The Real Estate Bug
Doyle Shea
IAMC Chair
IAMC Chair
July is here and it’s vacation time. There is nothing like getting away with the family for a week off in a timeshare at the beach. Thank you for taking Site Selection along in your stack of reading materials. We are honored to have made the cut of things to catch up on.
Now that you are away from work, my question is, "Are you really disengaged from the real estate business?" Be honest now. How many of you have picked up the local residential real estate guide to see what price the area homes are going for? A more interesting question would be: How many of you have actually toured homes that were listed for sale while on vacation? Go ahead and raise your hand … no one will notice. Your family is most likely off doing something without you anyway.
Back in May, after the Professional Forum in Albuquerque, I was flying home to the great north woods. On the flight I was joined by one of our IAMC members who had taken some time to tour residential properties. He was out in New Mexico for a week with friends, clearly taking a break from his day job, but that old real estate bug was still in his system. He was not ashamed to tell his story of touring properties, and I was not shocked to hear it.
You see, I had the same problem a few years ago. My wife and I were spending a week with my sister’s family in Rehoboth Beach. We were staying in a very nice, very large rental home. There were residential property guides in every restaurant around town, so of course I picked one up. After carrying it around for a few days I did some rough calculations in my head and it all seemed to pencil out. Even though I was away from my job, my mind was still wrapped up in real estate.
On that particular trip I came to my senses on day four. By that time I realized that my estimate for utilities, repairs and maintenance was way too conservative. I also remembered that I actually did not live on the East Coast and there is that thing in real estate about location.
I don’t know if there is a clinical name for the affliction that we have. Yes I said "we" … remember, you are the one on vacation reading this article. My boss has called me a deal junkie on more than one occasion, so we could go with that. The good news for me is that I don’t have to actually buy or sell something; I just need to run the numbers. So while I am on vacation I can just sit in the beach chair and think about buying vacation property. No need to spend time and energy touring homes.
Now in your case, you can call it what you want — after all, you are a real estate professional. As for this magazine, don’t recycle it. Leave it in the stack of magazines that are in the rental home. You never know, there may be a deal junkie checking in next week.
See you in Philadelphia,
Doyle
Doyle SheaIAMC Chair
IAMC INSIDER
From Site Selection magazine, July 2011
IAMC member news
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n May Maersk Line announced it would refrain from purchasing shipping containers with floors made of uncertified tropical hardwood. The container industry uses approximately 1.2-1.5 million cubic meters of hardwood annually. To date, Maersk Line has purchased 64,000 containers that comply with the new policy (example pictured below). Over the next five years, Maersk Line will purchase approximately 3 million containers (TEU), more than doubling its current container fleet. The policy is part of a new overall approach to integrating sustainability into the Maersk supply chain. By end of 2011 at least 50 percent of Maersk Line’s operational spend will be covered by the Maersk Responsible Procurement Program.
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ockheed Martin in April announced plans to open a new Mission Support Center in the Greater Jackson, Miss. area in September 2011 that will create up to 350 new jobs and provide diverse technology services for its federal customers. The new facility at the South Pointe Business Park in Clinton (pictured left) establishes Lockheed Martin’s Gulf Coast Technology Hub and increases Lockheed Martin’s presence in the state, which already includes operations in Biloxi, Stennis and Vicksburg. The new facility will work with Lockheed Martin’s existing East Coast and West Coast Technology Hubs in Rockville, Md., and Altadena, Calif., to offer enhanced technology capabilities such as cloud computing, business continuity and disaster recovery services.
"Corporate/municipal cooperation in site selection, infrastructure, workforce development, and operating costs is key to America’s long-term competitive position in the world economy. IAMC plays a key role in providing a unique environment for this dialogue."
— Jeff Troan, Director, Real Estate, Lockheed Martin/LMCPI
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ir Products recently announced it would build a $40-million manufacturing facility in Tooele, Utah, for the manufacture of ceramic Ion Transport Membrane technology modules, allowing the company to ramp up from a pilot-scale project it’s developed during two decades of partnering with Salt Lake City-based Ceramatec. The modules will be used for the production of oxygen. The initial 33-month project activity will be substantially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. At the end of that period, the fully functional manufacturing facility is expected to employ 57 people. The project saw incentive support from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and from the City of Tooele.
"I have decided that the IAMC organization is the one where I will commit my personal time and attention because of the relationships I have been able to create and the long lasting benefit they bring to our efforts."
