Readiness Taxonomy
John Boyd of The Boyd Company has said it directly: "there is no formal definition of what constitutes a 'shovel-ready' site." Three different public agreements indexed on Law Insider use three different definitions. Virginia's Business Ready Sites Program reserves the label for its highest tier only, where all site permits are in place or identified. A JLARC review found fewer than 10% of 466 characterized Virginia sites met that standard.
The problem is operational. A site with confirmed zoning and a completed Phase I has cleared different risks than one with committed utility service letters and a filed construction calendar. When both get called "shovel-ready," the site selector has to do the differentiation work the city should have done already.
This issue uses a five-state taxonomy (right column). Each state corresponds to a specific proof file. Each is perishable: an expired option, a new environmental finding, or a changed utility tariff moves a site backward. A city presenting a State 1 site under the same label as a State 4 site is not closing an intelligence gap. It is creating one.
Great Falls Won Janicki's $800 Million Campus by Being Furthest Along, Not Finished
Janicki Industries selected Great Falls, Montana, for an $800 million, 1.6-million-square-foot aerospace campus on a site with documented expansive soils, no utility service letters, and no workforce pipeline. What the city did have, all of it documented before the selection date: 185 contiguous acres under single-entity control, industrial zoning already in place, $4.5 million in completed backbone infrastructure, a current BNSF certification, four operating tenants, and tax benefits authorized by both the city and the county three weeks early. The gates that take years to clear were behind Great Falls. A competitor starting from raw land would need 18 to 36 months to reach the same position.
Great Falls Won Janicki's $800 Million Campus by Being Furthest Along, Not Finished
Janicki Industries selected Great Falls, Montana, for an $800 million, 1.6-million-square-foot aerospace campus on a site with documented expansive soils, no utility service letters, and no workforce pipeline. What the city did have, all of it documented before the selection date: 185 contiguous acres under single-entity control, industrial zoning already in place, $4.5 million in completed backbone infrastructure, a current BNSF certification, four operating tenants, and tax benefits authorized by both the city and the county three weeks early. The gates that take years to clear were behind Great Falls. A competitor starting from raw land would need 18 to 36 months to reach the same position.
Production-Stage Test
Form Energy selected Weirton in December 2022. Commercial production was confirmed in February 2026. The selection-stage package — 55 acres of former Weirton Steel land, Ohio River and rail access, a $290 million state commitment — closed the deal. Everything that followed was a second project with different capital sources and different risk.
Construction ran 16 months. The WVDEP air permit application was filed before equipment specs were finalized. Hancock County's PILOT was approved 14 months after selection, during construction. The city's water treatment expansion from 4 MGD to 8 MGD ran in parallel with no public Form-specific allocation on record.
Form targeted commercial production by end of 2024. It arrived roughly a year late. The bridge was a $150 million DOE grant executed in December 2024, funding a production line, workforce training partnerships with WV Northern Community College and JD Rockefeller Career Center, and ramp to serial output. That federal money entered after the factory was built — a post-selection instrument, secured on a post-selection timeline, addressing constraints that did not exist at the moment of site selection.
Documentation Checklist
The Great Falls feature surfaces a pattern worth operationalizing: at every readiness dimension, the city held records of different evidentiary weight. Some would survive a site selector's diligence file. Others would not. The distance between those two categories is where most tier-3 pitches lose traction.
A utility consumption estimate (3.1M kWh/year) tells a selector the facility will use power. A load letter names peak MW, voltage class, service configuration, upgrade scope, cost allocation, and energization date. The estimate describes a need. The load letter confirms that the utility has committed to meet it on terms the project can close on.
That distinction repeats across every dimension. A community college catalog page shows a welding program exists. An executed MOU with cohort size, launch date, first-completion date, and employer hiring commitment shows a pipeline is funded and scheduled. A BNSF certified-site designation addresses category risk. A railroad-approved spur engineering plan addresses the project-specific question.
The companion table maps each dimension to its weaker and stronger document form. Where your files hold the weaker version, the timeline to upgrade it is the operative constraint on your readiness.