Updated: Saturday, February 15 2014, 09:37 PM MST

By: Stacey Welsh

EL PASO, Texas -- The Sun City's first four star hotel could revitalize the El Paso International Airport area. Plans are in the works for a new Westin hotel at the intersection of Airway Boulevard and Boeing Drive.

EPIA Director Monica Lombrana expects the new hotel to have much more in store for El Paso because it's set to have retail space nearby.

"We're looking at it in terms of redeveloping the entire area of the southern industrial park over time. We recently rezoned that to SmartCode. We have a master plan for that entire area," Lombrana said.

"I think that as long as it's going to stimulate the economy, it's a good choice for the area and also for El Paso," central El Paso resident Ruben Ville said.

The plan for more restaurants and retail locations could benefit other hotels in the area.

"There isn't anything aside from two restaurants to go out to at the end of the day," Lombrana said.

However, some are afraid the project would only bring more traffic to the airport area.

"They've got hotels up all over the city. Put them all on Interstate 10. That's where all the competition is anyway. I don't see any reason for building more hotels, especially a hotel that size," East El Paso resident Roger Jernigan said.

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Westin hotel project could revitalize El Paso airport area

Union Storage complex in Fargo

The Union Storage Building, seen Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014, at 1026 NP Ave., Fargo, N.D., may undergo a $9 million renovation. Michael Vosburg / Forum Photo Editor

FARGO The Fargo Renaissance Zone Authority gave its blessing Thursday to a $9 million project that aims to transform the vacant Union Storage and Transfer complex on NP Avenue into upscale apartments, and commercial and retail space.

The application for Renaissance Zone property tax breaks will now go to the City Commission, along with a request from the developers, NP Avenue LLC, for other property tax breaks tied to payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOT incentives.

Developers are also pursuing state and federal income tax credits based on the historical significance of the complex, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Jessica Barner Alsop, who is developing the property with business partner John Williams, told Renaissance Zone Authority members the target market for apartments will be individuals and couples who want to live downtown.

The plan involves two buildings.

The Union Storage site, called the west building, has a basement, three upper floors and about 34,000 square feet of space.

The east building, the former Armour Creamery, has a basement, four upper floors and about 45,000 square feet of space.

Alsop said the west building will be retrofitted to accommodate retail and commercial space, while the east building could house 40 or more apartments and 22 underground parking spaces.

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$9 million project aims to revitalize vacant Union Storage and Transfer complex

Senior Housing Properties Trust (SNH) agreed to buy two 15-story medical-office buildings in downtown Bostons Seaport District for about $1.13 billion.

The buildings comprise biomedical research facilities, corporate office space, a parking garage and retail space covering a total of 1.65 million square feet (153,300 square meters), the Newton, Massachusetts-based real estate investment trust said yesterday in a statement.

The properties were completed in December and are 96 percent occupied by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., which is relocating its headquarters from nearby Cambridge to the Seaport District complex. Bostons real estate market is seeing a construction boom, driven in part by the strength of the citys technology and life-sciences industries.

The Seaport District is the hottest real estate market, probably in the nation right now, David Hegarty, president of Senior Housing Properties, said in a telephone interview. The company, which doesnt typically invest in offices, was drawn to the buildings because more than half the space is laboratories and research facilities, he said.

Vertex (VRTX) started moving its 1,300 Boston-area employees into the Seaport District buildings in December and will complete the relocation this month, Hegarty said. The company, with a market value of about $19.2 billion and 2,200 global employees, has 15 years remaining on its lease at the two-building complex, according to the statement.

The property has 50,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space that Senior Housing Properties is looking for tenants to fill, Hegarty said.

The REIT received a term-loan commitment for $800 million, according to the statement.

Senior Housing Properties, with a market value of about $4.14 billion, owns independent- and assisted-living communities, medical-office buildings, nursing homes and wellness centers in the U.S.

