Features

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 […]

Site Selection: HQ’s real estate holdings are growing by leaps and bounds, thanks to the merger of Frontline Capital’s serviced office unit, VANTAS, with HQ’s properties. What is your role in managing this growth? Ron Adam (right): Completion of the deal is a little ways off, but we’re now in an interim period, which is […]

An increasing number of companies are turning to the concept of “shared services” to lower operating expenses and gain competitive advantage. Briefly defined, shared services consolidates accounting, human resources (HR), real estate and other transactional operations to reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction. As a management technique, shared services falls into the process-oriented family of […]

Abstracts of recent major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate (CCE) association. “Transforming the Workplace through Value-Based Management,” IDRC Tennessee World Congress Opening General Session, Oct. 18, 1999: Successful value-based CRE management requires understanding corporate goals and how CRE can add value, said Stern Stewart & Co.’s […]

Of all the management skills required of today’s corporate real estate manager, none is more elusive than the requirement that he have soothsaying skills. After all, predicting real estate space requirements is central to an organization’s ability to manage physical assets wisely and, as importantly, strategically. Real estate clairvoyance is known in professional circles as […]

China’s challenges were center stage at IDRC’s record-breaking March 27-28 Beijing World Congress, “Asia and Corporate Real Estate: Global Infrastructure Rises to the Next Level,” which drew an Asian record turnout of 172. “This Congress was a marker in China’s future development,” said presenter Marcel De Meirleir of Ernst & Young. RIGHT: Lois Dougan Tretiak […]

The United Kingdom attracted more new and expanded corporate facilities in 1999 than any other European country. France took the runner-up position, while Germany ranked third. Those results are essentially a photocopy of 1998’s facilities race, in which the same three countries took the top three spots, based on Ernst & Young’s European Investment Monitor […]

Start Me Up: Phoenix, Las Vegas Rated No. 1 Cities Startups are costly, risky business. But Phoenix and Las Vegas are the U.S. locations most conducive to startups’ health, according to new research from Cambridge, Mass.-based Cognetics (www.cogonline.com) (headed by David Birch, considered “the granddaddy of gazelles”). Those two cities are the respective two top […]

What’s upbeat, on the rise and ranges between 4 and 6.3 percent? Answer: current gross domestic product forecasts for four of Southeast Asia’s biggest economies. Indeed, the 2000 economic outlook for Malaysia (where growth over 1999 is expected to hit 6.3 percent), Singapore (6 percent), Thailand (5 percent) and the Philippines (4.5 percent) is decidedly […]

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie is on intimate terms with persistence. Just ask Richard Branson. Branson recently announced that he was shopping for an Australian headquarters site. But the Virgin Atlantic chairman already had a location short list that was truly short: It included only Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s two largest, best known cities. Faced with […]

Traditional businesses can rest easier: NASDAQ’s recent violent nature is a symptom of the impending collapse of dozens of former online darlings. As it turns, out solid business plans, management-team depth, effective business models (however boring), customer service, competitive advantages, and (duh) profits really do matter. The dot-com’s e-retail strategy — spending millions of dollars […]

Cannes, France: It looks like a second Normandy landing here in the south of France: As Europe’s recovery settles into a long upward leg, U.S. investors are invading, grabbing buildings and real estate securities like they’re going out of style. And that surge will likely multiply the shares of real estate investment companies beginning to […]

Newfoundland & Labrador’s call center industry, though small in comparison to larger provinces, is growing. In fact, it’s grown by 20 percent since January 1999. The Atlantic province’s cost-competitive operating environment is one of the major lures attracting that growth, but another is equally important: labor. Newfoundland & Labrador’s per-capita labor pool, for instance, is […]

Frankly, most companies would die for problems like Capital One Financial’s (www.capital1.com): five straight years of 20 percent-plus earnings growth and a spot in Fortune‘s “100 Best Places to Work.” But Capital One’s blistering growth had burned a gaping hole in its corporate real estate (CRE) strategy. Like some steroid-fueled bullfrog, the Signet Bank spin-off […]

“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. […]

“Leadership,” says Warren Benis, “can’t be taught; it must be learned, grown through experiences.” The industry’s experience grew a bit on Apr. 30, as Site Selection presented its Corporate Real Estate Leadership Awards to eight executives, chosen by SS’s editorial board from industry-wide nominations. (Two other winners were tapped as “Editors’ Picks.”) Appropriately, the Leadership […]

The Feb. 15-17 Leadership Development Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz., marked the beginning of an important new organizational initiative and membership benefit for the International Development Research Council (IDRC). Fifty-three leaders from the Executive Committee, Board of Directors, policy boards, committees and chapters took part in the program. “Leadership development is becoming integral to the strategic […]