In an effort to further promote its available properties to potential businesses, the York County Economic Development Authority approved a one-year agreement with a real estate property search engine.
EDA members voted 4-2-1 for the approval of the agreement, with Secretary Bradley Berrane and H.J “Junior” Coxton opposed, and Harvey Weinstein absent.
The search engine will live on the EDA’s website, www.YesYorkCounty.com. Office of Economic Development Director Jim Noel said the idea was to make searching for available properties in York County “as simple as possible.”
“We want to have that website tell them how wonderful we are, get the information they need to evaluate us, whether it’s taxes or workforce or available property, because at the end of the day economic development is still a real estate transaction,” he said.
Previously, the EDA contracted with CoStar, a similar commercial real estate search engine with its own URL.
Noel called this site selector “labor-intensive and expensive,” noting the search engine was not receiving many hits. He and Senior Business Development Representative Melissa Davidson had to enter new data onto the available sites manually instead of the search engine adding information automatically.
The new search engine is powered by LoopNet, an online provider of MLS service, marketing and technology. The yearly agreement calls for a one-time fee of $500 and $300 per month.
CoStar acquired Loopnet in April 2012, according to its website.
The EDA will advertise the LoopNet Site Selection module as a “function of” the existing website and will be promoted in at least three places on the site, Davidson said.
Noel said a function like this is “standard” on many localities’ economic development websites, and little standalone marketing is done for this item.
Berrane and Coxton opposed the agreement, preferring a standalone website.
“I don’t think this really helps us,” said Berrane, noting specific marketing that drives customers to this function would be well-suited.
Davidson said the main York County website is presently undergoing improvements that involve adding drop-down menus to each heading. Currently, clicking on the “Businesses” heading leads the user straight to the EDA website. In the future, a drop-down menu consisting of subheads such as “existing businesses” and “available properties” will be added.
