Landlords Can't Forget Their Customers

I saw this article (click on the title for the complete article) on GlobeSt.com. It's from Sunday's General Session of Building Owners and Managers Associations's (BOMA) annual conference.

The article stresses landlords need to remember that they need to serve the tenants that are their customers and concentrate on service. One of the best ways is open communications with tenants (seems pretty simple, doesn't it, but how often do we called our tenants when we don't have to).

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Update - Whole Foods on Blossom Hill

According to one of our local Almaden weekly newspapers, The Almaden Resident, the Whole Foods Market on Blossom Hill Road and Almaden Expressway will be delayed until Fall of 2010.

The store was supposed to have opened at the end of 2009. Most of the demolition has been completed, but work has ceased for the last six months or so and the dirt has been covered by plastic.

Supposedly, a new regional manager decided to shuffle the opening dates for several of the new Northern California stores. There was no mention of the Downtown Whole Foods Market.

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Tishman Speyer Defaults On Campus @ North First

Last Friday, I saw that the Campus @ North First project was in trouble in an article from the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal (click to see the article).


Apparently, it was in real trouble because I saw this morning in the San Jose Mercury (click to see the article) that Tishman Speyer Properties has defaulted on an $86.2 million loan from Bank of America. Tishman Speyer is still in negotiations with Bank of America on a "workout" on the land.


In March 2007, Tishman Speyer paid $108 million for the 40 acre site with plans of building a multi-phase 2.8 million square foot office park. I guess that's not going to happen.


Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Hoover Dam & the Hoover Dam Bypass

As I posted yesterday, we stopped briefly (20 minutes) at Hoover Dam on the way to the Grand Canyon. (Actually we didn't stop at Hoover Dam, but at a turnout overlooking the Dam.)

Here's a picture of Hoover Dam from the Arizona side. If you look carefully, you can see how the waterline has dropped (the white area) due to the drought (10 years according to the bus driver).

But one of the coolest things that I saw was the Hoover Dam Bypass (Colorado River Bridge) that they are currently building over the Colorado River and Hoover Dam. It will take US 93 directly over the river, instead of over the top of the Dam.

If you click on the title, it will take you to the Hoover Dam Bypass website (How cool is that, a website for a bridge with a webcam?) The website saids that it will be completed by late 2010, the bus driver said 2014. Who are you going to believe?

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Grand Canyon Trip

My wife and I took the whole family to the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam this weekend on a bus tour from Las Vegas.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Bright Angel and Mather Point. (The pictures don't do the Grand Canyon justice.)

The first one is from the Bright Angel Trail. The second one is from Mather Point.

If you haven't take a trip to the Grand Canyon, I would highly recommend it. I don't know if I would take the bus tour again (too long of a day, we got picked up at 6:00 AM and dropped off at 11:00 PM), but it worked for the first time. I think that the next time I would probably spend a couple of days there.

There's not much development in Arizona on the way to the Grand Canyon. Most of the land adjacent to freeway is being used for cattle ranches. What development there was tended to be Hospitality and Self Storage (lots of flat land available).

We also stopped briefly at Hoover Dam. I'll post a picture of the new bridge that they are building tomorrow.

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Whole Foods Markets

Well, no news on the Whole Foods Markets in San Jose, but I did see something in the San Francisco Business Times about a Whole Foods project in SF being scrapped.

The developer of a combined Whole Foods Market and housing development in SF (Haight & Stanyon) has scrapped their plans citing the economic downturn and high city fees.

Apparently, the developer would have to pay between $5 - 6 million in city fees to pull the permits for the development, which was to consist of a 34,000 sf Whole Foods Market and 62 apartments. Ouch!

It probably didn't help that the entitlement process took 32 months. Ouch!

Maybe somebody in the South Bay should give the developer a call and see if he wants to do something down here.

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Random Thoughts on Twitter vs. Blogs

I know, this is suppose to be a blog on Commercial Real Estate, not a technology blog (and we know we have enough of those). However, since I've recently started using Twitter, I've been thinking about blogging vs. twittering.

I find myself twittering more than I blog. I think it something about being able to dash off a quick message (and it has to be quick since you only has 140 characters), rather than sitting down and actually writing about something. (I use to be an mechanical engineer, so 140 characters is just about right.) I think that this is the main reason that I find myself twittering more and no, I don't twitter about what I had for breakfast.

And there's that aspect about following. There's a lot of good and bad aspects to following. The good is that you get a lot of information quickly and the bad is that you get a lot of information quick. You can easily get an overload of information with Twitter.

I use TweetDeck to group the people I follow (if you twitter, you need to check this program out). But that can also happen with blogs, so I also use Google Reader to consolidate the blogs that I follow.

So, I'll continue to do both, at least until something new comes around. LOL

If you're interested in following me on Twitter, I'm "svcomremoose".

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Professional Brokers' Forum - June 11

It's that time of month again (most of the commercial real estate forums seem to be in the second week of the month), so here's the information on the Professional Brokers' Forum. This one looks pretty interesting, especially if you want to work with the City of San Jose.

Date: June 11, 2009
Time: 11:30 - 1:30 PM
Speaker: Neil Stone, City of San Jose's Real Estate Division Manager
Topic: The City of San Jose - Real Estate Asset Management and a Role for Brokers
Place: 777 North First Street, Mezzanine Room, San Jose, CA

The Real Estate Division is responsible for the City's acquisition of property for roadway widening, new libraries and fire stations, etc., handling leasing on behalf of the City as both lessor and lessee as well as sale of surplus properties.

If you're planning on attending, you should RSVP Ron Ricard @ ron.ricard@ipx1031.com.

Registration is from 11:30 - 12:00 (and so is lunch).

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

NCalCCIM June 9th Luncheon Meeting

Well, it's that time again. Time for me to put in a plug for the NCalCCIM June 9th Luncheon Meeting (click on the title for more information and to register for the event).

Location: Four Points Sheraton, 5121 Hopyard Road, Pleasanton
Agenda:
9:00 AM Technology Session
10:15 AM Mentoring Session: Integrating between brokers, architects and contractors - Michael Hanneken, President NCalCCIM Chapter
11:30 AM Marketing Session
12:00 Noon Luncheon Program - Luis Belmonte

Our luncheon speaker will be Luis Belmonte, Principal with Seven Hills Properties of San Francisco, developers of neighborhood retail and multi-family residential properties. Mr. Belmonte is a humorously outspoken observer of development trends and politics. Prior to starting Seven Hills Properties, he was Executive Vice President of AMB Property Corporation.

East Bay Crew will be joining us for this meeting.

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Bay Area Apartment Brokers Forum - June 10, 2008

If you've read my posts before (and hopefully, you have), you know that this is one of the forums that I always recommend attending, especially if you're interested in multi-family in the Bay Area and you don't have to be a broker to attend.

Group: Bay Area Apartment Brokers Forum
Guest Speaker: Tod Spieker - President, Spieker Companies, Inc.
Topic: Apartment Straight Talk 2009 - Q&A
Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 @ 8:00 AM
Place: First American Exchange, 1737 N. 1st St., San Jose - 4th Flr.
Breakfast: Continental Breakfast provided by First American Exchange
Chairman: Richard Domich - CB Richard Ellis, Inc.
Vice Chairman: Keith Suddijan - Cornish & Carey Commercial
Membership: Kari Noomen - WaMu - J.P. Morgan Chase
Sponsor: Mary Kay Kennedy - First American Exchange
Adjournment: 9:30 AM

Note: All present will have an opportunity to present their listings, buyer requirements as well as their analysis of current events and market trends that directly effect the multi-housing (apartment) industry in Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area.

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.