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 […]

‘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 […]

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 […]

Oracle sees blazing changes on Europe’s horizon: “Combine globalization’s thrust, the e-commerce surge and the Euro’s emergence, and you’ll see e-commerce blow through Europe like a whirlwind. The single currency has amplified the velocity of change, broadening and flattening the playing field. E-commerce is impacting our own European operations in a big way, and it’s […]

The U.S. government as a leading-edge indicator? The notion may seem farfetched, but that’s definitely the case with the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA at www.gsa.gov). For the two straight years, the GSA has garnered prestigious Best Practice Awards from the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. The organization […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

“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. […]

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 […]

Freshwater is the lubricant that fuels development. And that means development is in trouble: “Forget oil. In the 21st century water will be king. Already, a supertanker full of water from a pure source . . . is worth more than any supertanker full of oil to thirsty populations in Asia,” says U.S. Congressman Bob […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]