Originally  published on November 15, 2022, by NAIOP.

NAIOP’s valuable 60-page e-book, “Rules of Thumb for Distribution/Warehouse Facilities Design, Second Edition,” allows you to gain a step up in today’s competitive marketplace. The e-book includes detailed instructions and diagrams on everything from site planning to floor slabs. Members save 50% off the list price!

Rules of Thumb for Distribution/Warehouse Facilities Design, second edition, has been extensively updated with new must-know information and detailed illustrations. Author and former principal with HPA, Inc., Byron Pinckert, has drawn on his firm’s decades of industry experience to explain best-practice methods for planning and designing warehouse facilities. This 60-page e-book addresses topics including site planning for truck and rail delivery, material handling equipment and racking systems layouts, as well as field-tested approaches to complex features such as floor slabs and roofs. Rules of Thumb for Distribution/Warehouse Facilities Design will help developers achieve peak operational efficiency for their tenants and build-to-suit clients.

Purchase Book

Originally published on November 8, 2022, for NAIOP E-Newsletter.

While most of the political establishment in the nation’s capital is focused on the midterm congressional elections, federal agency staff are still moving forward on developing regulations from legislation enacted this year. The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service last Friday issued their Priority Guidance Plan for 2022-2023, detailing their top regulatory priorities for the next year.

A major focus of the plan is the clean-energy tax provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed by Congress in August. These include measures on tax credits for electric vehicles, clean-energy manufacturing, and energy-efficiency incentives for commercial real estate and other industries. The plan also includes projects on the newly enacted corporate alternative minimum tax, the tax on corporate stock repurchases, and manufacturing incentives for the semiconductor industry.

The Treasury Department and the IRS will update the plan during the year to add additional items that become priorities as a result of legislative developments, or as a result of input from public comments on proposed regulations.

Priority Guidance Plan

Originally published in The Role of Data Analytics in Commercial Real Estate Siting, Design and Valuation Decisions by Clifford A. Lipscomb, Ph.D., MRICS in October 2022.

Industries are rapidly evolving as business processes grow more interconnected and automated. Data and analytics play an important role in information technologies and their interaction with the physical world, including emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), and virtual and augmented reality. Although commercial real estate (CRE) has been slower than other industries to adopt data analytics, some firms have identified several ways that data analytics can support land and building development and contribute to better project outcomes.

To gain a sense of how CRE firms are using advanced data analytics, the NAIOP Research Foundation commissioned this report to examine applications in site selection, design and valuation for commercial buildings. The author conducted a secondary research and interviewed brokers, data providers, investors, developers and professionals at CRE technology firms.

Firms continue to rely primarily on traditional forms of market research when making investment and development decisions. Nonetheless, several commercial real estate technology companies have developed specialized software that draws from data analytics to support applications ranging from highest and best-use analysis to real-time building rendering. These emerging applications suggest that data analytics has the potential to add substantial value to new development projects through improved siting decisions and building design.

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Originally published in the Fall 2022 Issue of NAIOP's Development Magazine by Patrick Finucan, Sam Bennett, and David Kitchens.

To compete with the rise of e-commerce, traditional shopping malls are evolving to stay relevant and offer experiences that can’t be found online. Recognizing the central location of most malls, more owners are executing major redevelopments of these aging monoliths, transforming them into compelling, destination-worthy mixed-use environments that reflect the needs and wants of the communities they serve. 

One example of this redevelopment strategy in action is the recent renovation of Ballston Quarter, a formerly enclosed shopping mall in Arlington, Virginia, a few miles outside of Washington, D.C.

Over the past 70 years, the site where Ballston Quarter is located has gone through several iterations. From the rise of parking garages to the advent of experiential retail, this regional mall has lived through generations of retail revolutions and undergone two renovations to ensure its continued relevance. 

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Is your 2023 salary and bonus package competitive? Find out with the 2022 NAIOP/CEL Commercial Real Estate Compensation and Benefits Reports. These valuable reports (either Office/Industrial-Retail or Office/Industrial-Retail-Residential) enable commercial real estate businesses to stay current on salaries, bonuses, and benefits for CRE professionals from executive to entry-level positions.

The report includes:

Submissions from over 300 companies

Salary, bonus, incentives, and benefits for up to 200 positions

Numerous vacancies remain on several Charlotte City Council-appointed Boards and Commissions.  

• The recent vacancy notice lists positions for which the City Council will make nominations and appointments in 2022.  Please take note of application deadlines and dates projected for nominations and appointments.
• Any additional positions will be added to this list as they arise.  Please subscribe to NotifyMe to receive notices of new vacancies.
• Applications are available online at charlottenc.gov/clerk or by clicking here.
• Applications remain active for one year from the submission date.
• Applicants will be notified when appointed.
• Please visit the Boards & Commissions webpage to view more details about each board and commission and their meeting times and locations.  Please review the necessary qualifications for each board, as well as attendance and code of ethics requirements.
• All applicants must be residents of Mecklenburg County.
• Appointees serve voluntarily without compensation.

