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11 Must Reads for the CRE Industry Today (Sept. 9, 2021)

Samsung may be on the verge of selecting Central Texas as the site of a massive $17 billion chip manufacturing plan, reports Houston Business Journal. Several publications looked at how New York City has transformed in the 20 years since 9/11. These are among today’s must reads from around the commercial real estate industry.

  1. Samsung closer to picking Central Texas for $17B chip plant “For the better part of a year, Samsung has scoured the United States for a location to build its next-generation semiconductor factory — a $17 billion facility that would create an estimated 1,800 jobs. It would be one of the biggest foreign investments to ever hit the U.S. economy. New public documents show the process has advanced further in a small city outside Austin than anywhere else in the country.” (Houston Business Journal)
  2. The rebirth of the Financial District: Why 9/11 could be a roadmap for the Covid crisis “That’s nothing unusual now, but 20 years ago, it was unheard of. Almost no one lived downtown. There was no place to live. The Financial District was mostly office space. Nearly 60% of the space was taken up by investment banking, real estate, and insurance companies. Most of the rest of the space was either professional services or government offices.” (CNBC)
  3. Rebuilding Lower Manhattan “In the 20 years since 9/11, dozens of projects have transformed downtown into a vibrant neighborhood. From river to river, there are waterfront parks, skyscrapers with corporate headquarters, thousands of luxury condos, and high-end stores and restaurants.” (New York Business Journal)
  4. Rebuilding Ground Zero Was a Mess. Lower Manhattan Bloomed Anyway. “In the wake of another September morning, New York has become less Manhattan-centered since the attack on the twin towers, less a hub with spokes and more multi-nodal, hastening the booms in Brooklyn and Queens. The old model of urban economics, agglomerated vertically in a clutch of downtown skyscrapers, has gradually ceded to a broader vision of mobility, remote access and live-work neighborhoods.” (The New York Times)
  5. Vaccine hesitancy is disproportionately high in the construction industry. Here's how that's affected bottom lines. “While the days of closed construction sites appear to be in the rearview mirror, the construction industry is facing another pandemic-related challenge in 2021: widespread vaccine hesitancy among its workforce.” (The Business Journals)
  6. Empty Lobbies, Untouched Doughnuts And Shattered Plans: Offices Stayed Quiet The Day After Labor Day “Tenants across the country have pushed back their office returns from Labor Day to the fourth quarter or even to next year as the delta variant of the coronavirus has brought Covid-19 cases to their highest levels in months. Office owners, managers and the retailers that depend on workday foot traffic are now grappling with the frustration of yet another delay in the return to normal.” (Bisnow)
  7. CREXi lays groundwork for public offering with CFO hire “Founded in 2015, the Los Angeles-based company now has 185 employees and 1.6 million users. Even if it doubles headcount, CREXi’s gains would still be modest in comparison to CoStar, which has almost 4,700 employees and reported $480 million revenue last quarter.” (The Real Deal)
  8. If You Never Met Your Co-Workers in Person, Did You Even Work There? “The coronavirus pandemic, now more than 17 months in, has created a new quirk in the work force: a growing number of people who have started jobs and left them without having once met their colleagues in person. For many of these largely white-collar office workers, personal interactions were limited to video calls for the entirety of their employment.” (The New York Times)
  9. Macy’s says public can return to watch annual Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City “For its Thanksgiving Day Parade, Macy’s said that all volunteer participants and staff must be vaccinated against Covid. In order to implement social distancing along the parade route, Macy’s said it will cut the number of participants by up to 20% to 1,600.” (CNBC)
  10. Dick’s Sporting Goods to unveil outdoor-focused store concept in Pittsburgh “The new store concept will also feature an ‘elevated’ customer service experience that will rely on employees who are passionate about showcasing their love for the outdoors and believe in protecting the country’s public lands for all to enjoy, Dick’s said.  One percent of all Public Lands sales will go back into local and national conservation efforts.” (Chain Store Age)
  11. How Alice Walton Is Doubling Down on Her Mega-Museum in Arkansas “In the past decade, more than five million visitors have visited the museum’s 120-acre campus, which includes five miles of trails that connect to downtown Bentonville. According to Walton, many visitors in its first year told her that they had never been to a museum of any kind before.” (The Wall Street Journal)
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