Rare example of a corporate return to the city: Sherwin-Williams and Cleveland

So reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "The return of Sherwin-Williams’ workers may revive downtown Cleveland — but not without resistance."

Companies did move back to the city.  While there was a trend of corporations that had moved to the suburbs moving back to the city--examples like Compuware and Rocket Mortgage in Detroit, and Panasonic to Newark, it wasn't universal.

I had hoped DC had a shot with this, and companies like AES, Nestle, and Hilton, but it wasn't to be.  

Remember, MCI was based in DC for a long time, mostly because of accessibility to its regulator, the FCC, and all the cases it brought to open long distance telecommunications to competition.

-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?" (2015)
-- "Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"" (2017)

And corporations left legacy cities for the South.  Plenty of corporations moved out of legacy regions altogether to the South, especially Atlanta and Texas ("Next Phase of Clustering of Business away from the Midwest"). 

For example, while Panasonic was moving to Newark ("A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center"), Mercedes-Benz moved their headquarters from New Jersey to Atlanta, leveraging the naming rights they've paid for the Atlanta Falcons football team.

Companies continue to leave smaller cities.  Like Caterpillar from Peoria to the Chicago suburbs and then to Texas ("Caterpillar to move headquarters to Texas, marking second major corporate departure from Illinois in 6 weeks," Chicago Tribune), and Winston-Salem ("Smaller cities lose out when it comes to business consolidation and headquarters relocation: WInston-Salem, North Carolina").  

A big concern is airport access and size, needing convenient connections to multiple places from a close by airport.  Plus, as manufacturing shifts South, eventually, so do companies 

Car versus transit accessibility.  Or companies choosing locations for branches, like State Farm in Dallas and Atlanta, they chose based on freeway access, unlike the quest by Amazon HQ2 made transit accessibility a major criterion ("Amazon's HQ2 Hunt Is a Transit Reckoning," Bloomberg) .

CEOs move to get away from progressive taxation and politics.  And corporations like those owned by Ken Griffin ("Ken Griffin poised to pay extra $1.4M in taxes for NYC properties thanks to Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax: report," New York Post) and Starbucks ("Is Starbucks breaking up with Seattle?," Seattle Times) continue the trend of companies moving out of cities where they believe the regulatory environment is unfavorable.  

Griffin doesn't want to pay extra tax on his $238 million condo in NYC, after leaving Chicago because of its crime ("Billionaire Ken Griffin says Citadel’s Chicago exodus was ‘not hard,’ cites crime, taxes," Fox").  Starbucks isn't happy with Seattle City Council's passage of an employment tax.

Corporate consolidation.  There is still the issue of corporate consolidation cutting businesses, like banks and railroads.

And aging buildings.  A counter-force to in city location is aging building stock.  As buildings age companies don't want to pay the high renovation cost, so they move to new facilities, often in the suburbs where the company can spread out, on a campus ("Dallas Is Booming—Except for Its Downtown," Wall Street Journal).  From the article:

This city is a hotbed for commercial property. The metro area’s population is booming and financial-services firms are flocking here, earning the area the sobriquet “Y’all Street.” Yet at its heart is one of the country’s worst-hit central business districts: Downtown Dallas.

Companies are abandoning this neighborhood and its aging office towers. They are heading to the Uptown district or the thriving suburbs, often over concerns about crime and homelessness. Left behind are defaulted loans, foreclosures and deeply discounted property sales.

Plus new buildings generally are outfitted with the kinds of amenities that younger employees seek ("10 Must-Have Commercial Building Amenities That Attract (and Keep) Top Tenants," Fooda).

Cleveland.  Has a new corporate headquarters with a worker mandate to work in the office every day.  The addition is a boon after the recent closure of the Downtown Heinen's Supermarket (" Farmers market replaces Heinen’s in Cleveland," Supermarket News).  But it comes with costs.

... Sherwin-Williams has opened its new roughly 1-million-square-foot headquarters near Public Square, requiring office employees to show up in person five days a week.

For the city, that is welcome news. The deal was written to protect jobs and taxes. And the return of so many workers has become something bigger: the spark city officials and business leaders hope will finally bring a pandemic-battered downtown back to life.

For many of those workers, however, it feels like a loss. The return-to-office mandate ended a hybrid arrangement many had built their lives around. They arranged child care, bought homes and reshaped their daily routines around working remotely — and now that flexibility is gone.

The result is a 36-story tower standing at the intersection of three competing interests: a company’s push for in-person collaboration, a city’s fight to bring downtown back to life and a workforce that had reorganized life around working from home.

In any case, in recent times, it's a win for legacy cities, and "the Rust Belt."

Where should cities focus their economic development resources?  However, some economists make the point that cities do better when building up and developing smaller businesses, than focusing on large corporations who may stay just a short time ("How U.S. Cities Lost the Economic Development Plot," CommonEdge).  I call this the difference between "building a local economy" and traditional "Economic Development."

I suppose I come down in the middle.  Some companies seem to be worth recruiting, like Amazon HQ2, although post covid it hasn't worked out as well.  High paying jobs, reasonable amounts of subsidy, secondary development, e.g., with Amazon HQ2, that's seeded a Virginia Tech campus.

But as pointed out in the aftermath of the closure of the Pfizer research lab in Ann Arbor, and the number of companies that developed out of it, that many small companies rather than one big one reduces risk for the local economy ("How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a more robust and independent biotech sector").

Doubles and triples, especially in a stage of the US economy that is focused on smaller companies, rather than the big corporations of past decades.  E.g., big GE is now three smaller companies with others sold off.  Same with Honeywell.  Large corporations of the old days are smaller or non existent today.

Goldman Sachs is building a new campus for more than 5,000 employees in Dallas, its largest in the U.S. outside New York City. (Shelby Tauber/For The Washington Post)

This trend is furthered by how new technologies such as electrification of automobiles or AI make it easier for new entrants and harder for legacy companies ("Factors undergirding the decline of economic clusters").  

NYC under Mayor Bloomberg made a good move in funding the start of a new "technology and engineering higher education institution"--Cornell Tech--as a way for the city to stay relevant economically in the face of shrinkage of the financial industry among others ("Bankers are leaving Wall Street for ‘Y’all Street’," Washington Post).

Loss of business clustering/headquarters hurts secondary cities

 1.  "Boston has lost its financial services clout. Santander’s latest move is just another example," Boston Globe.