State of Housing 2022 Summit 
Tuesday, November 15, 2022, at 2:00 pm

In-person at The Dubois Center at UNC Charlotte Center City or via Zoom

The summit, in its fourth year, brings developers, government officials, and community stakeholders together for an exclusive first look at the "2022 State of Housing in Charlotte Report," which details:

• A comprehensive inventory of the current housing stock
• An analysis of housing affordability across all income levels
• A high-level comparison of the Charlotte regional housing market
• A comprehensive look at owner-occupied, rental, and subsidized housing in the eight-county Charlotte region
• How the market has changed since the first State of Housing Report in 2019
• How house price growth rates have fared during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
• A long-term view of the dynamics of the housing market over the last two decades

Event Schedule

REGISTER NOW

Monday, November 7th

Previous planning studies related to the Downtown include the 2006 Downtown Master Plan and the 2040 Community Plan.  The 2022 Downtown Plan will both update the 2006 Plan and follow adopted 2040 Plan policies and action priorities.  The Plan will be reviewed by the Huntersville Planning Board and eventually considered for adoption by the Huntersville Town Board of Commissioners. 

The most recent public forum was held on October 20th with about 80 people attending.  The presentation links are listed here for your review:

• Final Draft Presentation 1 of 4 (PDF)
• Final Draft Presentation 2 of 4 (PDF)
• Final Draft Presentation 3 of 4 (PDF)
• Final Draft Presentation 4 of 4 (PDF)

Once you have had a chance to view the presentation, please complete the survey which will be open until Monday, October 31st at 5:00 PM. 

For additional details about the plan please visit:

Let's Plan Huntersville

Originally published on October 24, 2022, by Konrad Putzier for The Wall Street Journal.

Hybrid work schedules for most companies mean splitting time between remote work and time in the office. For the startup Frontier Talent Inc., it also means rotating through the same office space with another company.

Frontier employees head to their San Francisco office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. After two of those days, they pack their laptops, clean up their desks and throw away any trash so their work area will be clean when another company moves in for its turn using the space.

Originally published on October 11, 2022, by Matt Baron for NAIOP.

When you invest time on the front end of your development efforts, you will reap dividends during its latter stages. Conversely, if you don’t heed the details – political landscape, concerns of residents, requirements of regulatory agencies, and more – then you will pay in stalled or stymied projects.

In vivid detail, panelists at NAIOP’s CRE.Converge this week illustrated those contrasting outcomes in a session moderated by Jill Didier, vice president of business development of Miron Construction Co – and also the former mayor of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a community west of Milwaukee.

Her varied background is fitting for the topic at a time of rising complexity in land development, new regulations, fewer municipal employees, and the COVID-19 pandemic combining to create longer delays in permit and entitlements processes; it’s vital to understand the development process from myriad vantage points. Someone who can put themselves in others’ shoes is that much more likely to have a smoother path to seeing developments take shape and bolster the region’s economic well-being.

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Originally published on October 19, 2022, for Business Insider.

As the US emerged from the Great Recession, cheap real estate and the rise of e-commerce collided to create a warehousing boom.

As Amazon and others began building million-square-foot distribution centers, construction skyrocketed. Since 2011, over 2.3 billion square feet of new warehouse space has come to market — enough room to comfortably stuff 3 ½ Manhattans inside.

Past industrial booms created coal countries, steel cities, and oil towns. Now warehouse boomtowns shoot up in places like California's Inland Empire, Pennsylvania's Lehigh County, and Columbus, Ohio, and the number of warehouse workers has nearly tripled in a decade.

Originally published on October 18, 2022, by NAIOP.

The NAIOP CRE Sentiment Index for September 2022 is 47, down from April’s reading of 53. It is at its lowest level since September 2020. This reading suggests that respondents expect unfavorable conditions for commercial real estate over the next 12 months. 

Key Takeaways:

• Respondents expect higher interest rates, higher cap rates, and a decrease in the supply of equity and debt over the next year.
• Their outlook for occupancy rates, face rents, and effective rents are also less optimistic, though they still expect rents to grow.
• Respondents also expect a sharp deterioration in general industry conditions over the next 12 months.
• The only positive development in the September survey is that respondents expect a slower pace of construction cost inflation over the next year.
• Despite a more pessimistic outlook for development conditions, developers plan to maintain recent deal volume over the coming year.
• Most respondents expect to be most active in projects or transactions related to industrial properties over the next year.

View Full Report

Originally published on October 12, 2022, by Matt Baron for NAIOP.

Midway into a panel discussion at CRE.Converge, a quip about the Federal Reserve behaving like a novice teenaged driver – “way too much gas, way too much brake, way too much gas” – drew laughter from many attending the jampacked session. But palpable nervousness tinged those chuckles at the metaphor by moderator Bart Johnson, president, and CRE market head, of Wintrust Bank.

