News

The Detroit Science Center has broken ground on an 80,000-square-foot addition to the museum.The $15 million cost of the four-story addition will be funded by The Thompson Educational Fund, which will lease the addition to the Science Center for $1 a year. The University Prep Science & Math Middle School, a public charter school of 486 students, will be located in the addition and will have daily access to the museum’s resources, which includes exhibits and an Imax Theater. The partnership is designed to foster the students’ interest in college and career opportunities in the fields of science, technology, engineering…

Demand for industrial product in Northern California’s Silicon Valley remains strong, as evidenced by real estate services firm Colliers International’s closing of 1.2 million square feet in new and expanded leases over the last two months. As per a Colliers report, Silicon Valley’s industrial market closed the year in 2007 with an overall availability rate of just under 7.7 percent. And during the first quarter, the warehouse and manufacturing properties kept the numbers down with average vacancy rates of 4.7 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, according to a report by real estate services firm NAI BT commercial. The deals Colliers just…

It’s a sign of the times. Acting on behalf of a top banking institution, First Financial Network Inc. has just commenced an offering of more than $400 million in real estate loans on multi-family properties in the South and Southeast.”The offering is the largest whole loan offering comprised solely of this product type so far this year,” Merrie Duncan, FFN director of marketing, told CPN today.Most of the 44 loans involved in the offering are secured by properties in Florida–including condominiums, apartments and developable land–with the remaining few situated in North Carolina and Tennessee. in North Carolina and Tennessee. “The…

Plans for the development of the Longwood Center, a 350,000-square-foot mixed-use research center at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, move forward as the Boston Redevelopment Authority gives the green light to the joint venture behind the $300 million endeavor. Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., Charles River Realty Investors and National Development are the developers of the Longwood Center, which will sit within the 200-acre Longwood Medical Area, an enclave of hospitals, biomedical research centers and educational institutions about three miles from Downtown Boston. The state-of-the-art building will occupy a one-acre parcel that the joint venture acquired from the Harvard…

ProLogis has started the first phase of construction on a major new distribution park near Tokyo, Japan, it has announced. The park will be Japan’s largest Prologis facility. ProLogis Parc Zama I, a five-story facility totaling more than 1.2 million square feet is being developed in the city of Zama, a logistics hub in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture. At full build-out, ProLogis Parc Zama will contain two facilities totaling 2.2 million square feet.The site is 25 miles from downtown Tokyo–and provides access to greater Tokyo and greater Nagoya. ProLogis Parc Zama is near Route 246, a major north-south highway, and the…

The Las Vegas Planning Commission has just given its approval–with conditions–for a development group to move forward with a hotel project that would bring an additional 2,500 guestrooms to the downtown area.According to papers filed with the commission, Grand Central L.L.C. is the team behind the proposed project, which would occupy 12.5-acres at Grand Central Parkway and Charleston Blvd. In addition to requesting a site development plan review, the partnership submitted requests for special use permits for constructing the 700-foot tower in a district with a 200-foot height limitation, and for including a lounge and bar in the hotel. Grand…

Yesterday’s $93.3 million sale of the Sycamore Plaza/Sycamore Crossing shopping center in northeast suburban Cincinnati seems to be a sign that even in a troubled economy, in the right location a retail center can be highly recession-resistant. As reported in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer, the sale from RP Properties, Beverly Hills, Calif., to Regency Centers, Jacksonville, Fla., was presumably a very profitable one, since RP had bought the centers in 2004 for a figure reportedly in the area of $61.5 million. Sycamore Plaza was built in 1966 as an enclosed mall and converted in 1994 into a 355,000-square-foot, three-story shopping center….

Cavico Corp. has announced that its wholly own subsidiary has received approval from Ha Tay People’s Committee to participate as the principal investor and constructor for Ngo Sai urban city, eleven miles southwest of Hanoi. Ngo Sai city lies on 6-lane Lang-Hoa Lac highway, which is currently under construction. The urban city is expected to take until 2013 for full buildout, at a total investment cost of $94 million. The deal is anticipated to net approximately $25 million. Ha Tay province will become part of Hanoi capital with the entire project ultimately within Hanoi capital’s boundary. Cavico is now part…

Rayonier and Cousins Properties Inc. have joined forces to create a master plan and secure entitlement for a site spanning 6,300 acres in Flagler County, Fla., about 30 miles north of Daytona Beach.The sprawling chunk of what is currently timberland is located within close proximity to Palm Coast, and is owned by Rayonier subsidiary TerraPointe L.L.C. “We chose to ally with Cousins to help us master plan and come up with the best project for the community,” a Rayonier spokesperson told CPN today. While the planning is in the very earliest of stages, the fact that Flagler County is experiencing…

The U.S. warehouse market weakened considerably during the first three months of 2008, posting only a modest rise in occupied space and a further increase in vacancy vs. a 2007 forth quarter, according to Colliers International’s latest report. Weak demand and rising completions pushed the first quarter vacancy rate up 23 basis points to 8.13 percent. New construction saw 46.1 million square feet completed during the period–down from the 55.5 million square feet from the previous quarter. Year-ago first quarter completions came in at 36.8 million square feet. Industrial developments int he pipeline also fell hard–thanks to a combinations of…