Tom’s Recommended Reading for the Week

Happy St Patrick’s Day weekend! Does this mean that spring is finally here? Lets hope so. Check out these 5 articles before heading into the festive holiday weekend.

1. Google, Motorola, Lefkofsky back FEMtech incubator at 1871 – 1871 is about to become less of a boys’ club.The high-profile launchpad for tech companies at the Merchandise Mart will soon be home to 1871FEMtech, an incubator for women-owned tech startups.It’s part of a broader $1 million effort by Google Inc., called #40Forward, to help launch 40 incubators worldwide aimed at boosting women’s participation in technology by 25 percent this year. FEMtech also is being underwritten by the Motorola Mobility Foundation and the Lefkofsky Family Foundation, set up by Groupon Inc. co-founder Eric Lefkofsky and his wife, Liz… Crain’s Chicago
   
2. Where Google Refugees Are Going  –  Like animal print, the West Loop is so last season. We kid, but another bleeding-edge neighborhood is emerging for those priced out of Google’s new ‘hood..Dayton Street Partners just picked up a 37k SF loft building, 2101 W Carroll St, in the Kinzie Corridor, and founder Howard Wedren (above) tells us the area’s ripe for growth thanks to Fulton Market/West Loop mania. “Many tenants have been displaced and are looking for lower-cost options,” he says. (And if history’s taught us anything, they’ll go West, my son.)… Bisnow
   
3. Chicago Spire dream lives on under new deal  – The snakebit Chicago Spire — once forecast to be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and now a watery hole in the ground — took a modest step toward resurrection today.Irish developer Garrett Kelleher reached an agreement with his largest creditor over a financing plan that would allow him to keep control of the site and potentially begin searching for construction financing for the proposed 150-story, 1,194-unit project.Lawyers for Mr. Kelleher and the creditor, a venture led by New York-based Related Cos., announced the deal in principle this afternoon in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago… Crain’s Chicago 
   
4. Don Wilson venture takes control of Fulton Market building housing Publican – The Publican has a new landlord: trader Don Wilson, who repossessed the restaurant’s West Loop building more than two years after filing to foreclose on it.A venture of Mr. Wilson’s Chicago-based firm DRW Holdings LLC took over the building at 845 W. Fulton St. in January through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, or a kind of out-of-court settlement, with Robert Kowalski, a local developer and investor who owned the property through a trust, according to Cook County records… Crain’s Chicago
   
5. China Cinda Buys into 65-story Chicago Office Tower  – Chinese investors charged into the U.S. commercial real-estate market last year with high-profile deals in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now they’re buying in the middle of the country. Cindat Capital Management, partnering with Chicago-based Zeller Realty Group, on Tuesday paid just over $300 million to purchase a 65-story office tower in Chicago, at 311 South Wacker Dr., according to Zeller Executive Vice President Ari Glass… Wall Street Journal