— Jeff Edwards, President & CEO,
Economic Development Corporation of Utah
IAMC forum report
Spring 2011 Professional Forum:
“Sustainability: Impacts for Real Estate Development Beyond LEED”
The Aperture Center at Mesa del Sol will be one of two New Mexico sites for testing smart grid technologies as part of the U.S.-Japan Smart Grid Collaborative Demonstration Project over the next four years. This image depicts an energy storage project being executed by Sandia National Laboratories, GS Yuasa Battery, Mesa del Sol, and 310 Solar. The PV panels serve as the patio roof for what will be the restaurant space at Aperture Center.
Photo courtesy of Sandia Laboratories
Photo courtesy of Sandia Laboratories
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rapt audience in Albuquerque got a glimpse into the future when officials from Forest City Enterprises, Sandia National Lab, PNM Electric and Schott Solar talked about the 5-sq.-mile (13-sq.-km.) Mesa del Sol development, slated for 38,000 houses and 18 million sq. ft. (1.67 million sq. m.) of development over the next 50 years.
The housing portion moved forward in April with work beginning on 250 homes. Also moving forward is cutting-edge research into how to incorporate smart grid and renewable energy into our daily lives.
"IAMC continually achieves a high level of quality in programming at the Professional Forums. The Forum in Albuquerque was no exception. The addition of the pre-Forum work activity to help with economic development in the Kewa Pueblo was excellent and I hope a harbinger of things to come."
— Allison J H Thompson, CEcD, EDFP, Director,
Cedar Hill Economic Development Corp.
"We think 100,000 people will live here, and 60,000 will work here, with the opportunity to bike to work," said Michael Daly, president of Mesa del Sol, noting a project time horizon nearly as long as the desert sightlines on-site. "Most steps are aspirational. If we can accomplish 40 percent to 50 percent, it’s better than accomplishing none."
Among the things Mesa del Sol already has accomplished is the attraction of a 300-job manufacturing facility from Schott Solar, with over 100 MW of photovoltaic production capacity and 400 MW of concentrated solar device manufacturing capacity.
"It represents a huge bet on the U.S. market from Schott Solar," said Tom Hecht, president, sales, marketing and business development for Schott. Among the reasons Mesa del Sol got the nod were New Mexico’s "huge promise for solar" and the sustainability and community ecosystem objectives of the development.
Other organizations resident at the development include the Reelzchannel film and TV studio and headquarters, and offices from such prestigious names as Fraunhofer and Sandia National Laboratories. Given its nuclear stockpile security mandate, it comes as no surprise that Sandia’s work involves cyber and physical security issues surrounding emerging smart-grid and energy storage technologies. It also applies to such things as smart appliances in residential developments: "There are security ramifications when everybody makes a technology choice that is exactly the same," explained Annie McIntyre, principal member, technical staff, in Sandia’s Forest City Partnership Program.
"Mesa is a beautiful clean slate for us," she said. "Demand reduction in building technologies is extremely important to the Department of Energy today. For years we looked at solutions that were high tech, bleeding edge. But you don’t always need a Ferrari solution. In Hawaii, working with Forest City [on its Pearl Harbor housing project], we were able to do a $10,000 spray-foam job on military housing and cut rates by 40 percent."
Among the testing grounds at Mesa del Sol is the Aperture Center, where Sandia has been testing a nanocarbon battery integrated with rooftop photovoltaic modules. Sandia is also testing a small-scale methanol fuel cell that for a few thousand dollars may allow off-grid operation of site security systems involving low-tech cameras.
"IAMC has been a cornerstone of my development as a corporate real estate leader. Managing a global portfolio requires connection to the best resources and ideas. IAMC provides these connections through numerous avenues including focused Forums, effective industry groups and Web site tools. IAMC excels at enabling its members to have focused networking interactions that makes us all better at what we do."
— Steve Zeller, Director, Global Real Estate, Donaldson Company, Inc.
Where the rubber really meets the road is with the utility partner at the project, PNM Electric, which is working on an EPRI demo site at Mesa del Sol for integrating commercial-scale renewable energy into the grid, one of 11 such test sites around the world.
Another project under way is testing energy storage options and how smart-grid concepts can help smooth out intermittency, said Jon Hawkins, manager, advanced technology and strategy, PNM Electric.
"We’re developing some advanced algorithms that can help us understand when the best time is to use the energy," he said. "We’re still one of the very few industries where supply must equal demand every second of every day. So our primary concern is high reliability."
— Adam Bruns
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