Urbanexus Update — Issue #40
Please scroll down for the weekly compilation of analysis, reporting and opinion about real estate and community development. Note that some links may lead to material that is behind a paywall.
The economy
Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in November indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity remains strong.
Sale leaseback
Distribution center deal
Multinational Deutsche Bank’s RREEF America REIT II paid just over $144.5 million for Safeway’s sprawling distribution center in Auburn in a sale-leaseback deal. The 102-acre property is home to a dry-goods and refrigerated warehouses, a recycling center, administrative building and repair shop for Safeway trucks, which deliver from the center to 221 stores in the region. About 825 people work at the center.
Metropolitan regions in the USA
Columbus, Ohio is improving demographically, economically, and culturally
Talented newcomers have helped fire up a technology startup sector, symbolized by the $1.1 billion purchase of local software firm CoverMyMeds by San Francisco–based McKesson. Columbus is home to one of the largest midwestern venture-capital funds, Drive Capital, headed by two former partners at marquee Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Sequoia. External validation came from making Amazon’s short list of 20 cities in its HQ2 competition and from winning a fierce national competition for the Transportation Department’s $50 million “smart cities” challenge grant.
Superstars of the USA — www.wsj.com
A tech-driven concentration of talent since the 1980s has helped the rich get richer. But it has also sharpened an urban-rural divide that, some say, threatens growth. Columnist Christopher Mims explores the phenomenon.
Retail
Ruth Bader Ginsburg inspires revitalization — product.costar.com
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a marketing draw to its West Village retail strip on Bleecker Street, an area known for arts and culture in New York City. Thanks to events such as one featuring Ginsburg’s writings at a store that combines politics and cashmere in a uniquely West Village way, Brookfield Properties has fully leased the portfolio to a batch of artisans and local vendors, transforming a once-languishing strip less than a year after acquiring the block of stores . The makeover is an example of the tactics Brookfield plans to employ elsewhere.
Community development
Developers struggle to meet affordable housing demand
A shortage of more than 7.2 million affordable housing units exists across the USA for households with incomes at or below the poverty level, defined as 30 percent of area median income, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. But finding affordable housing is not just an issue for impoverished people. Typically, renters who earn up to 60 percent of area median income are also eligible to live in affordable housing properties.
Debate on public financing of private development in Chicago
A question is looming amid surging development in Chicago over which projects will get approval in coming months and how much public money the nation’s third-largest city should use to fund private construction. projects cutting across industry segments are already on the burner, but few are as grandiose, both in scope and price, than the major development proposals the Chicago City Council will decide on in early 2019.
Top planning websites
www.planetizen.com
Planetizen’s annual list of the most useful and innovative websites by and for planners (and every person interested in planning).
Homelessness
An explosion crime, and addiction in Seattle
In its 2017 point-in-time count of the homeless, King County social-services agency All Home found 11,643 people sleeping in tents, cars, and emergency shelters. Property crime has risen to a rate two and a half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s. Cleanup crews pick up tens of thousands of dirty needles from city streets and parks every year.
Sustainability
We can’t stop global warming without reducing driving
Electric vehicles aren’t going to cut it, emissions-wise. That’s one alarming finding in a new report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The estimates vary. But one important finding estimates [PDF, page 65] that about 20 percent of emission reductions needed to limit temperature rise need to come from trips avoided or trips shifted — from cars to trains, buses and bikes.
Climate becomes a matter of conscience for a city manager — www.npr.org
Steven Falk of Lafayette, CA (a transit-served suburb in the Bay Arae), has resigned because he says he cannot carry out policies that fail to address the urgent threat of a changing climate.
What if the megaquake happens when you’re in a Seattle high-rise?
www.seattletimes.com
The city is boosting seismic construction standards for new skyscrapers, but the biggest risk is to older high-rises and old brick buildings.
Around the world
War, hunger and a housing boom: welcome to Africa’s most crowded city
Conflict, drought and floods have pushed a record number of Somalis into Mogadishu, making it Africa’s most crowded city, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
