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2024 Site Selectors Guild Fall Forum to Come to Detroit

Michigan welcomes influential group

By Kathy Gibbons

Detroit will host the 2024 Site Selectors Guild Fall Forum. || Photo by Bedrock/Kellin Wirtz

Michigan—and Detroit—have landed the 2024 Site Selectors Guild Fall Forum.

The only association of the world’s top professional site selection consultants—the people who provide location strategy to corporations around the world for every industry, sector, and function—the Site Selectors Guild holds two meetings a year. In addition to its annual conference, the fall forum is a more intimate gathering that boasts a ratio of eight economic developers attending per site selector, with about half of the guild’s full membership attending.

Attracting the group to Michigan is a terrific thing for a couple of reasons, says Susan Proctor, site selector engagement executive for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC). The MEDC is cosponsoring the event with the Detroit Regional Partnership, though actual programming is driven by the guild itself.

Susan Proctor of the MEDC || Photo by MEDC

“Any time you can get site selectors in your community is a good thing,” Proctor says. “They help clients make major decisions on site locations. Having them in Detroit and being able to show them around—the great things happening in Detroit—is a diamond opportunity for Michigan and the region as well.”

Claude Molinari, president and CEO of Visit Detroit, says the Site Selectors Guild’s choice of Detroit falls in line with a lot of the other positive developments that are bubbling in the community.“Detroit is a city that is on the move, with more than $9 billion of development underway building on the thriving art, music, and culinary scene,” he says. “Southeast Michigan is attracting more attention, investment, and events, and having the Site Selectors Guild in Detroit for their 2024 Fall Forum is a strong validation of our region’s accelerating vitality.”

The Westin Book Cadillac will be home base for the 2024 Site Selectors Guild Fall Forum. || Photo by Westin Book Cadillac

While about 300 will attend the Site Selectors Guild Fall Forum, which will be held Sept. 23-25, 2024, at the Westin Book Cadillac, Proctor says the impact will be felt beyond the event itself.

“This is like a pebble in a pool,” she says. “That good news spreads out far and wide, with the site selectors and the great things they see here. It’s a small group of individuals, but they talk among each other.”

Proctor notes that working with site selectors from all over is an ongoing effort.

“I lead an outreach strategy to the site selector community year round,” she says. “Thus far this year I’ve either lead or attended 25 different events where site selectors are located. We also do familiarization tours.

“We do several events, we attend events, we host them whenever possible, and of course we host them when they’re coming into communities looking at sites. This … is just part of a broader, very large strategy to keep Michigan top of mind and build relationships.”

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