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Skanska USA Building has been selected to build a new $150 million 205,000-square-foot data center project for an Internet trading company in the western United States. Construction is currently under way and is scheduled for completion in May 2010.Computing power is critical to the company’s operations and the aim is to increase data capacity. Energy efficient solutions that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases were decisive in the selection of Skanska for implementing the project. Skanska has developed a total solution that reduces energy costs for operation and cooling of the facility by up to 60 percent compared with traditional…

About one month after Kraft Foods Global Inc. renewed about 1.5 million square feet in Ohio and Pennsylvania from ProLogis, Kraft selected Grubb & Ellis Co. as its facilities service provider for its sites throughout North America. Grubb & Ellis will provide a full range of facilities management services for Kraft’s headquarters in Northfield, Ill. (pictured), and all of the food maker’s office and R&D sites across North America. The assignment covers 41 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada totaling more than 4 million square feet of property and builds on Grubb & Ellis’ long-standing transaction services relationship with Kraft….

Dubai Industrial City has announced that 19 companies are investing more than $177.2 million in the construction of their manufacturing units within the industrial township.The construction shows the vitality of the township, according to its statement. The development is the third largest non-housing or office real estate project in Dubai spanning across 560 million square feet. Five of the 19 factories currently being built are estimated to be completed by 2008. The remaining are slated to start operations by 2009. More than 500 factories and manufacturing units for light and medium industries are set to be built across the various…

As CPN reported in our Daily News REport Morning Edition(subscribe here), bank lending continued to thaw overnight. Overnight Libor has dropped to 1.28 percent, according to the British Bankers’ Association.Asian stocks had a mixed day, but appear to be fighting off a bottom. The Nikkei 225 was up 3.3 percent and the S&P/ASX 200 popped 3.9 percent. The Hang Seng, however, gave up 2.4 percent. Buoyed in part by a French bank bailout infusion, European stocks are up in trading so far today. The French government announced that it will pay $14 billion for debt from six major lenders in…

As bankrupt retailer Mervyns prepares to close its remaining 149 stores, Developers Diversified, owner of 38 of those leased stores in a joint venture with Macquarie DDR Trust, said it anticipates escaping major fallout from the retailer’s demise. The partners prepared for trouble when they acquired the stores for $407 million in 2005. Upon purchasing the properties, Developers Diversified and Macquarie DDR leased them back to Mervyns under 15-year triple-net lease agreements featuring an aggregate annual rental rate of $30.5 million and an annual rent increase of 2 percent. The joint venture had configured the leases to provide sufficient credit…

Where commercial paper has gone, money markets will now go. Earlier today, the Federal Reserve Board announced its creation of the Money Market Investor Funding Facility, or MMIFF, a program that “will support a private-sector initiative designed to provide liquidity to U.S. money market investors.” To facilitate “an industry-supported private-sector initiative to finance the purchase of eligible assets from eligible investors,” the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will provide senior secured funding to a series of special-purpose vehicles. “Eligible assets,” denominated in U.S. dollars, include certificates of deposit and commercial paper issued by “highly rated financial institutions” and having…

As of mid-day (and as the Dow futures market had predicted), the DJIA is down, though not by a record amount: 174 points, or about 1.88 percent. The Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s 500 edged down somewhat more, at 2.9 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. One of the important factors in getting the Panic of 2008 rolling last month was that some money-market mutual funds “broke the buck” — that is, priced their shares below a dollar each, which was always theoretically possible, but never really supposed to happen, certainly not to a venerable old fund like the Reserve Primary…

In the midst of an economic downturn in the U.S., hotel REITS face challenging times ahead. The health of hotel assets are greatly tied to the performance of the U.S. economy, and, since a hotel’s “leases” are nightly room rentals, the effects of an economic downturn are felt almost immediately, in comparison to an office building, which has tenants committed to five-to-10 year leases, said Maria Maslovsky (pictured), assistant vice president and analyst at Moody’s Investors Service.The difficult times that hotel REITS are facing is illustrated in a report released recently by Robert W. Baird & Co. Analysts David Loeb,…

As CPN reported in our Daily News REport Morning Edition(subscribe here), we are shocked, shocked that some in the markets might seek to profit from the misery of others. But a joint investigation, between New York attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, and the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Michael Garcia, into credit-default swaps for financial-firm stock is looking into just that, according to a report in The New York Times. They are looking to see if the financial instruments—which insure against defaults on bonds–were used to push down share prices. The SEC is also looking at the swaps. At issue is the…

The federal government’s efforts to steady the financial markets may be well-intentioned, but they are not addressing the heart of the problem, argues real estate finance expert and economist Peter Linneman. “Lest you think that nationalization is a panacea, we’ve been to this movie before,” said Linneman, a professor of business at the the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. He made the remarks Friday afternoon during a Webinar sponsored by NAI Global and moderated by Jeff Finn, the firm’s president & CEO. The history of government-controlled banks is rife with political scandal, insufficient lending and inefficiency, charged Linneman,…