As recently as 25 years ago, Boston punched above its weight in financial services, with powerhouse mutual fund managers at almost every corner, a top 10 retail bank in FleetBoston, even a stock exchange of our very own. Now? That supremacy feels like it has slipped away. This is just the latest example.

... With each passing year, it seems, Boston’s Financial District sheds just a little more of the sector’s clout that gave the place its name. The big post-COVID hope for the district’s future hinges on real estate conversions: hotels, dorms, apartments, tourist attractions. Anything but new offices. (And many of the offices that remain are being taken over by the likes of tech firms such as SimpliSafe, DraftKings, and Klaviyo.)

(Baltimore too had at one time been a regional financial center with national heft.  The first private equity bank was founded there.  Some big mutual funds.  Insurance companies.  No more.)

Norfolk Southern headquarters, shown here in an aerial photo on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, sits squarely in the Midtown Atlanta landscape, reflected in its gleaming glass facade. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

2.  A merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads likely means the serious diminishment of the importance of Atlanta to the new company--NS is based in Atlanta ("Atlanta is at the center of a railroad merger with big economic implications," "Coming soon to Midtown: A Union Pacific building?," Atlanta Journal-Constitution).  From the second article:

In addition to a Fortune 500 headquarters, the proposed plan would cost Atlanta jobs as operations consolidate in Nebraska, the application outlined. In total, more than half the Midtown headquarters’ management employee headcount would either relocate to Omaha or lose their jobs, the filing said.

... expects the company’s total Georgia headcount to remain at about 3,000 post-merger — versus its current 4,000.

3.  Corporate headquarters are leaving California.  Part of it is consolidation to bigger business clusters, such as Chevron from suburban San Francisco to Houston, but also conservative company owners like Elon Musk making political statements.  

Focus on new business development and growth.  The business columnist for the Orange County Register ("How can California survive the departures of big companies?") suggests the response should be to focus on the state's strength as a place for start ups and new businesses, some of which end up growing to be quite large.

4.  Another issue is the relocation of divisions from a corporate headquarters city.  For example, Starbucks, based in Seattle, has relocated its logistics division to Nashville, and appears about to sign a lease for space that could support up to 2,000 workers, far more than the size of the logistics group ("Starbucks reportedly eyes Nashville office large enough for hundreds," Seattle Times).

==========

Also see:

-- "A wrinkle on corporate headquarters: leaving the city as buildings age," 2026
-- "Clustering/agglomeration economies and revival of Southern California's space sector," 2025
-- "How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a more robust and independent biotech sector," 2021
-- "Federal government research hub development initiative," 2023
-- "Universities and ancillary economic development (versus the anti-research agenda of the Trump Administration)," 2025
-- "Next Phase of Clustering of Business away from the Midwest," 2022
-- "Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"," 2017
-- "Corporate headquarters relocating to the center city: GE chooses Boston," 2016
-- "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend," 2015 
-- "A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center," 2015
-- "Pennsylvania Avenue DC planning initiative," 2014
-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?," 2014

Nationalization of banking came at the expense of local communities

There is a section in Death and Life of Great American Cities, where Jane Jacobs describes driving on a US route across the Northeast coast, going through town after town in decline.  

She describes being shocked at seeing a successful community.  Later she learned that it still had a remaining community-based bank committed to making business and building loans, whereas the other neighborhoods she passed through had been redlined--areas determined to be less viable, and therefore too risky to lend money to.

I remember the period of bank consolidation in Detroit.  National Bank of Detroit (NBD) merged with Bank of Chicago, later to be gobbled up by what is now JPMorganChase.  Comerica is the merger of a bunch of Detroit banks, the company moved its headquarters to Texas although it still has interests in Detroit, naming rights for the baseball stadium, Comerica Bank.

Many cities went through a similar process, to the point where most city center regional banks have been acquired by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo, although there are still some large center city banks here and there.

And studies generally show that as corporations consolidate and leave former headquarters cities, their financial and philanthropic commitment declines 

-- "The geography of giving: The effect of corporate headquarters on local charities," Journal of Public Economics (2010)

It's not clear these days how well local banks function compared to what Jane Jacobs described.  Banks have community reinvestment requirements, but I don't think the reporting is very good.  In fact I think that branches should have to publish infographics each year, detailing their local operations.

This isn't the best example of an infographic, but the best I could find.  I picture one say showing 5 and 10 mile radii from where the branch is located, with information about residential mortgages made, business loans made, and personal loans made.  With demographics breaking down loans by income, race, etc.  I suspect most of the deposits are used out of the area.  Source: BECU.

Philadelphia Inquirer business columnist Joseph DiStefano has a piece, "How Philly lost its big banks, and a little survivor that’s grown in the vacuum," about two books about the history of Philadelphia's banks, most of which have met similar fates to those of Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, etc.  From the article:

Philly’s big banks lived for generations. That includes Girard and Fidelity, Provident and PSFS, and especially the grandest and toughest, PNB and First Pennsylvania, whose combination as CoreStates was designed to keep Philadelphia in business as the nation’s oldest financial center.

These big banks funded factories, transport, and trade, taught school kids to save, guarded fortunes, decided who in the divided city got to buy property and who had to rent, intervened in public crises, and hired armies of workers, many of them low-paid women with little power but vast responsibilities.

These banks all vanished in the merger mania of the 1980s and 1990s, amid mass layoffs that emptied Center City office towers. The biggest bank still based in the metro area is now Delaware’s WSFS, which bought its way into the vacuum left by the passing of the big lenders after enduring its own near-death experiences.

As it happens, Charles Coltman III, the No. 2 executive at CoreStates when it vanished in a $20 billion 1997 merger, and Marvin “Skip” Schoenhals, the man who saved WSFS from a near-shutdown, then a threatened takeover, have now published memoirs giving their insider accounts of the news events of more than a quarter century ago. What can we learn?

... a tough but supple credit culture that he argues has been stripped, leaving promising businesses without hope of healthy funding, by rigid regulators captive to the Wall Street mega-banks.

 ... Beyond the scope of the book is the larger question of why Philadelphia bankers, so strong for so long, lost public influence, their sense of personal responsibility, and the moral will to excel, leaving a hole in the city’s leadership.

