In the News—Week of June 28 2021

Former Sears stores go on market to generate cash  

As many as 50 former Sears stores are going on the block as a real estate investment trust that emerged from the Sears bankruptcy attempts to generate cash, Bloomberg reports. Seritage Growth Properties wants to unload properties it is less interested in developing, CEO Andrea Olshan says. Seritage is facing some time pressure. The enterprise is valued at around $800 million and has a $1.6 billion loan from Berkshire Hathaway that comes due in 2023. Seritage owns 154 former Sears sites and has a stake in another 25. 

Homebuilders in Maine brace for more energy-efficient codes 

Contractors in Maine face a building challenge because building codes are changing in July, the Bangor Daily News reports. The Legislature is trying to make buildings more energy efficient. Walls in homes will be required to have better thermal barriers and structures will have to be tighter. “The benefits to what we’re proposing with these energy codes is they give us better heating performance in the winter and better cooling performance in the summer, thus saving you year-round,” Maine’s state building official, Paul Demers, says.

Texas pink granite has lost its luster with office-building designers

Pink granite from Texas was once all the rage for office buildings in Houston. But alas, like the mullet hairstyle of the same era, its day seems to be done. Building owners and designers want nothing to do with it, the Houston Chronicle reports. There is more than enough of it now, and it so 1980s, which happens to be when many Houston office buildings were built. Many edifices from that period are getting an update. Glass is back in a big way. For some of us, it is sad. Anyone know a good fern bar where one can get a good wine cooler to chase the it’s-not-the-1980s-anymore blues away?