To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Giammona in New York at cgiammona@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net

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Senior Housing Properties to Buy Boston Medical Offices

Rendering of the retail space at 935 Madison Avenue

Renderings have been unveiled for a roughly 14,000-square-foot Madison Avenue retail space next to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The project, still under construction at 935 Madison Avenue, is part of a renovation of a historical 1876 property on 74th Street. The retail portion includes roughly 7,200 square feet on ground floor and 7,100 on the lower level, said Isaacs & Co.sJoel Isaacs, who is marketing the retail space with colleagueJosh Lewin. Itwill have over 100 feet of frontage on Madison Avenue.

The whole project is being developed by real estate investor and health care entrepreneurDaniel E. Straus.

Each of the ground-floor spaces will have a lower-level space which can be used for selling and storage, Mr. Isaacs said. On the ground floor, asking retail rents are $1,200 a foot on the corner and $1,000 a foot inline and on the lower level they are $50 a foot, he said. Ceiling heights can reach 18 feet on the ground floor and 10 feet on the lower level.

Rendering of the interior of the retail space at 935 Madison Avenue

The area is expected to generate more foot traffic after theMetropolitan Museum of Art takes event and exhibition space at the WhitneysMarcel Breuerbuilding, at945 Madison Avenuenext year.

Mr. Isaacs said there has been considerable interest in the retail space.

We are talking to a broad range of high-end brands, he said.

Upstairs, 10 new residential units, with an address of 33 East 74th Street, are under construction. Home prices will range fromabout $15 million to in excess of $30 million, a spokesperson for the project said. Douglas EllimansKatherine Gauthier and Karen Mansour are marketing the residential space.

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Revealed: Images, Prices of Retail Space Next to Whitney

FREMONT -- A thriving outdoor mall could expand to meet one of the area's biggest retail needs, if the City Council approves its plan to open the city's largest sporting goods retailer and other storefronts.

The Block at Pacific Commons' proposal to add Dick's Sporting Goods in a 50,000-square-foot store and Buffalo Wild Wings, a restaurant in a 6,500-square-foot building, will be considered Feb. 18 by the council. The Planning Commission last month unanimously recommended approval.

Fremont has coveted a large sports equipment retailer since Tri-City Sporting Goods closed in 2006, city leaders said. "Right now, a lot of people step outside Fremont to buy a ball or other basic sporting goods," said Christina Briggs, the city's economic development manager. "We're filling key voids in our retail, and it speaks to The Block's existing success that it is adding to it."

The 27-acre shopping hot spot -- bounded by Boscell Road, Bunche Drive and Curie and Christy streets -- opened two years ago next to Pacific Commons, an 80-acre outdoor shopping center that opened in 2004.

Catellus, which developed both retail zones next to Interstate 880, sold Pacific Commons two months ago to Heitman, a Chicago investment company.

But Catellus still owns The Block, envisioning it as a food and entertainment mecca when it built a cinema multiplex and several restaurants there in 2012. Its first phase landed stores such as Target, Men's Warehouse, Ulta and Sleep Number, as well as The Habit Burger Grill, Which Wich and other eateries. Now on the verge of adding two large retail spaces in its second phase, The Block also might include another store in a 3,000-square-foot building, said Catellus spokesman Sean Whiskeman. "We're in pretty active discussions to find a tenant for that third space," he said. "We've had great interest from restaurants for it."

The Block originally was meant to be what the developer calls a lifestyle center, where a cluster of small retailers would encourage customers to walk within the mall, staying for food, entertainment and shopping.

That specific goal was a casualty of the 2008 recession, Whiskeman said, saying the economic downturn made it "difficult to bring in the right critical mass of those small-shop retailers."

The Block vision has not been abandoned -- Catellus still aims to build a promenade linking the sporting goods store and the restaurant.

"There still will be beautiful plaza spaces and great opportunities for outdoor dining," Whiskeman said. "We still have elements of the original plan; it's still intended as a lifestyle center."

