In the News—Week of March 22 2021
Around the Nation
Target’s announced pullout has many worried about downtown Minneapolis
When Target announced it would not continue its operations at City Center in downtown Minneapolis — with 3,500 workers — when its lease ran out, it got the attention of businesses and the commercial real estate community, Fox 9 TV reports. Along with the challenges other office submarkets face, downtown Minneapolis has been hit with civil unrest since May. Safety is a prime concern. “We’re seeing a lot of activity from the downtown market interested in properties around the 394 corridor because they are interested in better safety … I mean it’s real. It’s very concerning,” the vice president of office brokerage services at Colliers Laura Moore says.
Energy & Environment
Artificial neuron boosts network efficiency reducing power needs
Engineering & Technology reports that University of California researchers have developed a nanoscale device that can carry out neural network processing more efficiently, vastly reducing energy consumption. “Neural network computations in hardware get increasingly inefficient as the neural network models get larger and more complex,” an electrical engineer at the university’s school of engineering, Duygu Kuzum, says. “We developed a single nanoscale artificial neuron device that implements these computations in hardware in a very area- and energy-efficient way.” The device could be used in facial recognition or keeping autonomous vehicles from running over cyclists.
Texas
Redone La Colombe d’Or hotel set to open with 34-story tower
The historic La Colombe d’Or hotel in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood is set to reopen with a 34-story tower next door, the Houston Chronicle reports. The Residences at La Colombe d’Or will have 265 apartments and 18 luxury suites. The Zimmerman family owns the property. They joined forces with Hines and Nuveen about five years ago to renovate and expand the property. The hotel was originally a mansion built by Humble Oil founder Walter Fondren Sr. in 1923. The Zimmerman’s bought it in 1979 and converted it into a hotel.
Mixed-used project taking shape south of downtown Fort Worth
Dodson Commercial Real Estate is developing a project with office and retail buildings called “The 701,’’ The Dallas Morning News reports. The nearly 70,000-square-foot complex is located south of downtown Fort Worth. Plans call for a restaurant, a 200-space parking garage, and a three-story office building. The 701 will include a renovation of a historic building. The complex is scheduled to be finished in early 2022.
Arizona
Arizona only state with two metros on list for top CRE markets in 2021
Phoenix and Tucson made the National Association of Realtors’ Top 10 Commercial Real Estate Markets for 2021, KOLD-TV reports via msn.com. The National Association of Realtors says it made the selections looking at 25 indicators. Arizona was the only state with two metro areas on the list. The National Association of Realtors did not rank the metro areas. Other areas were: Austin-Round Rock, Texas; Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida; Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina; Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, Nevada; Nashville-Davidson-
Mexico
Chinese investment is forecast to dominate industrial space
Mexico has become China’s favorite near-shoring partner, and CBRE predicts that about half the investors in commercial real estate will be of Chinese origin, Mexico Business reports. Chinese investors were involved in more than a third of the industrial projects in 2020. “This is not something that happened overnight, there are more and more investors coming from China,” CBRE’s president in Mexico, Lyman Daniels, says. Asian companies find Mexico attractive because of its proximity to the ultimate destination for goods, the United States.
