How did Charlotte, North Carolina, developer Bissell Companies build a major mixed-use development —largely on spec—despite dramatic changes in economic conditions? Their Ballantyne community includes more than 5 million square feet (465,000 sq m) of office space, 500,000 square feet (46,500 sq m) of retail, 1,000 hotel rooms, and 4,600 residential units. And the developers believe that it pays to have inventory at the ready.

Envision Charlotte, a pioneering sustainability program in Charlotte, North Carolina, has partnered with Duke Energy, Cisco Systems Inc., and Verizon to produce a model program, Smart Energy Now. The program involves a robust network of 70 buildings, and their owners and managers, who will help achieve the program’s goals for dramatic energy savings. Up next: water, waste, and air. Charlotte will host ULI’s Spring Meeting, May 8-10.

The government’s data center consolidation efforts, cloud computing initiative, and budget constraints are creating opportunities for private data centers, attendees at one Bisnow Media event learned.

With a few tweaks to the development plan, Kai Tak—a decommissioned airport—can become the vibrant, mixed-use community the Hong Kong government wants it to be, says a ULI advisory services panel.

Once the butt of jokes by late-night comedians, Newark now has building cranes dotting its skyline—proof that the Garden State’s largest city is experiencing something of a renaissance.

In its transition from an industrial economy to a knowledge-based one, Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has become the most robust innovation-based cluster in the nation—if not the world.

Cost is secondary to value right now, declared one panelist at a session titled “Rethinking the Office Market” at the ULI 2011 Fall Meeting and Urban Land Expo in Los Angeles.

There are many paths to earning a university degree in real estate development, and a wide variety of disciplines and subjects provide grist for that education mill.

Despite some downward-trending market indicators, the forecast for the commercial real estate sector is decidedly more mixed for the coming year, depending on the market sector, according to Deloitte.