Features

‘Effective Rents’: How Much Are You Really Paying? What can you tell from landlords’ asking rates? Not necessarily very much, according to a new study of “tenant effective rents” in 12 major U.S. markets. The study, from New York-based Julien J. Studley (www.studley.com), subtracts lease concessions from total rents. Some of the results may surprise […]

“If everything is so good, why do we feel so bad?” was the working title of a presentation made at a recent gathering of the Counselors of Real Estate (CRE), a Chicago-based association of corporate real estate consultants. The presenter was Phil Ward, senior managing director, real estate investments, at CIGNA Investment Management, Hartford, Conn. […]

Michigan’s banner years under Doug Rothwell’s leadership just got a major exclamation point: General Motors (www.gm.com) has decided to invest US$1 billion to build two plants just outside Lansing that will add 2,800 jobs. And Rothwell, president and CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. (MEDC at www.michigan.org), did a lot of the heavyweight deal’s […]

For those of you waiting for the Canadian electricity market to open up to competition, you will now have to wait a little longer. Although the plan was to open the market up in November of this year, the Ontario government announced on June 22 that the open date will be pushed back to a […]

“Many already use the Internet, yet I doubt many are using it for construction management. The speed of connectivity and the range of companies committed to working on the Internet are growing so fast that this will cease to be a business obstacle within a very short time frame. Your entire team will build the […]

Ever since Michael Hammer, the guru of Business Process Re-engineering, made the observation years ago that the business world has not adequately considered the effect re-engineering has on the notion of workplace, work space design experts have struggled to understand the relationship between the two concepts. What role does workspace really play in productivity? Can […]

Polled corporate executives pinpoint today’s top 10 U.S. labor markets Today’s drum-tight U.S. labor evokes James Marshall’s 1848 wisdom. Building a sawmill near Coloma, Calif, Marshall spied glittering flecks. He dipped his hand into the icy American River and then roared, “By God, boys, I believe I’ve found a gold mine!” The California Gold Rush […]

Labor may be spare, but it’s out there. And broad-ranging corporate strategies are finding it. What would you ask for if you could get just about any expansion incentive imaginable? That was the situation for United Parcel Service (UPS) in 1998. Its new cargo-sorting hub would employ 6,000-plus with a US$250 million annual payroll. Clearly, […]

Universities and proactive businesses are crafting ever-more-relevant job training programs designed to give employers in their area an edge in the labor pool. Work-force training programs are seeing substantial inflows of capital as state and local economic development agencies seek to make their available workers more competitive. This is among the findings of a recent […]

Opening nine major U.S. customer service centers in a mere three years, Sprint PCS has fine-tuned a system for rapidly adding the labor others can’t even find. b y     J A C K     L Y N E “Finding a place with higher unemployment is ideal. But you’re not going to find a U.S. […]