SITE TO DO BUSINESS CASE STUDY
By Nicholas Leider
LAYERS OF UNDERSTANDING
Building customized maps based on zoning , development projects , and other variables can help deepen an understanding of an area .
While data has become an essential aspect of site exploration and site selection in commercial real estate , raw facts and figures are hardly capable of helping improve decision-making and analysis . CRE professionals benefit from a presentation of data in a way that is easily understood and communicated to clients and colleagues .
MapSite is one tool in the Site To Do Business suite of offerings that can easily and effectively package complex data in intuitive and accessible ways . It ’ s also built on Esri ’ s ArcGIS online software platform , which allows users to create dashboards , mobile applications , and more .
“ There have been a lot of enhancements to Site To Do Business recently ,” says Eric Pollard , commercial sector lead , consumer goods & services for Esri . “ One of those is the MapSite Workflow , which allows you to make market maps more easily with fewer clicks and allows you to export and share .”
Within the workflow , users are able to select a series of nationwide variables — some are local , like parcels within a municipality , while others are much broader , like adjusting for income in areas across the country . MapSite also allows users to add multiple layers at once .
The MapSite tool allows users to project hex pins for median household income over different areas , while also mapping major building projects .
BUILDING SMART As much as any other business , commercial real estate thrives on the axiom that knowledge is power . In terms of finding the ideal location for an office , restaurant , warehouse , or any other asset , decision-making is improved with more information . For MapSite , that means continuing to build a growing index of up-to-date , real-time data on a local scale .
“ This amount of data is going to increase over time ,” Pollard says . “ We have a series of municipalities , cities , and metros that are populated already . The CCIM Technology team is currently working to add more and more .”
To see this function in practice , let ’ s look at a case study on Bellevue , Wash ., a city to the east of Seattle across Lake Washington . If you were curious about very local issues in the area , you could use MapSite to display major building projects and permits as layers on the interactive map . The permits , for example , show you a host of attributes about the business , including live links and further information about a particular business on a particular street in an area that may be well suited for a potential deal .
“ Once you have a map that you ’ re happy with , what can you do with it ?” says Pollard . “ Well , you can create a PDF or even share this map to your GIS , which makes a live digital copy of the map that allows you to edit further by adding labels , changing colors , and personalizing the map .”
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COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE MAGAZINE SUMMER 2022