Articles About Industrial

A once-abandoned 40-acre industrial site in Chicago’s West Pullman neighborhood has become home to 32,000 solar panels since December, part of the nation’s largest solar plant capable of generating 10 megawatts of clean power. That’s enough to power 1,500 homes.  According to Kevin Lynch, who trains electricians to install solar panels for the International Brotherhood […]

Three years after an EF5 tornado tore apart tiny Greensburg, KS, the town of approximately 900 is making a conscious effort to rebuild itself as a green community. City officials, residents and business owners are leading by example, making Greensburg a national model for environmentally conscious living. For example, a wind farm five miles south […]

A new accounting standard could alter the way tenants lease space, a move that carries serious implications for commercial real estate.  The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been cooperating with the International Accounting Standards Board to combine its generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) with international standards. According to Russell G. Golden, the FASB’s technical […]

After nearly two years of waiting, watching and hoping, American commercial real estate is finally regaining strength. This is one conclusion of the Reuters Global Real Estate and Infrastructure Summit held recently in New York City.  Starting in the fall of 2008, real estate investors feared there would be a wide-ranging sell-off of debt-laden commercial […]

Is there something special in the water in Texas?  After surviving the Great Recession in relatively good shape, the Lone Star State can claim that it has more jobs than it did two years ago, as well as the lowest unemployment rate of the 10 largest states at just 8.3 percent.  According to the Texas […]

Home Depot, NCR are greening their companies. Fortune 500 companies are increasingly using energy-saving measures in their corporate real estate.  Some firms are retrofitting warehouses to conserve energy or are applying Japanese principles to building design and operation. Home Depot, for example, has 2,245 retail stores comprising 235 million SF nationally, owns 89 percent of […]

Wells Fargo & Company and LNR Property Corporation are hunting for buyers for $1 billion each of distressed commercial real estate assets and loans.  San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest commercial real estate lender, is soliciting bids on $500 million to $1 billion worth of office and hotels.  LNR, the nation’s largest CBMS special […]

The long-abandoned United States Steel South Works on Chicago’s South Side moved closer to undergoing transformation to a mixed-use development when the Community Development Commission unanimously approved a $96 million tax-increment financing (TIF) district to fund the project’s initial phase. The Chicago City Council still must approve the TIF district, which would give the green […]

Urban cores with challenging infrastructure issues are not getting the right attention from government, so planners are creating their own public/private partnerships to obtain funding from various city sources to pay for necessary upgrades.  And, according to A. J. Robinson, President of Central Atlanta Progress (CAP) and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADD), his organization […]

Detroit is undergoing a radical downsizing – the most ambitious urban makeover in American history – that will shrink the city’s current 139-square-mile footprint to approximately half that size as abandoned neighborhoods are consolidated and returned to productive farmland. Mayor Dave Bing, a former Detroit Pistons player and All Star, is determined to shrink the […]