... Schoenhals’ book, cowritten with Brittany Kriegstein, is, like Coltman’s, part life story. It goes on to recount the rescue takeover of the badly over-extended former Wilmington Savings Fund Society by canny investors who put the well-connected, straight-arrow manager in charge. And it shows how he avoided their plan to resell the bank for a fast profit, won time to rebuild the staff and its credit culture, and boost its stock to stay independent.. 

Then again, one of the criticisms of too locally focused banks, especially those cozy with developers, is that the bank's loan portfolio can be especially risky, if economic conditions change. That's driven many banks to failure.  From the article:

While WSFS recovered as Philly’s banks vanished in the ‘90s, there’s a more recent moral lesson, in WSFS’s eclipse of Delaware’s once-dominant Wilmington Trust Co. At a reception in Wilmington on Dec. 12, Schoenhals recalled how he had limited developer loans to just over 10% of his bank’s portfolio on the eve of the Great Recession — vs. Wilmington Trust’s 40%, enough to sink that bigger company when land values fell. But that story isn’t in this book; he plans a sequel.

Smaller cities lose out when it comes to business consolidation and headquarters relocation: WInston-Salem, North Carolina

Winston-Salem is a secondary city in North Carolina, second to Charlotte, the largest city in the state, and to Raleigh-Durham, home to universities and large research operations.  

 When US business was not so concentrated in major cities, it was home to a large number of firms including major corporate headquarters.  

These days, not unlike Caterpillar living Peoria for Chicago, and now to Texas, Winston-Salem is experiencing the loss of those corporations, especially as they further consolidate and relocate.  If firms stay in North Carolina, they are moving to Charlotte.

The Winston-Salem Journal has a really great article about this process, "Triad weathers corporate HQ departures with manufacturing revival."  It's super rare for a smaller newspaper to have such a thorough, detailed, well-argued piece.

I've written a few entries on this topic in the past year and over the years: 

-- "Next Level Clustering of Business away from the Midwest," 2022
-- "Boeing to move "headquarters" to Northern Virginia," 2022 
-- "How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a biotech sector there," 2021
-- "Why do Rust Belt rivals Cleveland and Pittsburgh have diverging economies?," 2021 
-- "Crystal City Arlington as Amazon one-half of HQ2 | Part 1: General + Housing impact," 2017
-- "Part 2: Leveraging Amazon's entrance for complementary economic development improvements," 2017

Ten smaller businesses versus one big business: which is better?  And a point in the WSJ article dovetails with a point made in the article about Ann Arbor and biotechnology, that Winston-Salem needs to recognize its place in the business ecosystem and focus on smaller businesses, and that for example 10 businesses, with more of their functions handled locally, has more impact than one business with the same number of employees, and fewer locally-based business functions, and is less dependent on any one business.

R&D functions and manufacturing proximity.  It also illustrates another point although the author doesn't mention it per se, about "doing versus coordinating."  Corporate headquarters or at least research and development for manufacturers--with Boeing being a big exception--tend to stay proximate to major manufacturing clusters.

Airports.  A key point mentioned is airports and the number of destinations served.  International companies like Caterpillar can't rely on a local airport for simplified connections.  Same with firms in Winston-Salem.

--  "Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"," 2017

Education.  The article mentions the importance of higher education in particular technical education and engineering, something that Greensboro, a peer city, has been particular good at.

-- "Universities as elements of urban/downtown revitalization: the Portland State story and more," 2014

-- "Naturally occurring innovation districts | Technology districts and the tech sector," 2014

-- "Better leveraging higher education institutions in cities and counties: Greensboro; Spokane; Mesa; Phoenix; Montgomery County, Maryland; Washington, DC," 2016

-- "Revisiting past blog entries: College Park as a college town and economic development | PG County and Amazon,," 2018

-- "University President Freeman Hrabowski and an agenda for urban universities," 2021

-- "The other George Miller idea: creating multi-college innovation centers in (cities) Philadelphia | Creating public library-college education centers as revitalization initiatives," 2021

Technological change can redistribute business location.  And while I haven't written about it, how quantum technological change within an industry can change its location patterns.  

For example, now that the auto industry is moving from gasoline engines to electric motors, the new firms and their suppliers are increasingly located outside of the Midwest.  It's not that Michigan and other states aren't landing some of the business, but so are states like Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, etc., shifting supply chains and where added value is developed.

Interestingly, oil interests are fighting this in Republican-led states ("Georgia judge's incentives ruling threatens Rivian EV plant," Atlanta Journal-Constitution).  It's positioned as fighting corporate welfare, but it's really a different type of corporate welfare attempting to ward off competition.

Next Phase of Clustering of Business away from the Midwest

Around 2015, there were a number of instances of corporate headquarters moving to the South, such as Mercedes USA moving from New Jersey to Atlanta.  

Atlanta and Dallas were particularly successful in gaining large corporate or regional headquarters, and sadly in locations that were minimally served by transit.

Although at the same time, there has been a number of examples of corporate headquarters moving from suburban locations back to the center city, although the impact of covid on people actually coming to work versus working from home has countered that in many instances. 

-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?," 2014
-- "A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center," 2015
-- "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend," 2015
-- "DC, Transformational Projects Action Planning, and the Baltimore-Washington Maglev project," 2021

Relatedly is all the discussion about firms moving from California/Silicon Valley to Texas ("Companies are rapidly leaving California, study finds. Here’s where they are going " KXAN-TV), and how industries going through technological change shift their locations as well (e.g., electric vehicle battery and car/truck production to Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and potentially Oklahoma, etc.).

Although given the reality of Western drought and how manufacturing tends to require great amounts of water, I would think the Midwest has a long term competitive advantage in terms of access to water supplies. 

In May I wrote about Boeing relocating its headquarters to Northern Virginia, from Chicago, when it had already been moved from Seattle, where the company was founded and still has its largest manufacturing operations ("Boeing to move "headquarters" to Northern Virginia ").

Then a bit more than a week ago, Raytheon, another large defense manufacturer, announced it was also moving its HQ to Northern Virginia ("Raytheon will move headquarters to Arlington ," Washington Post), bringing all of the largest companies to the DC area, all but Lockheed Martin (in Montgomery County, Maryland) in Virginia.

