Industry Insights

The closure of a supermarket in Columbia, Maryland, more than 10 years ago forced Kimco Realty Corp. (NYSE: KIM) to take a fresh look at the retail-only strategy for its shopping centers.

Now, the site of the shuttered grocery store embodies the retail REIT’s efforts to turn some of its outdated, but well-located, real estate into mixed-use developments.

As MCR Development LLC broadens its focus in the lodging market, it’s adding landmarks like a former TWA flight terminal at JFK International Airport to its portfolio to go along with the seminary in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that the company converted to The High Line Hotel in 2013.

Established in 2006, MCR Development is a private owner of a $2 billion portfolio of 90 primarily Hilton and Marriott-branded hotels across 23 states and 62 cities. The company has acquired or developed approximately $1.3 billion of lodging real estate since its inception, concentrating on select service hotels.

Atlanta native and city councilman Kwanza Hall looks at his hometown and sees a city that is “ripe for growing to be an international icon.”

The councilman lights up when asked about what makes Atlanta special to him, expounding on the city’s thirst for innovation and its flourishing arts and culture. Yet, he says a deep reverence for history lies at the city’s core.

In October, streaming media company Netflix, Inc. signed a 10-year, multi-stage lease for 99,250 square feet of stages and production offices at Hollywood’s Sunset Bronson Studios. The deal, the latest in an ongoing partnership with Hudson Pacific Properties, Inc. (NYSE:HPP), came shortly after Netflix preleased Hudson Pacific’s entire 323,000-square-foot adjacent ICON office development on Sunset Boulevard completed at the end of 2016.

When Michael M. Crow became the president of Arizona State University (ASU) in 2002, he unveiled a long-term plan to reimagine higher education. Crow envisioned ASU as the model for what he calls “the New American University,” a public research university dedicated to “the simultaneous pursuit of excellence, broad access to quality education and meaningful societal impact.”

Once the site of a Royal Air Force (RAF) base during World War II, the vision for Kings Hill, an 800-acre mixed-use development located less than an hour from London by rail in Kent, has shifted over time.

The Kent County Council acquired the site in the 1970s, and in 1989 it teamed with Liberty Property Trust UK Ltd., a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Liberty Property Trust (NYSE: LPT), to develop a U.S.-style business park. The original goal was stimulating local economic growth, but greater demand for housing in the area led the developers to change course towards a mixed-use development.

Back in 2005, the view from the Assembly Square area of Somerville, Massachusetts, left much to be desired – decaying industrial buildings and brownfields, an obstructed view of the Mystic River, a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Orange Line train that rode directly by but didn’t stop.

“To say it was underutilized and forgotten is being kind,” says Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone.

Named for the site’s former Ford Motor Company plant that closed in 1958, Assembly Square’s 143 acres of land are bordered by Interstate highway 93, Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood and the Mystic River.

Longtime San Franciscans may remember the Mission Bay neighborhood, located on the southern end of the city, as the home to one of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company’s railyards. Trains ran in and out of the railyard for nearly 100 years until the 1990s.

That part of the area’s history might seem strange, though, to the influx of scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs who have migrated to the Golden Gate City in recent decades. To them, Mission Bay is an enclave of the biotechnology industry.

Fifteen years ago, the 48 acres in southeast Washington, D.C., now known as The Yards was home to an expanse of decaying industrial facilities.

Situated next to the Washington Navy Yard along the banks of the Anacostia River, the site will eventually be occupied by thousands of residential units and more than 2 million square feet combined of office and retail space.

Prudential Real Estate Investors’ Marc Halle discusses opportunities in a rate sensitive environment.

An apartment developer is targeting an industrial site in the South of Gandy area for its next big play in Tampa.

Camden Property Trust (NYSE: CPT) has filed plans with the city to build a 297-unit apartment complex on a 12.3-acre site between Lois and Manhattan avenues — just south of the Walmart Supercenter on Gandy Boulevard.

A Camden representative was not immediately available for comment Tuesday morning.

Camden South Tampa, as the project is named in city filings, would have a gated entrance, five three-story multifamily buildings, and multiple parking garages and covered parking areas. It will also include a pool, clubhouse and on-site dog park.

Plans for a major mixed-use waterfront development represent the latest step in efforts to rehabilitate this city that not long ago was rated as America’s most dangerous.

The development of offices, apartments and retail space, totaling 1.7 million square feet, would be built along the Delaware River starting in the fall of 2016, according to plans announced by Camden’s mayor, Dana L. Redd, and the developer Liberty Property Trust last week.

The project, estimated to cost about $1 billion, would be the biggest private sector investment in the city’s history, and the latest in a series of corporate developments and relocations that are beginning to create jobs and drive down the city’s notoriously high rates of crime and poverty.

Liberty Property Trust plans to construct a $1 billion “iconic skyline” along the Delaware River in Camden, N.J., that aims to become an integral component to the struggling city’s revitalization.

While the Malvern, Pa., real estate investment trust has owned office and industrial buildings in South Jersey, it has never invested in the city of Camden.

