Why is Mericle, a real estate developer, promoting Northeastern Pennsylvania’s (NEPA’s) quality of life?
Mericle has been very fortunate to provide commercial space to several hundred companies since 1985 and we are especially proud that more than 20,000 people work in the buildings we’ve developed in NEPA. However, when companies are going through the site selection process, more factors come into play than just the availability of a certain type of building or site.
In recent years, Area Development Magazine has surveyed hundreds of corporate executives from around the country who are actively engaged in site selection for their companies. The executives were given a list of 28 factors that are typically considered when companies are considering opening new facilities. The executives then rated each factor’s importance to their business and the ratings were averaged by the magazine.
On average, the five factors voted most important were highway access, availability of skilled labor, labor costs, occupancy/construction costs, and quality of life.
Skilled workers know that they are part of a small supply trying to fill a large demand. Where do skilled workers live? In many respects, anywhere they want to. Their scarcity gives them flexibility when deciding what community is right for them. That’s where quality of life, the 5th highest ranked factor in the Area Development surveys comes in.
Many skilled workers, especially millennials, are drawn to those communities known as great places to live. Communities such as Austin, San Diego, Seattle, Raleigh-Durham, and Madison, often show up on best places to live surveys, giving them a decided advantage when it comes to retaining and recruiting skilled workers.
We created DiscoverNEPA® to show this region’s best and brightest that Northeastern Pennsylvania’s quality of life does compare favorably with the Austins and the Madisons, that you can do just about everything here, and that they should choose NEPA as the place to start and grow their careers. We hope our tenants and other area businesses will use DiscoverNEPA® as a tool to recruit talented people and their families to this region. We also invite the area’s 18 colleges and universities to use DiscoverNEPA® to convince prospective students – our future workforce – to be educated here and stay here upon their graduation.
We invite you to visit DiscoverNEPA.com and to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Mericle is Northeastern Pennsylvania proud.