Central Houston Proposes $750M Package Of Upgrades To Make I-45 Project More Equitable

A Houston business group has put forward a $750M plan in hopes of making the contentious — and now stalled — North Houston Highway Improvement Project more equitable to communities previously devastated by highway development.

According to exclusive reporting by Axios, downtown business organization Central Houston is proposing 10 new amenities be installed in and around the downtown portion of the project, including a green loop around the downtown area featuring parks and trails, a community park that would sit above an East Downtown portion of the roadway, and the transformation of Pierce Elevated into a sky park on the west and south sides of downtown.

"The transformational aspect is connecting communities that have been rent asunder under transportation projects in the ‘50s and ‘60s that destroyed communities," Central Houston General Counsel Allen Douglas told Axios of the project, for which Central Houston has offered to kick in a third of the cost.The remainder is unfunded,…

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Cold Storage Feels The Chill Of Inflation, Power Costs

Cold storage is one of a few benefactors of the dramatic shift in consumer tendencies that resulted from the pandemic, but as the ebbing effects of the virus ripple and collide with other forces, this subsector of the red-hot industrial real estate market faces growing pains.

Like many sectors, rising inflation and interest rates, labor challenges and general economic uncertainty pose a challenge for owners and operators in this specialized real estate type, but a steady stream of demand keeps the industry at least partially insulated with cash flows tied to a universal activity: eating.

“Cold storage as a business is based on people consuming food and no matter what is consumed, where it is consumed, this food goes through the exact same cold storage supply chain,” CenterSquare Investment Senior Investment Strategy Analyst and Global ESG Lead Uma Moriarity said. Refrigerated storage options were already growing…

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Under-The-Radar Asset Class Drawing A 'Flurry Of Demand' From Investors In Baltimore

A property type attracting growing attention from investors and tenants in the Baltimore area isn’t glitzy waterfront office towers, amenity-laden apartments or massive Class-A distribution centers. 

An increasing number of investors are looking at oddly shaped plots of industrially zoned land with just enough improvements for trucks to come and go, an asset class known as industrial outdoor storage. 

“We are seeing a flurry of demand from investors,” Rob Maddux, vice president of brokerage at JLL in Baltimore, said of the asset class.

Essentially, outdoor industrial storage is a piece of land where businesses can securely store items, such as recently imported cars, a fleet of last-mile delivery vans or stacks of PVC piping. While they can be standalone lots, they are often unused land next to older industrial buildings. Institutional capital has…

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