Perkins&Will Sues Developer Of Stalled Midtown Condo Tower For Unpaid Bills

The owner of Ponce City Market wants to add housing at the iconic redevelopment. Jamestown is seeking approval from the BeltLine Design Review Committee to add 160 residential units atop an existing parking deck along North Avenue on the Ponce City Market site. Sixteen of those units are proposed to be…

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One year ago, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, and office workers across the United States and United Kingdom went exiled to home offices. Now, as vaccines get distributed and cases begin to decline, three states — Texas, Mississippi and Wyoming — are fully reopening and dropping mask mandates. It is…

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One of the great paradoxes of the coronavirus pandemic is that while the home-tied public might appreciate more than ever the social power of place, there is no way of knowing how people will actually behave once the global crisis fades away. 

That dynamic will be studied and hotly debated for years ahead, but one thing that cannot be argued is that some segments of the commercial real estate industry are prevailing in one key area: innovation.

Since March 11, 2020, when the pandemic took hold of the world, commercial real estate has been in the throes of massive socioeconomic upheaval. While some quarters are betting that things will go back to normal, others are adopting and inventing new ways to thrive, preparing for new orders of how to conduct business and making good on promises to evolve technologically, socially and culturally. 

If these men and women have been frightened by the turbulence of the last year, their actions are not evidence of it. They are persevering and building a new future — unwilling to let the opportunity created by the crisis pass them by. At Bisnow, we're pleased to introduce you to these innovators and celebrate their achievements made through unprecedented adversity.

See the Q&As with every innovator Bisnow has interviewed so far here.

In this series, Bisnow highlights people and companies pushing the commercial real estate industry forward in myriad ways. Click here to read Q&As with all the innovators Bisnow has interviewed so far.

UK retail property is a dark and stormy place right now, and it’s not just because of the coronavirus pandemic — a lot of it is to do with the way retail property is leased. So one big institutional investor decided to fundamentally change the way it leases its retail schemes. 

For decades, the way British leases were structured, with long tenures and rent reviews every five years where the rent could only go up, worked just fine for property owners and retailers: Both sides had certainty and security. 

But as consumer habits changed, retailers became locked in to leases on high rents at unprofitable stores. Landlords had a choice of either cutting rents or risking a tenant walking away or going bust, leaving their units empty. The uncertainty has led to a huge plummet in retail property values, and the whole situation has only being accelerated by lockdowns and social distancing.

Before the pandemic hit, Legal & General Investment Management Real Assets, which owns 76M SF in the UK, decided that rather than ignore the issue, or try and sell out of the retail sector, as some of its peers are doing, it wanted to change the way it leased retail assets.

Read the full story here.

The coronavirus pandemic's onset may have accelerated the rise of real property technology or proptech over the past year. Yet, it is just the latest chapter in commercial real estate's high-tech transformation over the past decade leading to greater property insights when used cautiously.

Beyond virtual tours, DocuSign, Internet of Things devices and robotic furniture, the increasing use of artificial intelligence and geographic information systems technologies has untethered the industry from physically being in spaces and also provided new vantage points from which to analyze properties, though not without challenges.

Read the full story here.