Articles About Industrial

Wells Fargo & Company and LNR Property Corporation are hunting for buyers for $1 billion each of distressed commercial real estate assets and loans.  San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest commercial real estate lender, is soliciting bids on $500 million to $1 billion worth of office and hotels.  LNR, the nation’s largest CBMS special […]

The long-abandoned United States Steel South Works on Chicago’s South Side moved closer to undergoing transformation to a mixed-use development when the Community Development Commission unanimously approved a $96 million tax-increment financing (TIF) district to fund the project’s initial phase. The Chicago City Council still must approve the TIF district, which would give the green […]

Urban cores with challenging infrastructure issues are not getting the right attention from government, so planners are creating their own public/private partnerships to obtain funding from various city sources to pay for necessary upgrades.  And, according to A. J. Robinson, President of Central Atlanta Progress (CAP) and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADD), his organization […]

Detroit is undergoing a radical downsizing – the most ambitious urban makeover in American history – that will shrink the city’s current 139-square-mile footprint to approximately half that size as abandoned neighborhoods are consolidated and returned to productive farmland. Mayor Dave Bing, a former Detroit Pistons player and All Star, is determined to shrink the […]

As the 1st quarter 2010 numbers come in, banks across the country are still uneasy about the short-term outlook for commercial real estate – and their portfolios in particular.  At the same time, there is a growing sense that the potential for disaster has faded and that problems are being resolved. In general, banks reported […]

Ten years after Mayor Richard M. Daley ordered a roof garden planted on top of Chicago’s City Hall, the city has 500 green roofs downtown and scattered throughout its neighborhoods.  According to Department of Environment spokesman Larry Merritt, green roofs cover approximately seven million SF, although that represents less than one-tenth of one percent of […]

Congress — wary of 2010 mid-term elections – appears to be unlikely to pass climate change legislation this year, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs in Scientific American. According to Sachs, “The fracture lines are countless, but probably the most important one runs through public opinion.  A recent poll showed only 36 percent of Americans believing that […]

A 43-story residential tower in south London’s Elephant & Castle neighborhood will receive eight percent of its power from three wind turbines  installed at the top of the structure.  The Strata Tower – nicknamed the Electric Razor – is being developed by Brookfield Europe and eventually will be home to 1,000 residents. The Strata is […]

Despite the troubled economy, commercial building owners retain their commitment to making their properties more environmentally friendly.  Going green saves building owners and users money and makes sound business sense. “The fact of the matter is this is just good business – making buildings perform better,” said Dan Probst, an energy and sustainable development expert […]

Worker productivity increased 3.8 percent in 2009, the best record since 2002. Writing in the Washington Post, Neil Irwin notes, “That means high-level gains in productivity – which in the long run is the key to a higher standard of living but in the short run contributes to sky-high unemployment.  So long as employers can […]