San Antonio as a developing automotive cluster.  Around that time I came across an interesting article about the development of Greater San Antonio becoming a corporate R&D cluster, building out of industrial plants for Toyota, Navistar, and others ("Driving force: San Antonio picks up speed in auto industry," San Antonio Express-News, access with printfriendly).  

Manufacturing has moved South and West because most of the states have labor laws that make unionization of the workforce difficult, so they can offer lower wages compared to plants in the Midwest.  Over time, corporate functions are following.

The article is long and detailed, and illustrates how corporations can shift their "centers" as they develop new centers of business concentration. 

Caterpillar moving to Texas.  Yesterday's announcement that Caterpillar, the heavy equipment manufacturer once based in Peoria, Illinois, having shifted to Suburban Chicago in 2017 ("Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"," ) is now moving to Irving, Texas ("Caterpillar to move headquarters to Texas, marking second major corporate departure from Illinois in 6 weeks," Chicago Tribune).  

Although they do have various manufacturing operations in the state, Illinois remains much more significant. And the number of employees, 230, isn't huge.

Conclusion.  I'd say it's early to draw overarching conclusions but the trends do not look good for center cities (especially with the post-covid shift to working from home) generally and in the Midwest specifically.  Although Midwestern states with ample water supplies ought to be putting that front and center in the economic development and business recruitment positioning.

Boeing to move "headquarters" to Northern Virginia

According to the Post ("Boeing's move to Virginia will mean few new jobs in DC"), it's not as big as a deal as it seems, because it will add relatively few people to Boeing's existing operations in the area, which are focused on military procurement.  

When I first saw the news I thought five things: 

(1) it demonstrates that Boeing thinks that the military business will be even more significant going forward ("Boeing is losing the plane race. So it packed up and moved to Washington," CNN);

(2) I wondered if this was because Boeing wanted to communicate it was more concerned about fixing its relationship with its regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, given all the various failures over the 737MAX program ("How ‘Boeing’s Fatal Flaw’ Grounded the 737 Max and Exposed Failed Oversight," New York Times, "Q&A: What led to Boeing's 737 MAX crisis," Seattle Times, "A Tale of Two Boeing Boards — The Disparate Conclusions of the Justice Department and the Delaware Chancery Court," JDSupra, "The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course," Atlantic Magazine).  

... just like the old MCI long distance phone company located in DC because its formative years were spent suing AT&T and lobbying the Federal Communications Commission on opening up of the telephony market. But then again, there is the issue of "regulatory capture."

But if that mattered wouldn't they have chosen an in DC location?

(3) why isn't DC proper particularly successful in landing high profile business headquarters? There is lots of coverage in planning circles about companies moving back to cities, after having decamped for the suburbs.  But this movement seems to bypass DC:

-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?," 2014
-- "A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center," 2015
-- "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend," 2015
-- "DC, Transformational Projects Action Planning, and the Baltimore-Washington Maglev project," 2021
-- "Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"," 2017

I can think of four instances now: Hilton; Nestle; Amazon HQ2 (but there, DC's response didn't meet the stated criteria for a large amount of contiguous office space); and Boeing for which it appears DC proper was never considered.

The Post article said that Northern Virginia leaders lobbying Boeing for this to increase the area's visibility and to get a win, even though it doesn't appear to be that significant:

The jet and weapons manufacturer’s decision to relocate was the result of a lengthy lobbying campaign by leaders in the region, reflecting the Washington area’s growing appeal to global corporations. Yet the shift appears unlikely to accompany a major economic boost in the short term. 

Amy Liu, a vice president at the Brookings Institution and director of its Metropolitan Policy Program, said the company’s Northern Virginia move is a win for the region — at least in terms of perception. 

 “It’s a big vote of confidence that this is a community that can hold a global brand,” she said. “Even if there are not major job changes that are attached to the move, the fact that the corporate headquarters is in Northern Virginia means that the company wants to be known and branded in this region.” 

She predicted Boeing would eventually add or shift other services to Arlington, eventually adding more jobs. Other companies will see Boeing’s shift as a sign that Northern Virginia is leaving behind its identity as a home only for government contractors, she said, while establishing itself as a high-tech hub.

To the person who asked me about this, and sent me an article about it, I did suggest that DC's economic planners and development officials aren't particularly good.  C. 2003 when I knew a lot less about urban planning and economic development than I do today, I thought they were much better.  Mostly, they are followers.

The city is decently successful around law and lobbying firms, and trade associations, plus multiunit housing, entertainment districts, and to some extant, retail, but not in keeping federal agencies nor in landing large businesses that desire proximity to the federal government.  WRT Northern Virginia and to some extent, Montgomery County, lap the city significantly ("The East-West Divide | DC area regional economic development: anchors and where they are placed matter + airports | But military spending matters the most." 2021).

(4) At the same time, I wonder if the "animus" about "Washington" directed by much of the general public wrt national politics based here--although they forget that that Washington is produced by their voting choices back home, and they create the cesspool by making bad voting choices--makes it harder for DC to recruit corporate businesses to the city proper, because they don't want the association? ("Basically Everybody Under 40 Hates Washington," Time Magazine).

(5) and finally, will crony capitalism send more business headquarters to the DC area?  Given that Republicans are inclined to "get all up in the business of business" given the actions by Florida Governor DeSantis to punish Disney Corporation after it spoke out against State-passed culture war laws ("Disney government dissolution bill signed by DeSantis," AP, "Sen. Josh Hawley's Move to Strip Disney's Copyrights Called 'Blatantly Unconstitutional'," Variety), will businesses relocate to be around the national center of power, the way that it happens in other countries.  

For example, Thessaloniki lost its preeminence as Greece's center for business and industry as more companies felt they were better served by relocating to Athens, to be closer to the politicians.  (Turkey and Istanbul is another example.)

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DC has a branding problem.  WRT DC proper, it needs to refocus on branding and identity development, and how to create a brand for the city that isn't tainted by national politics ("City Branding (Place Branding) | Meaning, Stages & Examples," PlanningTank, "Strengthening the city’s reputation in the age of cities: an insight in the city branding theory," City, Territory, and Architecture).

-- THE BRANDING OF CITIES: Exploring City Branding and the Importance of Brand Image, masters thesis

The city has "leaned in" on being the national capital and leader of the free world.  (I joke that because the US is still the strongest nation, even after Trump's destruction of so many elements of the nation's leadership, that people in DC define anything they do as "world class" whether or not it is.)

