Features

Cisco and Lucent’s workplace innovations have cut their European real estate costs and increased optional flexibility. But understanding cultural nuances is a major factor in making it work. Editor’s note: Communications age workplace innovations are rapidly advancing in Europe, propelled by deregulation, exploding Internet usage and the new single currency. Two leaders in European workplace […]

Whirlpool:RE Takes ‘Integrator’ Role b y     J A C K     L Y N E Consistent, quantifiable processes and savvy outsourcing are two of the keys in the dawning rise of Whirlpool’s Corporate Real Estate (CRE) unit into the role of “corporate integrator” — a value-adding effort that bagged a prestigious 1999 Best Practices […]

IDRC’ s blue-ribbon powwow in Nashville spotlighted a host of workplace innovations that add competitive edge. Above all, though, space must fit strategy. “The evolution of the built environment over the next 50 years will shape the future of our society, creating new patterns of geographical distribution and human activity.” — Landscape of Change At […]

Buyer Beware: Expert Urges Tactical, Not Pervasive, Systems Integration b y     M A R K     A R E N D This report begins a short series on how real estate managers can implement integrated systems without purchasing and installing too much technology. Knowing the difference is a valuable asset. The recent date change […]

 MARCH 2000  SITE SELECTION  NEW FRONTIERS FOR FACILITY PLANNERS • Cover Page •  Industrial Super     Projects •  Air Transport    Rails    Highways    Water Transport •  Intermodal Systems    Fresh Water Projects    Power Generation     Projects •  Hydro Power    Oil & Gas Projects    Alternate Energy     Sources •  Developing a Global     Power Grid    Environmental     Projects    Global Comm. •  Global Venues    Urban Development    High-Rise Projects    New Urban Forms •  Rapid Transit Systems    New Towns,    Redevelopment,    Mixed-Used Projects    Project Data Base […]

PeopleSoft’s John Igoe Keeps People in The High-tech Real Estate Management Equation John F. Igoe knows a thing or two about managing real estate assets in the high-tech arena. As vice president, facilities and real estate, at Pleasanton, Calif.-based PeopleSoft Corp. (www.peoplesoft.com), he manages a portfolio of 1.8 million sq. ft. (167,000 sq. m.) in […]

A team of corporate real estate executives, leading academics and service providers met regularly through late 1998 and much of 1999 to craft a new portfolio management model that recognizes corporate real estate as a strategic organizational asset. What exactly is portfolio management in the corporate real estate context? Unless the concept is given some […]

The role of business combinations, including mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic alliances in restructuring industries and companies was a — if not the – business trend story of the 1990s. Since 1990, the worldwide value of merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions has increased over six times to US$3.4 trillion in 1999, according to Securities […]

Separated by a statistical nose, Michigan nipped California, as 1999’s record-breaking business expansion clip again demonstrated who went where for maximum site selection value. Ali vs. Frazier. Affirmed vs. Alydar. Borg vs. Conners. Those kinds of classic confrontations sprang to mind as 1999’s feverish Site Selection Governor’s Cup race wound down. Just like last year, […]

1999 Proportional PerspectivesMichigan, Kentucky Bag No. 1s, but Shakeups Reshuffle Top 10s Albert Einstein, Time‘s “Man of the Century,” knew a thing or two about proportional perspectives. “When you are courting a nice girl,” he observed, “an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. […]

Y2OK: SSI Projects Bullish 20 Percent Expansion b y     J A C K     L Y N E We have survived Y2K, the millennial-turning Chicken Little equivalent of Comet Kahoutek’s similarly fizzling hysteria in the 1970s. So, since there’s going to be a future, what does it hold in 2000 for corporate expansion? 2000 […]

1999’s U.S. Location Leviathans b y     J A C K     L Y N E The very big U.S. business expansion equaled very big facilities: That’s the nutshell tale of the 20 largest corporate facility deals announced in the United States in 1999, as the nation edged toward its longest sustained economic expansion. 1999’s […]

“Last one out, turn off the lights.” A few years ago, that was the rueful joke in Detroit. Even personable Mayor Dennis Archer joshed at a mid-1990s’ blue-ribbon gathering of corporate real estate executives, “I’ve got a lot of empty lots and boarded-over storefronts that I can really get you a good price on.” But […]

They?re living large in Alabama economic development circles, reveling in landing one of the year?s most coveted deals: Honda?s US$450 million, 1,500-employee plant, a 1.7-million-sq.-ft. (153,000-sq.-m.) behemoth that will rise on a 1,350-acre (540-ha.) tract in Lincoln, a small Talladega County town of some 3,600 residents 35 miles (56 km.) east of Birmingham. Undoubtedly some […]

With Europe?s economic revival gathering strength, the continent?s Latin markets are heating up, and crowding in historic city centers is sending occupiers heading for the hills. In Madrid, the business surge last year boosted takeup 20 percent to a 5.55 million sq. ft. (500,000 sq. m.), a high for the 1990s that has squeezed vacancy […]

Ontario Power Generation — North America?s biggest electric utility in generating capacity — is an invaluable member of the economic development team that?s helping make Ontario a leader in the chase for new business. In fact, OPG (the electricity generation successor to the former Ontario Hydro) recently won the Economic Developers Council of Ontario?s inaugural […]

One of the late 20th century?s most significant business trends, infrastructure integration is an idea whose time has come — and with it, a new role for real estate. Case in point: CIGNA corporate real estate?s (CRE) innovative Vision 3 Initiative, which merited a prestigious Best Practices Award from the International Development Research Council (IDRC), […]

If only the Y2K bug could be gotten rid of as easily as its counterparts in the natural world. It cannot, of course, and there is a palpable sense of foreboding surrounding the run-up to Jan. 1, 2000, when non-Y2K-compliant computers will assume it?s 1900. There is an even stronger sense in some circles that […]

Those looking for immediate insights into real estate-related risk exposure tied to the Y2K bug can find extensive coverage of the topic at www.y2krealestate.com, a Web site operated by Millennium Strategies Group, LLC, a Denver, Colo.-based consultancy. The site lists building operating systems at risk and provides links to numerous articles detailing the various technical […]

In the coming years, one of the most important service providers to the corporate real estate profession will be a modem-equipped computer. Traditional service providers of all stripes are automating their services where possible in order to reduce their own overhead and to quench clients? thirst for convenient, customizable access to services. As corporate infrastructure […]

“If you?re in a pretty strong telecom market position, you?re in a difficult situation,” says Kevin O?Hara, the intensely alert, 38-year-old COO of red-hot Level 3 Communications (www.level3.com). O?Hara?s words may seem to fly in the face of conventional business wisdom. Like Elvis, however, conventional wisdom has left the building. The telecom business, O?Hara explains, […]

In the “Information Age,” telecommunications is as much a part of a community?s backbone as is its highways, railways and waterways. Now, businesses study not only an area?s physical and human infrastructure when locating a facility, but its telecom capabilities as well. And as telecommunications activities increase in the fast-paced global economy, the need for […]

Call it “physiostructure.” We might as well, since “infostructure” is now an established part of the site selection lexicon. In fact, much of this SS issue is a veritable hymn to how information infrastructure has dramatically altered where, when and how we work, transforming a 9-to-5 workplace that was as tightly defined as the facility […]

Common business wisdom used to hold that if you built a better mousetrap, the world would beat a path to your doorstep. But that was before people started shopping over the Internet and expecting almost instantaneous delivery of the products they ordered. Today, a growing number of customers demand exceptional logistics service from their vendors. […]