The University of South Alabama’s commercial real estate program has a name for what is happening across the Southeast, and it is putting it on the marquee.
The Mitchell College of Business real estate program will hold its fall forum — “The Boom Belt: Boldness Begins Here” — on Oct. 27 at the MacQueen Alumni Center. Tickets are available now.
What ‘The Boom Belt’ Means
The phrase is a recently coined moniker highlighting the rapid economic expansion and urban revitalization redefining the Southeast.
It is a deliberate revision of an older label. The region has spent decades described as the Sun Belt, a term built around climate and retiree migration. “Boom Belt” reframes the same geography around capital investment and development — a distinction that matters to the audience this forum is convening.
Who Attends
The conference brings together commercial real estate professionals, developers, investors and civic leaders to discuss how the growth is affecting the Gulf Coast and beyond.
That mix is the point. Development decisions in a growing market are made at the intersection of private capital and public policy — zoning, infrastructure, incentives, utilities — and the people on both sides of that line rarely occupy the same room outside of a hearing.
The Keynote
Reagan Farr, cofounder, president and CEO of Silicon Ranch, will deliver the keynote address.
Farr leads one of the nation’s top solar developers and operators. He previously served as Tennessee’s commissioner of revenue.
That background — running a state revenue department before building a national energy company — is unusual, and it maps directly onto what he is expected to address: the intersection of renewable energy infrastructure, public service and regional economic growth.
Energy is not a side topic for a commercial real estate audience at the moment. Large-scale industrial and data-intensive projects are increasingly constrained by power availability rather than by land, and developers across the Southeast are negotiating generation and transmission questions that were once someone else’s problem.
Details
- What: The Boom Belt: Boldness Begins Here
- When: Oct. 27
- Where: MacQueen Alumni Center, University of South Alabama, Mobile
- Host: USA Mitchell College of Business real estate program
Tickets are available now.