But at the same time, "the nation and the world" define DC solely in terms of its place as the political headquarters of the US, diminishing the local brand and any sense of an independent, local identity.

I've written about this a lot, starting with, "Town-City branding or "We are all destination managers now"" (2005).  

-- "City branding versus identity | Branding versus Urban Strategy," 2019 (this entry has multiple links to previous entries on the topic)

But this is much more than about making a community great for residents ("placemaking") and attractive to tourists.  It's about a noxious reputation created by others over which "the city" has minimal levers to impact.

======

FWIW, the move of Boeing's HQ to Chicago from Seattle is seen as a bad move, in disconnecting the administration of the company from its core business, plane production, especially as the firm started in Seattle (although now it has significant operations in Wichita and Charleston, South Carolina, among others).  Part of this was to distance the company from the strong union presence at the Seattle area manufacturing facilities.

-- "Inside Boeing's Big Move," Harvard Business Review, 2001

GE scales back its ambitions in Boston

Since GE announced plans to move from suburban Connecticut to urban Boston ("Corporate headquarters relocating to the center city: GE chooses Boston," 2016), the corporation has totally and completely tanked and significantly changed its focus, obviating the need for a larger headquarters campus with lots of space so people could work on digital initiatives that the company has now abandoned.

In less than two years, CEO Jeffrey Immelt was fired, and so was his successor, John Flannery, who has been replaced by Larry Culp, who had worked for the DC-based holding company, Danaher.

-- "What incoming CEO Larry Culp brings to GE," CNBC
-- "Larry Culp's long to-do list to fix GE," Washington Post

The Boston Globe reports ("GE says it will pay back Mass. $87m in incentives") that they've dropped the project, are returning $87 million in incentives they've already received, and are marketing the property where the campus was to be built.

Now, in line with the previous post on Amazon and NYC, I would have said that betting on GE was if not a sure thing, a good decision. So what do I know? (I had suspicions that GE did a lot of financial engineering and bad decision making, given the corporation's history with environmental contamination and various business disasters at GE Appliance, but who knew the extent?)

At the time, Strategy & Business had made a good point ("Corporate HQ and the Magnetic Pull of Cities"). As GE shifted away from financial services (and tv) they no longer had a reason to be so tightly connected to NYC. With their intent to refocus on manufacturing, Boston was a good choice because of the universities and Rte. 128 technology companies.

Other posts on the general topic of corporations moving back to the city include:

-- "A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center," 2015
-- "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend," 2015

When big corporations move their headquarters, it's interesting to read the press coverage in both the winning and losing towns

In December, it was announced that Norfolk Southern railroad is leaving Norfolk ("Real damage from Norfolk Southern's departure may be to Hampton Roads' image," Experts still hopeful about downtown despite loss of Norfolk Southern," and "Virginia, Norfolk may seek up to $4 million refund over broken promise as Norfolk Southern move advances," Norfolk Virginian-Pilot) for Atlanta ("Norfolk Southern CEO confirms HQ move to Atlanta," Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

Today it was announced that SunTrust Bank of Atlanta ("New details, reaction to SunTrust merger with BB&T," AJC) is merging with BB&T, consolidating in Charlotte, North Carolina ("BB&T, SunTrust announce blockbuster merger as Charlotte gains a new bank headquarters," Charlotte Observer), with BB&T relocating from Winston-Salem, North Carolina ("BB&T buys SunTrust in $66 billion deal; combined bank to move HQ to Charlotte," Winston-Salem Journal).

Discovery Channel to leave Silver Spring, Maryland

Over the past year, Aaron Renn, writing in his Urbanophile blog, had two posts that I found particularly provocative (in a good way) but I haven't gotten around to reacting. 

One was more recent, "St. Louis and the Consequences of Consolidation," discussing corporate "consolidation" and the impact of corporate mergers, distant control of the corporation, and the eventual impact on support services.

His example was Anheuser Busch, the nation's number one beer producer, based in St. Louis, but now owned by an international brewing behemoth based in Europe and South America. 

Historically, companies like A-B or General Motors were large enough to have key services such as advertising development and media buying provided locally, albeit by divisions of larger firms located in the nation's advertising capital--New York City, whereas most other companies would go to New York (or Chicago) more directly for this work.

(St. Louis has lost many locally significant businesses through corporate consolidation, such as Boatman's Bank, now part of Bank of America, May Company department stores, now part of Macy's, and increasingly, Anheuser-Busch, with a major negative impact resulting on the business district in Downtown St. Louis.)

The acquisition of Anheuser-Busch is an example of how business is now organized on international terms without respect to national boundaries, and even companies that are huge within their markets can not avoid or evade the merger and consolidation process as business is reorganized on a global basis.

A-B, acquired in 2008, took until 2017 to shift its advertising accounts to New York City, costing a number of highly paid St. Louis-based jobs as a result. 

Aaron discusses this in terms of consolidation and was reacting to a 2016 Washington Monthly article, "The Real Reason Middle America Should Be Angry," which makes the argument that lack of adequate anti-trust regulation against corporate mergers led to this kind of result.

Personally, I think the WM argument is weak because as long as companies are stock-based, the pressure from investors, especially large institutional investors and hedge funds agitating for maximized returns ("The Effects of Hedge Fund Interventions on Strategic Firm Behavior," Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation) is to make more money and that comes from bigness and consolidation.

Although it must be noted that because extranormal business growth is unattainable in mature markets, profit margins are mostly increased by "efficiency gains" that come through layoffs and consolidation of production. This is true especially for businesses in countries like the U.S. where the days of hyper-growth are decades in the past. Moreover, as countries like China accelerate the growth of their economies especially in consumer-focused industries, those firms are now the hyper-growth actors and increasingly operating on an international basis.

In college, I came across a couple books, Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale, and The Bigness Complex: Industry, Labor, and Government in the American Economy by Walter Adams which had a lot of influence on my thinking about these issues, but the reality is that the organization of the capitalist system and a focus on "efficiency" leads this process and anti-trust regulation is more likely to result in the crippling of smaller companies.

Being from the Detroit area myself, I had witnessed a similar type of activity dating to the 1970s, in how the control of the city's advertising and media businesses (other than locally focused media) and banks especially, was shifting out of the region, in particular to Chicago, because a primarily one industry town wasn't big enough to generate its own momentum in the support of business-related "service" economy.