Liberty’s decision to make a significant commitment to Camden now is being driven by several demographic and market factors including an increasing desire of a younger workforce to live and work in dynamic urban environments, as well as lucrative tax incentives state officials put in place through its Grow New Jersey Assistance Program. Those combined have created a more attractive environment for private investment and made it less of a gamble.

After a colorful history and a checkered past, Asbury Park, NJ is finally looking at a brilliant future.

A multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan announced today will transform a 1.25-mile stretch of Asbury Park waterfront with carefully curated residential, hotel, and infrastructure projects. iStar (STAR), the visionary real-estate investment company whose roots in Asbury Park stretch back a decade, is leading the revitalization, which involves more than 20 individual projects.

Ten years in the making, the plan represents one of the most significant redevelopments ever undertaken on the Eastern Seaboard, and one of the nation’s most ambitious urban-revival initiatives.

Corporate Office Properties Trust has unveiled an ambitious vision for the 10 acres it owns on the Canton waterfront.

COPT’s plan includes 13 buildings, from low rise to high rise, and a pedestrian- and bike-friendly public space along the water’s edge.

The project could cost upwards of $1 billion, said Wayne H. Lingafelter, president of COPT’s development and construction arm. That includes construction of 1.1 million square feet of Class A office space, retail and restaurants, a 400-foot apartment tower, a 300-room hotel and a marina with 200 boat slips.

The two-building Market Square complex on Pennsylvania Avenue in Northwest D.C. has long enjoyed its status as a choice Washington office property, pulling in rental rates among the highest in the District.

But those twin 13-story buildings, constructed atop the Archives-Navy Memorial Metro Station in 1990 and offering sweeping views of Washington, are showing their age, and Columbia Property Trust lost one of its marquee tenants when Norton Rose Fulbright shifted its D.C. office to a newly repositioned building near Mount Vernon Square earlier this year. Now, Columbia Property Trust (NYSE: CXP) has launched a multimillion-dollar renovation to ensure that Market Square maintains its position among the upper echelon of D.C.’s commercial real estate market.

Strategic Hotels & Resorts, Inc. today announced that it has acquired the remaining 49 percent ownership interest in the 514-room JW Marriott Essex House hotel. The Company previously owned a 51 percent ownership position in the asset through a joint venture with certain affiliates of KSL Capital Partners, LLC (“KSL”). Pursuant to the terms of the joint venture agreements, KSL exercised a contractual put option of its equity interests in the asset and the Company will issue to certain affiliates of KSL an aggregate of 6,595,449 shares of common stock priced at $12.82 per share, or an implied valuation of $84.6 million. The transaction values the asset at a gross valuation of approximately $397.6 million, which includes $6.3 million of value for three owned condominiums, $2.2 million of cash currently held within the joint venture, and the existing $225.0 million mortgage financing.

Columbia Property Trust, Inc. announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the commercial condominium unit in the historic New York Times Building, a 16-story, 481,110-square-foot Class-A office building located at 229 West 43rd Street in the Times Square submarket of Manhattan, from affiliates of Blackstone Real Estate Partners VI L.P. for $516 million. The acquisition is expected to close within 30 days subject to customary closing conditions.

The acquisition is expected to be funded with a $300 million six-month bridge loan and short-term borrowings under Columbia’s $500 million unsecured credit facility, which is expected to increase the company’s leverage to approximately 39% of gross real estate assets (as of June 30, 2015, adjusted for recent dispositions). Currently 98% leased, the commercial unit of 229 West 43rd Street is expected to have first-year in-place net operating income (NOI) of approximately $22.3 million. The acquisition will bring Columbia’s portfolio to approximately 69% CBD and 79% multi-tenant and its exposure to high-barrier markets to 52%, all based on annualized lease revenue.

LCOR is breaking ground on The Edison within weeks and just purchased two parcels of land nearby for $14.3 million, Harmar Thompson tells GlobeSt.com.

When computer engineer Jim Nasto started working at the Philadelphia Navy Yard about a decade ago, the 1,200-acre property was a virtual desert of vacant industrial buildings and abandoned parade grounds.

Many of those buildings now make up Urban Outfitters’ headquarters, while the vast open spaces are being shaped into office parks inhabited by such corporations as GlaxoSmithKline.

“I love it,” said Nasto, 29, a research contractor for the U.S. Navy, as he tossed a bocce ball in a landscaped park that opened last month. “Now we have all these buildings.”

The developer of the popular D.C. foodie destination Union Market is pushing city officials to fund $90 million in street and infrastructure improvements to support plans it and other developers have to add apartments, office space, hotels, a movie theater and other amenities.

Edens, based in South Carolina, opened Union Market in Northeast D.C. in 2012. Featuring mostly local vendors selling gelato, olive oil, oysters and other specialties, it is an upscale retail presence in the warehouse district between Florida and New York avenues. It draws big crowds, particularly on weekends.

In the past couple of years Edens has been working to expand its vision by buying more industrial properties in the neighborhood and submitting plans to the city for new shopping and apartments.