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Fremont's biggest sporting goods store, restaurant may come to The Block shopping center

By Paula Garcia, Globe Correspondent

It is late afternoon and steady streams of people are making their way to the Fenway MBTA station. Some are dressed in suits, others in scrubs, and others more casually in jeans and sneakers. They all seem to emerge from the Landmark Center, a multi-service building that looms over the T stop.

This is a usual scene during weekdays in the Fenway, at the intersection of Brookline Avenue and Park Drive. The area, known for its proximity to Fenway Park and the Audubon Circle community, is the site of the Landmark Center, which provides office space for companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield and a variety of retail stores including Bed, Bath & Beyond and Best Buy.

On Jan. 16, the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved an expansion project for the Landmark Center. The project will renovate the interior of the current building, and expand to build a new section dedicated to housing development. The expansion is expected to create 550 housing units, more office and retail space, and the construction of a Wegmans supermarket.

Bill Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association, said the FCA and its members back the recently expansion plan.

We support it because it is predominantly residential, Richardson said in a telephone interview. We have been supporting all the residential projects in the neighborhood.

The Landmark Center expansion is a continuation of several development projects in the Fenway area by Samuels & Associates, a development firm that currently owns the Landmark Center. Samuels & Associates has been an active player in the Fenway since 2004. In the past 10 years, Samuels & Associates has built and redeveloped the Fenway community through the construction of the Fenway Triangle Trilogy and the 1330 Boylston St. building.

We believe that there is certainly a demand for housing in the city of Boston, Richardson said. I think the number one complaint among the younger people is that housing is too expensive, and there is only one way to tackle that -- try to get more housing.

The Landmark Center project will be part of three new housing-oriented projects in the area, which under BRA regulations will include onsite affordable housing units. The regulations, which are part of the Inclusionary development policy created by former Mayor Thomas M. Menino in 2000, require that any residential development have at least 10 percent of the total housing units be affordable housing for moderate to middle-income residents.

The Landmark Cente, along with The Point and the Van Ness Street projects, will add more than 1,000 new housing units into the Brookline Avenue corridor that runs from Kenmore Square to Park Drive.

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Planned expansion of Landmark Center gets positive reviews

The Markit and Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply's Construction Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) showed output across the UK's construction industry reach a figure of 64.6 in January, up from a PMI figure of 62.1 in December. A value of over 50.0 on the PMI scale signifies growth.

PMI data is collected via a monthly survey of more than 170 purchasing executives working within the construction sector, based in businesses of all sizes.

Markit said that the January PMI of 64.6 is the highest recorded growth in the industry since August 2007 and that its survey showed "near-record growth rates" across house building, commercial and civil engineering activity.

"The upturn was again led by house building, which increased for the twelfth successive month, but surging growth was also recorded for commercial construction and civil engineering," Markit said in a statement. "The rise of the latter two activities points to increased spending by business on infrastructure, office space, industrial units and retail outlets."

Markit said that construction industry businesses it surveyed expressed the highest levels of confidence about the forthcoming year's activity since September 2009. Jobs have also been created in the industry for eight months in a row now, it confirmed.

Construction industry expert Graham Robinsonof Pinsent Masons said that the "strong rebound" the construction industry is enjoying was welcome, but identified some challenges associated with the rate of growth in some areas and predicted that that rate would "moderate" in the longer term.

"The success of the house building and commercial markets in particular are acting as the main drivers for this strong rebound from the major troughs the construction industry experienced in the depths of the recession," Robinson said.

"However, much of the growth in house building can be attributed to the Government's continued backing for its 'Help To Buy' scheme, whilst the boom in the London property market may be masking the fact that in many parts of the country the commercial property market is still struggling," he said.

"There is some way to go in terms of taking up existing capacity in some areas, but where there are hot spots of activity there may be resourcing problems for contractors, in terms of both labour and materials. Although jobs have been created for a steady eight months in a row now, the construction jobs market has been rising from a very low base. Many of the workers who found themselves out of work in the recession have found jobs in other industries," he said.

Robinson said that "headwinds" in the European economy will continue to affect the UK export market and that this would eventually cause current growth levels in the UK construction industry to slow.