So this process isn't new to me.  It's the basis of agglomeration economies and the benefits of clustering.  What has happened is that as businesses grow and operate on a national or global/international basis, where they purchase services changes, from locally-owned or based businesses, to national centers.

This is the same effect as with the difference between locally-owned retail and national chains.  Chains don't purchase products or services locally, so the "multiplier effect" or the economic and business-to-business recirculation benefits from consumer spending are significantly reduced compared to purchases made at locally owned businesses ("The Multiplier Effect of Local Independent Businesses," AMIBA).

This comes up locally with yesterday's announcement ("Discovery Communications to exit Silver Spring," Washington Business Journal) that Discovery Channel, a large cable network, alongside their merger with Scripps Media, owner of channels such as HGTV, Travel Channel, and Food Network, is shifting its corporate headquarters to the nation's media capital--New York City--and most of its back office and production functions to Knoxville, Tennessee, where the Scripps operation is based.

Hurts Montgomery County, especially Silver Spring's office market.  This is a blow to Montgomery County, Maryland and the conurbation of Silver Spring, which loses one of three major business headquarters located there (the others being United Therapeutics and a federal agency, NOAA), 1,500 jobs directly, and likely more than double that in terms of indirect jobs.

It makes the capture of office jobs in Silver Spring even more difficult as suburban office space demand is shrinking ("Report: No Recovery in Sight for Parts of Montgomery County Office Market," Bethesda Magazine).

For whatever reason, Bethesda has been more successful ("Marriott to move headquarters to downtown Bethesda with $62 million in incentives," Washington Post) than Silver Spring in continuing to capture new headquarters, as companies shift to transit-adjacent locations away from the office parks.

Diminishes the DC area's relevance as a media production center, excepting television news.  Interestingly, both Detroit and Washington have functioned as secondary media production centers for a long time.  For Detroit, this came out of the business videos produced for the auto industry.  For Washington, it derived from the various television news operations for national networks and station groups.

And like with how MCI, the long distance telecommunications firm, located in the DC area because of access to regulatory agencies, a handful of television operations (PBS) and cable networks (BET, Discovery Channel, C-SPAN, Learning Channel later acquired by Discovery, etc.) developed here out of a similar proximity, including to the National Cable Television Association and the National Association of Broadcasters, industry trade associations and lobbying organizations.

But as these companies become relevant on a larger scale, nationally and/or internationally, local agglomeration economies are less valuable, and the businesses relocate.  This happened with BET already ("BET Shutters Washington, D.C., Office as Operations Move to New York," Hollywood Reporter) and now Discovery.  Plus, control of the National Geographic Channel shifts to Disney from Fox, etc.

How realistic is it for a ban (anti-trust regulation) of corporate mergers to occur, to staunch this kind of relocation? I'd say, not very.

Choosing urbanized places vs. choosing DC as a place to locate significant headquarters business operations: Marriott and CoStar

This is more of an aside.  I've written a number of pieces about how corporations are moving from suburban locations back to the city.  One of the biggest examples of this is how GE is moving from Stamford, Connecticut to Boston.

But DC (and Philadelphia) seem to be immune to the trend.  I am not familiar with the dynamics in Philadelphia, but in DC it has to do most likely with high costs of commercial office space, coupled with high cost of housing and high prevailing salaries.

-- "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend," 2015
-- "A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center," 2015
-- "Smart Growth America report on businesses moving back to center cities (and suburban core business districts)," 2015

Marriott, based in Montgomery County (but originally based in DC), is moving from a suburban disconnected office park location to Downtown Bethesda ("Marriott to move headquarters to downtown Bethesda with $62 Million in incentives," Washington Post), within a couple blocks of the Red Line Metrorail Station.

I don't know if DC tried to land them, but given that more than 60% of the firm's employees live in Montgomery County, getting them to move into DC was a stretch.

The firm received incentives about 20 years ago to stay in Maryland, but didn't earn the complete amount because it didn't grow its employee count.  Partly this was because the company sold off the hotels it actually owned to a related company, Host, which is now an REIT ("Host Marriott Plans to Become REIT, Purchase Luxury Hotels," 1998, Wall Street Journal).   This reduced its employee growth rate.

CoStar, a real estate information firm which received tax incentives to locate their corporate headquarters in DC in 2010 ("D.C. Council OKs $6.1M in tax breaks for CoStar Group," Washington Business Journal") announced that they will be locating their research division in Richmond, Virginia ("CoStar picks Richmond for major research center; hiring 730 people here," Richmond Times-Dispatch), likely because the cost of space and salaries are much lower than in the DMV. From the article:

"We want to provide our people with competitive compensation," said Andrew C. Florance, CEO and founder of CoStar, adding that most of the research and analytic jobs - the bulk of its operations - will pay in the $60,000 range. ...

"We are thrilled to be in Richmond and we look forward to being an engaged corporate citizen," Florance said. "This will be our single biggest operations and global research center."

The company started its search about a year ago, narrowing its list from 20 cities to Atlanta; Kansas City; Charlotte, N.C.; and Richmond. Factors under consideration were a high quality of life, culture, cost of living and a highly educated workforce. ...

The company is expected to infuse a quarter of a billion dollars into the Richmond economy over the next several years in leases, payroll taxes and capital expenditures.

DC needs to study why it seems to be exempt from the trend of corporations relocating to the city from the suburbs, which is particularly pronounced in Chicago ("Companies moving to Chicago from the suburbs," Chicago Tribune) although yes, CoStar moved its headquarters to DC from the suburbs, but rather than to continue to grow its business footprint in the city, it chose to locate in Richmond. Even so, CoStar is a rare example of a somewhat large firm locating in the city from the area suburbs.

It is another example, IMO, of how the height limit drives up the cost of office space (and housing) therefore encouraging businesses to locate outside of the city.

But note also the companies also use the relocation process as an element of rightsizing, moving "headquarters workers" Downtown, while keeping support staff in lower cost locations in the suburbs and elsewhere. This isn't a new phenomenon, and was pioneered by Wall Street firms in the 1980s, which began moving support staff to nearby locations in Brooklyn and Jersey City.

Corporate headquarters relocating to the center city: GE chooses Boston

I've written about this for awhile, especially in terms of a report produced by Smart Growth America on the subject ("A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center") although the issue is a bit more nuanced than has been reported by the advocacy groups.

