The Site Finders

The chateau dwellers in France's Loire River Valley, the vegetable dealers in London's Covent Garden and the truck assembly-line workers in Hagerstown, Md., probably have no idea of how closely their lives are linked to a New York and Chicago firm called the Fantus Co. Fantus is the world's largest and busiest company devoted to an increasingly important specialty: searching out new plant sites for corporations and advising job-starved towns on what sort of new industries they are best suited to attract. Last week it started work on the most far-reaching project in its 42-year history: a year-long study to determine the industries that should be located along a 400-mile stretch of the twisting Loire River and its tributary, the Cher, which France plans to develop with a $1.2 billion TVA-style project.

Fantus has pinpointed sites for 2,500 plants employing more than 1,000,000 workers. In 1962 it conducted 250 plant site studies in the U.S. and Europe that resulted in ground breaking for 70 new plants worth $100 million. Last month it submitted a report to the British recommending a new site for the historic Covent Garden produce market, which long ago outgrew its location among London's congested streets.

Watch the Lingerie. Fantus was set up in Chicago by Chair Manufacturer Felix Fantus, who found the job of finding a new location for his Indiana plant so complicated that he decided that he might make more money in selling industrial real estate. The firm stopped handling real estate in 1935 after Fantus' son-in-law and partner, Leonard Yaseen, saw a bigger future in selling site-finding expertise than in peddling land. Yaseen, 50, now runs the company's New York office while another Fantus son-in-law, Maurice Fulton, 42, heads the Chicago operation. Fantus now has branches in London and Brussels, and may soon set up new ones in Italy and Rio de Janeiro.

The Fantus search for a factory site begins in rows of grey filing cabinets jammed with information about every likely U.S. community. Then Fantus agents, frequently including Yaseen or Fulton themselves, prowl through the most promising cities, trying to keep their presence unknown. Besides looking for the resources and land their client needs, they check on civic attitudes and going wage rates, look over the school system to see if the town is forward-looking. They even make a point of finding out whether the local stores sell expensive or cheap lingerie, considering this an excellent way of determining whether the workers are upgrading their tastes and are thus more likely to pressure constantly for wage raises.

Truth with Wisdom. Fantus' blue-chip client list includes such names as Ford, General Electric, General Foods, Westinghouse and Anaconda. The company found Hershey Chocolate a suitable Canadian site ("I even went out and counted cows to make sure there was enough milk for their candy," says Fulton) and eliminated 45 locations before setting Sara Lee Bakeries down just a few miles from where it had been. When Fulton brought Rockwell Manufacturing Co. to Tupelo. Miss., the town was so grateful that it named a street after him. In recent years Fantus has expanded into surveying areas to see what sort of industry they can use. When Cambridge, Md., proved to have nearly everything needed to make chop suey, Fantus found it a new resident in Chun King Corp. The Fantus report on Evansville, Ind., so strongly criticized the town's attitude ("Evansville people resent anyone in power . . . politics is a dirty word") that it inspired civic reform and later enabled the city to attract new plants.

For the $80,000 study of the Loire Valley, Fantus will only recommend the types of industries that should be located at various spots, and the French will find the companies. But for worried tourists who picture factory smokestacks raining soot on scenic chateaus, Yaseen has a word of comfort. "It might make economic sense to put a steel factory next to a chateau," he says, "but it would not make sociological sense. We will have to balance truth with wisdom."

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