Property Types
Hotels and Resorts
What is surprising for the industry is the hotel recovery is happening at such a rapid clip, says Richard C. Conti, chairman of ULI’s Hotel Development Council. “The traditional U.S. hotel industry’s demand usually follows the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the industry usually goes through an 8-12 year cycle,” he continues. Read what Conti and other ULI members see ahead in the hotel industry.
Sustainable design is about looking to the future, minimizing environmental impact not only during construction but also long after. Adaptive use looks to the past, retaining the rich architectural heritage of older buildings. Read how the Hotel Palomar in Philadelphia brings both strategies together in a boutique hotel that opened in the fall of 2009.
The Commercial Mortgage Alert Trepp weekly survey of 15 active portfolio lenders narrowed slightly in response to widening in the yield of 10-year Treasury bonds. There seems to be an all-in cost of 5.0% “glass ceiling” in place as loan spreads moved in and Treasury spreads widened to accommodate changes in spreads and/or yields. For the survey period, average all-in cost equaled 4.87 percent.
Industrial
The Commercial Mortgage Alert Trepp weekly survey of 15 active portfolio lenders was mixed with some widening and some narrowing between October 15th and October 22nd. During the period, 10-year Treasury bond yields widened 5 basis points, with average all-in cost equal to equal to 4.89 percent.
Organizers of Expo 2010 have put together a set of five pavilions and a best practices area based on the “Better City Better Life” theme. The organizers have clearly sought to examine the “Better City” theme in a straightforward and easily comprehended manner. Read about how the Urbanian Pavilion, Pavilion of City Being, Pavilion of Urban Planet and others portray their messages.
The Commercial Mortgage Alert Trepp weekly survey of 15 active portfolio lenders widened between October 8th and October 15th. During the period, 10-year Treasury bond yields remained flat, with average all-in cost equal to equal to 4.86 percent.
Mixed-Use
Creating a thriving mixed-use property is not nearly as simple as putting retail space on the ground floor of a multifamily residential building, even though that is just what many local officials and planners like to dictate, according to a panel of experts at the ULI Spring Meeting in Houston.
Mixed-use projects have the potential to transform urban areas and create long-term value. But as members of a panel at the 2015 ULI Spring Meeting in Houston explained, it is a lot trickier than it might seem to create a successful synergy of uses.
The successful development of the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio, set into motion a nationwide flurry of development of urban sports-oriented entertainment districts, as municipal officials across the country reimagined their city centers as places where people live, work, and play.
Multifamily
Successful development of 20-minute communities in Black and brown neighborhoods requires community involvement and ownership, according to panelists who explored the topic at ULI’s 2021 Fall Meeting.
Khoo Teng Chye, the new chair of ULI Asia Pacific, began his three-year term in July, succeeding Nicholas Brooke, chairman of Professional Property Services in Hong Kong. An urban planner based in Singapore, Khoo teaches at the Faculty of Engineering and the School of Design and Environment at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he was executive director of Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities and chief executive officer of PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency.
Nearly 800 structures were converted to apartment buildings during the 2010s, the highest number in the past seven decades, according to research by data provider Yardi Matrix. Chicago tops the list of U.S. cities with the most adaptive-use apartment buildings, whereas New York City is home to the most converted apartment units in total.
Office
The conversion to primarily open-office floor plans over the past decade is now reaching adolescence, and like many revolutions has created problems as well as possibilities, panelists said at a ULI New York event in February.
A number of cities in the U.S. Northeast are supplanting outdated office product with new thanks to strong, diversified economies; vigorous job creation; and increasing formation of businesses. Further driving development in the Northeast—New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey—is continuing demand from the education and medicine (“eds and meds”) and technology sectors, among others.
Coworking reigns as a core strategy, rather than a craze, against the backdrop of commercial real estate evolving from a space-leasing business to a service-delivery business, said speakers at a ULI Houston luncheon in November.
Residental
Modular units, virtual reality, rental homes, data-driven marketing—and even autonomous flying passenger vehicles—will transform master-planned communities in the coming years, a group of developers and marketers said during a panel discussion at the 2017 ULI Fall Meeting in Los Angeles.
American housing continues to evolve as new forms of shelter arise to meet changing demographics and consumer demands.
The United States is becoming more urbanized. Cities are becoming stronger. But millions of people are being left behind, unable to participate in the urban success, says Henry Cisneros, coauthor of a new ULI book on the topic.
Retail
For decades, civic leaders have tried to revitalize Market Street, San Francisco’s central thoroughfare, only to see their efforts founder. “I sometimes call it the great white whale of San Francisco,” says Eric Tao, managing partner at L37 Development in San Francisco and co-chair of ULI San Francisco. “Every new mayor, every new planning director, every new economic development director has chased that white whale.” This year, however, an international competition of ideas hosted and run by ULI San Francisco, with support from the ULI Foundation, generated fresh momentum for reimagining the boulevard. The competition drew 173 submissions from nine countries and sparked new conversations about the future of downtown San Francisco.
The OAK project began in 2009, when a development firm set their sights on the corner of Northwest Expressway and North Pennsylvania Avenue, the state’s most important and busiest retail intersection. As the region’s only parcel capable of supporting a vertically integrated project of this scale and density, that land represented an opportunity to create something truly special.
As aging retail continue to evolve, one increasingly popular trend has been to redesign malls as town centers—recalling a time when such commercial districts were the heart and soul of a community. Mall–to–town center retrofits are emerging throughout the nation, especially in suburban communities, where pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environments are highly attractive to millennials now raising families.