Some corporations are moving back to the city, others are moving into better locations than they had been previously located, even adjacent to transit, but the sites are still very much automobile-centric, or into what are better termed "conurbations," which are more concentrated and urban but are likely to be suburban locations.  And some companies are living the city for the suburbs still ("TCF Bank to Move 1,700 Employees to New Corporate Campus in Plymouth," KSTP-TV (ABC)).

State Farm is a company moving to transit adjacent locations in Greater Dallas ("State Farm adds fourth building to Richardson campus project," Dallas Morning News) and Atlanta, but for the most part, the sites primary advantages are proximity to freeways.

In terms of suburban conurbations, one recent example is Baltimore County-based McCormick Spices, which after threatening to move to Pennsylvania or other distant locations, is relocating by just a couple miles ("McCormick & Co. will keep headquarters in Baltimore County," Baltimore Sun), but away from a cul-de-sac to a more directly connected location on York Road, and closer to the end of the light rail system.  (The company long ago moved away from Baltimore City.)  This could help recenter business location and development around the Hunt Valley end of line light rail station.

Current headquarters building for General Dynamics in Falls Church, Virginia is quite bucolic.

Another is how General Dynamics has announced they are moving to Reston, Virginia, which is 20 miles from DC, but an edge city in its own right, separate from Tysons ("General Dynamics moving HQ to Reston," Washington Business Journal).  Currently located in Falls Church, Virginia, they are trading one suburban location for another, but the new site will be just over one mile to a Metro station while the current site is about 4 miles from Metrorail.

But the big story that is unfolding concerns General Electric.  They have been looking for a new site for the past few months, spurred out of a complaint that Connecticut's business climate is unfavorable.

GE is located in Fairfield, which is pretty suburban.

After a search that has eliminated various sites, including Atlanta, as of yesterday GE was down to two choices, the waterfront in Boston, or a suburban location in Westchester County, New York--more convenient to NYC, especially by transit, compared to Fairfield, but still suburban.

Note that neither New York nor Massachusetts are considered particularly friendly to business, so the statements about the failure of Connecticut's business climate may have been a chimera.

-- "What GE's Search Says About 21st Century Business, And About Connecticut," Hartford Courant

If they choose Boston, we'll have strong evidence that major companies are choosing urban locations.

GE chooses Boston.  ... and GE announced within the last few hours that they are moving to Boston ("GE said to pick Boston for headquarters,"Boston Globe) in response to speculation in the media ("GE decision on Seaport move expected this month" and "Why Boston makes sense as a home for GE," Globe) that had been published yesterday.

According to today's article:

“We want to be at the center of an ecosystem that shares our aspirations,” CEO Jeff Immelt said in a statement. “Greater Boston is home to 55 colleges and universities. Massachusetts spends more on research and development than any other region in the world, and Boston attracts a diverse, technologically fluent workforce focused on solving challenges for the world.” ...

GE’s choice cements Boston as a hub of innovation in technology and life sciences. The city’s concentration of high-powered universities and tech firms proved to be a big draw for the company. Under chief executive Jeffrey Immelt, GE is selling most of its finance businesses to focus on industrial lines such as power and clean energy, oil and gas, aviation, and health sciences, which are all increasingly reliant on advanced technology.

It will be interesting to track the impact of this decision on other companies.  For example, this recent blog post. "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend" links to a Philadelphia Inquirer article which reports on the difficulties that Philadelphia is having in attracting corporate headquarters.  So clearly, certain kinds of cities are better positioned to re-attract larger business operations than others.

Boston in particular is a special location given the huge number of universities there, anchored of course by MIT and Harvard University, its strong information technology and health care and biotechnology sectors, especially in Cambridge, and its relatively strong--but underfunded--transit system.

Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend

Motorola--a much smaller company compared to its heyday--announced it is moving its headquarters to Downtown Chicago from suburban Schaumburg ("Motorola Solutions moving headquarters, 800 jobs to Chicago," Chicago Tribune). From the article:

In making the move back to Chicago, Motorola Solutions adds its name to a growing list of companies that have decided to jettison the suburbs for downtown digs, primarily in the city's Loop and West Loop neighborhoods. The list includes such venerable names as Kraft Heinz, Hillshire Brands and United Airlines, and they are all after the same thing: A tech-savyy, younger workforce that wants to work in the bright lights and big city, not on a sprawling suburban office campus. ...

Motorola Solutions is the 36th company to locate its headquarters in Chicago since 2011, according to the city.

State Farm--one of the nation's largest automobile insurers--has announced that they are locating new regional facilities in transit-adjacent locations in Tempe (Phoenix), Dallas ("New development to bring 650 apartments to Rowlett," Dallas Morning News), and Atlanta.  To me the Dallas location is more about automobility than transit, but the company has made statements that transit access is key to their decision-making going forward.  From the Arizona Republic article "Light rail now a must for central Phoenix development":

... State Farm Insurance Co. is going to lease almost all of a two million square foot, $600 million development on [Tempe] Town Lake because it is "vibrant." And a big part of being vibrant is its availability of public transportation. 

"Access to public transportation and multiple transportation options is critical to our operations going forward," said State Farm's chief operating officer about the company's choice of Tempe. That is corporate-speak for: We wouldn't be here without the light-rail.

Note that the Richardson Texas site is urban, but not the center city.  It will be interesting to see if the CityLine development there has good walkability and placemaking elements comparable to something like Northern Virginia's Reston Town Center.

And the Atlanta Business Chronicle terms State Farm's focus as more about "reshaping suburbs" than relocating to city centers ("How State Farm will remake 'outdated' suburbs"). The Dunwoody location is across the street from a MARTA subway station.

But the Philadelphia Inquirer reports ("Center city losing its position as a corporate metropolis") that other than Comcast's construction of a new headquarters, which includes bringing some NBC-related jobs in since they acquired NBCUniversal, corporations aren't moving back to Center City Philadelphia in the way that it has been reported in other cities.

From the article:

In the last two years, publicly traded Cigna, Sunoco, Arkema, Dow Chemical's advanced materials division (formerly Rohm and Haas), and Destination Maternity all moved their headquarters to the suburbs or out of state, following the vanished banks, insurance companies, railroads and manufacturers. 