Questions over the duration and extent of rising interest rates have slowed overall market activity. And no one on the panel predicted relief from the ongoing suspense any time soon.

In fact, the first perspective offered by Peter Schultz, a 39-year industry veteran who is executive vice president – of East region, First Industrial Realty Trust, Inc., was that “rates are going to rise, there’s going to be more pressure for sure. I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon.”

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Originally published on October 12, 2022, by Ian P. Murphy for NAIOP.

Pressure to satisfy environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals among companies in the commercial real estate sector has intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to panelists at CRE.Converge.

External pressure is building as local governments establish environmental benchmarking ordinances. But even where regulatory demands and tenant awareness are lacking, boards and investors are asking their firms to do more. “A lot of it is internal,” said Leslie Moore, senior vice president and director of ESG and corporate operations for LXP Industrial Trust. “Certain investors really push for it.”

“We don’t have a lot of pressure from our tenants to adopt sustainability as much as I’ve seen in the office sector,” said Rielle Green, director of ESG for Acadia Realty Trust, a retail REIT. “That’s coming from our investors and board. They ask, ‘What is our strategy? Are we in line with our peers?’”

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Originally published on October 12, 2022, by Ed Finkel for NAIOP.

Supply chain, logistics and transportation play a major role in site selection for industrial real estate, which has been disrupted along with many other economic sectors by the COVID-19 pandemic but remains in a strong position overall, said Adam Roth, CCI, SIOR, executive vice president of NAI Hiffman, at CRE:Converge 2022.

Corporations make site selection decisions by balancing the costs of industrial real estate with the percentage of suppliers and consumers they want to be able to reach same day and next day. They make algorithmic calculations that result in hub-and-spoke supply chain maps outward from central nodes where warehouses are located, Roth said.

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Originally published in the Fall 2022 Issue of NAIOP's Development Magazine by Plabo J. Quintana.

The modern office is in the midst of a transformation. With most knowledge workers opting out of the traditional five-day-in-office workweek in search of flexibility and hybrid work solutions, the shape, size and focus of the future office is rapidly changing.

CBRE’s Spring 2022 Office Occupier Sentiment Survey provides a snapshot of these changes and their impact on commercial real estate. In a survey of 185 tenant companies, 39% of respondents said they plan to expand their office portfolios over the next three years. That’s up from 29% the previous year, suggesting that fears about the “death of the office” have been exaggerated. Fifty-two percent said they plan to reduce their office space holdings, but only 8% say they will become fully remote. Seventy-three percent — the vast majority — plan to support hybrid work. 

As of now, office occupancy is slowly beginning to rebound from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. NAIOP’s Office Space Demand Forecast, released in May, reports that vacancy rates have increased across the country for 10 straight quarters. However, Class A buildings with amenities designed to attract skilled workers are helping to stabilize the office market. Net office space absorption in the remaining three quarters of 2022 is forecasted to reach 46.9 million square feet and total 47.3 million square feet for all of 2023.

The Transportation, Planning, and Development Committee held its first meeting of the new council term and reviewed its charge and procedures.  Members of the Committee, along with Mayor Pro Tem Braxton Winston who also attended, heard several presentations from planning staff that included:

• Community Area Planning, Alignment, and Rezoning
• UDO Implementation

• Meeting Agenda - October 3, 2022
• Meeting Video - October 3, 2022

Originally published in the Fall 2022 Issue of NAIOP's Development Magazine.

The Morton Salt Company warehouse on Elston Avenue in Chicago once furnished tons of preservative salt for the city’s tanning industry. Today it is itself preserved — a city landmark in the process of rebirth as a concert venue combined with commercial and office space.  

The complex, containing several buildings in a 4.2-acre site along the North Branch of the Chicago River, is being transformed to contain a 30,000-square-foot indoor concert venue in the former salt storage shed, 60,000 square feet of leasable office and commercial space in what had been a three-floor packaging building, additional space in a former garage, and an outdoor performance venue in the footprint of a recently demolished second salt shed.

The site is in the city’s North Branch Industrial Corridor, which has seen considerable development since partial rezoning in 2017 to encourage mixed-used development. The zoning of this site changed from M3-3, Heavy Industry District, to C3-3, Commercial, Manufacturing and Employment District.

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Originally published on September 28, 2022, by Dan Berthiaume for Chain Store Age.

Walmart is debuting a proprietary supply chain automation system in its new high-tech fulfillment center.

Located in Joliet, Ill., and described as the "first-of-its-kind" for Walmart,  the 1.1 million-sq.-ft, high-tech facility is the first of four state-of-the-art fulfillment centers dedicated to e-commerce that Walmart plans to open during the next three years. It will store millions of items available on Walmart.com, that are then picked, packed, and shipped directly to customers.

The new center will also fulfill third-party Walmart Marketplace items shipped by Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS), the company's end-to-end fulfillment service for third-party e-commerce sellers.

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