Features

N ew York City’s real estate market — or markets, if you consider Midtown and Downtown to be distinctive situations — is hot, any way you cut it. Too hot, for some, such as publisher John Wiley and Chase Manhattan Bank, which are moving across the Hudson River to new space in Hoboken and Jersey […]

How much space will the company need next year? It’s the corporate real estate executive’s million-dollar question, and the answer is about as easy to predict as the number of times your phone will ring in the next 12 months. The science — or art — of demand forecasting relies on how well we can […]

U.S. firms have become very good at planning, designing and operating their plants, offices, and other corporate facilities for optimal results. But there are still many unrealized opportunities for capturing value over the lifetime of these resources. When business or industrial properties are no longer actively needed, for instance, some of them go on to […]

They called it “the Building of the Month Club” at Cisco Systems ( http://www.cisco.com) , and it was exactly that. For 19 consecutive months in 1998-99, Cisco brought yet another new building online in North San Jose. By the time that flurry finished — however momentarily — Cisco had built 35 separate facilities spanning 6.3 […]

From Tallahassee to Sacramento, lawmakers in state capitals around the United States heeded business leaders? call to ?run government more like a business.? The result: lower taxes, higher revenue surpluses, more incentives for new business, a rush of ?e-government? and information technology initiatives, and greater investment in needed infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, public schools […]

It?s official, already: The glow is back on the Golden State?s business climate. That?s the scoop from the top of Site Selection?s business climate rankings for 2000. California this year moved all the way up to No. 1 from 1999?s No. 5 finish. The Golden State ranks as a perennial business location powerhouse, of course, […]

World business climates in late 2000 are, for the most part, fair. But some forces are at work that could change that in the New Year. Energy prices in Western markets, particularly the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, are exerting pressure on businesses that manufacture and transport goods. A scarcity of skilled labor is a […]

LoopNet CEO Dennis DeAndre looked out on a room filled to overflowing and made an observation that typified what was happening in New York. “I can remember doing talks like this four and a half years ago, and I swear I would be talking to two people,” DeAndre said. Pinpointing the e-revolution’s impact was clearly […]

You think your building is wired for the electronic marketplace? Elevators in Class A office properties owned by Crescent Real Estate Equities (www.cei-crescent.com) are being wired to the Internet so that riders can view traffic reports, entertainment information, sports scores and other data. The short duration of most elevator rides would likely preclude chat-room visits, […]

The stature of the workspace design industry is rising significantly thanks to renewed interest in designers’ ability to make office space and other work environments more productive — not just easier to look at. Speakers at a recent forum in New York, entitled “Measuring Workplace Performance — The Workplace at the Millennium,” shared their experiences […]

Abstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. “Global Corporate Real Estate Practices,” IDRC New York World Congress Workshop, May 1, 2000: This session reviewed the Annual Survey of Corporate Real Estate Practices, conducted each year by Johnson Controls in conjunction with IDRC. Among most […]

A onetime jazz saxophonist with the likes of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and Lou Rawls, Imation executive Thomas Foyer muses that the song in part remains the same. “Today’s business environment is like jazz because it’s moving so fast. You have to improvise, keeping the group small enough so you can make changes quickly,” says […]

Site Selection‘s editorial quality — on both the printed page and in cyberspace — has bagged three more awards in the 12th annual global “Awards for Publications Excellence” (APEX) competition. The three APEX Awards were for Site Selection‘s excellence in the categories of: Feature writing, for the January 2000 cover story, “U.S. Car Wars: Toyota […]

The Johnson Controls USA Office Costs Index[See Tables One, Two, Three and Chart A for data] The Johnson Controls USA Office Occupancy Costs Index is based on a detailed model of a medium grade air-conditioned office building, which operates reasonably efficiently with no unusually high service standards or demands. The building is 160,000 rentable square […]

IDRC and NACORE, the world’s two leading professional associations for corporate real estate executives, service providers and economic developers, are exploring possible integration. This unprecedented step would create one new association to represent the corporate asset management industry with a singular mission of creating value through the workplace. Since plans to converge both groups were […]

Editor’s note: A former president of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate (CRE) association, Michael Bell (right) is a widely recognized industry leader. His Gartner Group (www.gartner.com) research focuses on workplace transformation and the virtual enterprise — specifically, the workplace impact of information technology (IT), including corporate strategy formulation, […]

‘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 […]

Knowledge is power. A truer statement may never have been uttered, and amazingly, Sir Francis Bacon’s remark still holds true today — perhaps even more so. In today’s fast-moving economy, receiving the right information at the right time can make or break a location deal and sometimes even a company. That’s why site consultants and […]

Plenty of brainpower is being applied to the merits of electric utility industry deregulation, or restructuring to be more accurate. But the jury is still out in most US states that have deregulation plans in place as to whether the effort was worth it to consumers of electricity. After all, the airline industry — certainly […]

Editor’s note: This feature is a follow-up report on “Europe’s 1999 Facility Race,” which appeared in the July 2000 Site Selection. This article goes beyond the ranking and looks at which industries are hot and which are not in the top European markets. To be or not to be — in the European Monetary Union […]

Foreign investment in China is poised to take off, particularly if the Asian mega-market is permitted to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Every sector of the Chinese economy shows signs of growth, from investments in infrastructure to renovation of state-owned firms and industries to the emergence of a major service industry. Politics aside, China […]