A few public companies have moved downtown - DuPont spin-off Axalta Coating Systems from Wilmington, and construction-project manager Hill International moved in from South Jersey. 

But mostly, since 2000 Philadelphia "has witnessed a long, slow march to branch office-ville," says Howard Trauger, boss at Schuylkill Capital Management and a student of the local corporate scene since his days managing family fortunes at the former Girard Trust Co. Pittsburgh, less than one-fifth Philadelphia's size, can brag of bigger banks, manufacturers and energy companies, Trauger says.

According to Joseph DiStefano the author of the PI story, Paul Levy, the director of the Center City Philadelphia BID:

identified three groups of communities as to their attractiveness to corporate headquarters: those relatively attractive due to low costs and (by now) existing corporate concentrations (Texas cities, Atlanta); those with higher costs that are willing to spend a lot of money in subsidies to attract or keep companies (New Jersey, Illinois/Chicago, Connecticut); and those Northeastern cities like Philadelphia where the cost structure is high but there is not political will for very large subsidies.

DiStefano says "some of my readers disagree and say the new-construction tax breaks in Philadelphia are a large unfair subsidy." That can be an issue when tenants in existing buildings are attracted to new buildings also in the Center City but with lower rents because of tax breaks.

It's reported that DC is keeping the Advisory Board ("Exclusive: Advisory Board Co. picks new headquarters location," Washington Business Journal), but DC hasn't experienced the kind of relocation of businesses to the center city comparable to Chicago or San Francisco ("Blending Tech Workers and Locals in San Francisco's Mid-Market," New York Times).  It's more focused on not losing organizations, especially federal agencies, to the suburbs.

And clearly, at least with the suburban business center "relocations," placemaking and urban design elements are likely to be an ongoing issue (also see "A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center").

the more things change, the more they remain the same: Could McCormick Spice Co. move back to Baltimore City?

The company was founded in Baltimore in 1889 and grew through acquisition.  They left the city for quarters in Baltimore County in 1989.  Their old main headquarters building in the city is long gone.

The Baltimore Business Journal reports ("Spice company McCormick is considering 4 states for its new HQ") that the company is considering Pennsylvania, Delaware, Northern Virginia, and Maryland as sites for a new consolidated headquarters.

The article states that easy access to an international airport is highly desired, mentioning BWI Airport outside of Baltimore.

Why not just move back to Baltimore City?

Too bad the old headquarters is no long around for a triumphant return by the company.

Also see "Silicon Valley Fans San Francisco's Flames" from the Wall Street Journal about how many Silicon Valley tech firms are building up their operations in San Francisco, to have better access to quality talent, the same issue that is motivating McCormick to consider options other than their very suburban location in Baltimore County.

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In my forthcoming summary article for the EUNIC Washington Cluster "Europe in Baltimore" project, I suggested that the next phase for culture districts is to move towards knowledge clusters, and I suggest that Baltimore City and the city's higher education institutions need to consider this.

From the article:

From creative clusters to "creative economies" and knowledge quarters/knowledge precincts.  The basic precepts for the development of cultural districts as a revitalization strategy were laid down beginning in the 1980s, starting with various projects in the UK.   Researcher-consultants such as John Montgomery, Simon Roodhouse, Charles Landry and others have written extensively about "the creative city," and culture district development, planning and management.

The "Five Star" Model of Knowledge Development-Innovation Districts.  Source:  Aalto University.

As more places took on culture-based regeneration projects, the field has continued to develop and advance and define culture more broadly and integrate additional disciplines into more wider scale "creative economy" initiatives which tend to be focused on what are called "knowledge quarter" initiatives, as opposed to arts districts.  Perhaps knowledge quarter initiatives should be considered "next generation" culture district initiatives.

The Knowledge Quarter in Liverpool, which includes higher education institutions, government research facilities, private research ventures, medical and health care institutions, and research parks is one example.

-- "Liverpool City Region's Knowledge Economy: Delivering New Opportunities for Growth

Helsinki's Arabianranta district, which is centered around the design oriented University of Art and Design (now part of Aalto University) is another as is the Alexander Innovation District in Thessaloniki.  (There are many other examples around the world, including the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto.)

The URBACT publication, Creating knowledge hotspots in the city: A handbook | Practical guidelines for developing campuses, science quarters, creative districts and other knowledge hotspots, provides guidance for considering the development of broader knowledge development focused initiatives.

and...

3.  Baltimore has an incredible array of higher education institutions and while research and technology development initiatives by certain of the institutions have high profiles and there is the Baltimore Collegetown effort focused on retaining students in the metropolitan area after they graduate, there isn't the sense of Baltimore's higher education institutions operating at the scale of an integrated "knowledge quarter."  This needs to be addressed. 

Presently, there isn't a network of all of Baltimore's higher education institutions, although there are many examples of cooperation between institutions on more bi-lateral bases.  And Johns Hopkins University's president, Robert Daniels, who previously had been Provost at the University of Pennsylvania, which has a wide-ranging revitalization program within its urban interest area ("The University and Urban Revival," Judith Rodin, former president of Penn) has stepped up JHU's interaction with the city at large.

The Baltimore Student Exchange Program, like the Five College Consortium in Western Massachusetts, lets students take courses at different colleges and universities in the city, and is an initiative that can be built upon.

Could Baltimore's higher education institutions develop a network comparable to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation linking the Big 10 universities and the University of Chicago or the Washington Research Libraries Consortium in DC?

4.  Definitely there isn't a university-involved initiative within Baltimore that operates at the scale of Liverpool's Knowledge Quarter.

Could such a district be created in Baltimore, as the next generation of "culture district" development initiatives?

The way that the Arabianranta district was regenerated in association with the relocation of the University of Arts and Design and how design and information technology initiatives developed around it is another example of university-business-community revitalization that is especially relevant to the Station North Arts and Entertainment District as a way to better leverage and heighten the integration of these educational institutions into a broader program.

Also, the City of Helsinki's information technology innovation unit, Forum Virium Helsinki, a public-private partnership but also an agency of the city government, is another example that Baltimore could consider in the development of broader knowledge innovation efforts.

That being said, the East Baltimore Development Initiative, in part focused on leveraging the opportunities present within the medical research community at the adjacent Johns Hopkins University Medical School and Hospital is an example of a nascent effort along these lines.