Tom’s Recommended Reading for the Week
Looking for a quick glimpse into the Chicago commercial real estate world? Our Research Associate, Tom Hanrahan will be sharing his picks for the week’s top CRE articles. He’ll continue to update this with breaking news and feature stories for and about the commercial real estate industry. Here are five to check out this weekend…
- Mart says goodbye to Google, but Moto move on track – The Merchandise Mart has basked in the Google glow ever since the technology titan’s July 2012 announcement that its Motorola Mobility business was moving there from Libertyville. Now, on the eve of its move into 604,000 square feet of the hulking Art Deco building, the Mart’s owner and the rest of the River North neighborhood are left to wonder: Can there be a Google effect without Google Inc.?… Crain’s Chicago
- The Open-Office Trap – In 1973, my high school, Acton-Boxborough Regional, in Acton, Massachusetts, moved to a sprawling brick building at the foot of a hill. Inspired by architectural trends of the preceding decade, the classrooms in one of its wings didn’t have doors. The rooms opened up directly onto the hallway, and tidbits about the French Revolution, say, or Benjamin Franklin’s breakfast, would drift from one classroom to another. Distracting at best and frustrating at worst, wide-open classrooms went, for the most part, the way of other ill-considered architectural fads of the time, like concrete domes. (Following an eighty-million-dollar renovation and expansion, in 2005, none of the new wings at A.B.R.H.S. have open classrooms.) Yet the workplace counterpart of the open classroom, the open office, flourishes: some seventy per cent of all offices now have an open floor plan… The NewYorker
- For U.S. Office Market, It Was a Very Good Year- Investors are cheering the gains in asset values seen during 2013 from a strengthening recovery in the U.S. office market, and looking forward to an even brighter 2014 as virtually all the important metrics that drive rent growth and property income are expected to continue to improve over the next 12 months.The robust office market performance was the highlight of the year-in-review analysis and forecast webinar presented by CoStar market experts Walter Page, director of office research; Hans Nordby, managing director and corporate officer, and Aaron Jodka, manager, U.S. market research… CoStar
- Lake Forest Office Building Catches Sam Zell’s eye – For the first time in seven years, real estate billionaire Sam Zell is a suburban Chicago landlord. A joint venture between Mr. Zell’s Equity Group Investments LLC and Chicago-based Fulcrum Asset Advisors LLC paid $13.1 million Jan. 16 for a 105,000-square-foot office building in north suburban Lake Forest that’s about one-quarter vacant, according to Lake County records… Crain’s Business Chicago
- Food Genius gets cooking with $1 million, move to West Loop – “I’d go for the breakfast dog,” Justin Massa says. Even though it’s noon, breakfast is still on the menu at Little Goat, Stephanie Izard’s restaurant in the far West Loop, where the specials are a dog wrapped in a pancake and topped with a fried egg, and the Bull’s eye french toast, which also is topped with an egg and fried chicken bits.“I have to admit I’ve eaten both,” he says of the breakfast dog and French Toast, and a number of other items on the menu… Crain’s Business Chicago