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Construction industry sees sharpest growth since before the recession

Alexander, ND (PRWEB) February 03, 2014

M SPACE, a nationwide modular building contractor, breaks ground at Alexander Energy Park and is pleased to welcome its first two tenants, J-W Power Company and Wanzak Construction, Inc. Both companies will have new facilities open at the energy park this spring.

Alexander Energy Park is a mixed-use light industrial/business park located in McKenzie County at the intersection of Highway 85 and 68, between Watford City and Williston. Alexander Energy Park has lots for sale and build to suit metal buildings for sale and lease. Buildings will feature oversized garages and drive-through bays, administrative/office and retail space with storefront options.

Alexander Energy Park offers an ideal location with prime highway exposure, said Jeff Deutschendorf, M SPACE President and CEO. We have two housing communities within a few miles of the park which provides tenants the option of housing their employees nearby.

M SPACE has leased 15 homes to meet the housing needs for the current tenants of the park. Both developments are fully-furnished and include everything from housewares and linens to a flat screen TV. For more information about Alexander Energy Park or our housing developments, please visit our website, http://www.mspaceholdings.com, or call us toll free at 877.677.2231.

ABOUT M SPACE

M SPACE, a nationwide modular general contractor, provides both commercial and residential building solutions to properly support the growth of expanding areas. Our capabilities range from offices and metal buildings to single and multi-family homes, hotels/motels and residential communities. Flexible leasing, sale and financing options are available. http://www.mspaceholdings.com.

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Modular General Contractor Breaks Ground at Alexander Energy Park

Zara's arrival in Australia has been keenly watched by its international retail peers.

The invasion of international names in fashion, cosmetics, homewares and department stores is gathering momentum as global brands snap up newly-developed space across capital cities and larger suburban shopping centres.

Some, like Spain's Zara, Britain's Topshop and Williams Sonomas Pottery Barn from the US have already landed, while others, like British icon Marks & Spencer and Swedens H&M are yet to arrive.

Australia has become the latest frontier conquered by international retailers, with up to 10 labels opening new stores in the past 18 months.

An artist's impression of Melbourne's The Emporium

CBD redevelopments like Westfields Pitt Street Mall project and the under-construction Emporium site in Melbourne have helped spur the arrival of the fresh brands, who have watched with some interest Zaras foray into what many in Europe and the US have previously considered a outlier territory for retail.

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In addition fashion groups have realised that southern hemisphere stores give them a chance at a second bite of the cherry for a seasons designs.

Many labels have sent and continue to send representative leasing executives to Australia to seek out the appropriate locations, with most putting a holding deposit on potential stores while they report back to their head office.

H&M's new Sydney home at 345 George Street.

The rest is here:
Retail invasion picks up pace

Zara's arrival in Australia has been keenly watched by its international retail peers.

The invasion of international names in fashion, cosmetics, homewares and department stores is gathering momentum as global brands snap up newly-developed space across capital cities and larger suburban shopping centres.

Some, like Spain's Zara, Britain's Topshop and Williams Sonomas Pottery Barn from the US have already landed, while others, like British icon Marks & Spencer and Swedens H&M are yet to arrive.

Australia has become the latest frontier conquered by international retailers, with up to 10 labels opening new stores in the past 18 months.

An artist's impression of Melbourne's The Emporium

CBD redevelopments like Westfields Pitt Street Mall project and the under-construction Emporium site in Melbourne have helped spur the arrival of the fresh brands, who have watched with some interest Zaras foray into what many in Europe and the US have previously considered a outlier territory for retail.

Advertisement

In addition fashion groups have realised that southern hemisphere stores give them a chance at a second bite of the cherry for a seasons designs.

Many labels have sent and continue to send representative leasing executives to Australia to seek out the appropriate locations, with most putting a holding deposit on potential stores while they report back to their head office.

H&M's new Sydney home at 345 George Street.

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Retail invasion picks up pace: Where to find the foreign brands storming Australian shopping