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Corporate owners can have many reasons to get surplus properties out of their portfolios, ranging from accounting to post-merger strategy. In a bid to further raise its profile in the specialized field of marketing surplus assets, CB Richard Ellis Inc. is launching a new practice within its global corporate services group. Property owners often take a less than efficient approach to repositioning and selling these sites, director of operations for CB Richard Ellis’ new asset repositioning management group Bruce Rasher (pictured) told CPN. “Clients typically engage these services independently on an ad-hoc basis and almost put each service in its…

Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers, Colliers ABR, Colliers Pinkard and Colliers Turley Martin Tucker have appointed Gary Helminski (pictured) as national director for project and development services. Helminski will report to Joseph Stettinius Jr., CEO of Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers.In this capacity, Helminski will lead the expansion of the consolidated companies’ service offerings to include development services, multi-site program management, relocation and move management, and national account project management for both corporate and investor clients. Helminski brings 25 years of industry experience to the position. Most recently, he served as managing director of the project and development services group at Jones…

EI Solutions has teamed up with Tioga Energy Systems to provide solar power for the Phoenix Suns, it has announced. Plans call for the installing of a 1,125 panel, 194-kilowatt solar system at the team’s home arena, the US Airways Center, owned by the city of Phoenix. The installation will be completed in the spring of 2009.This project is one of a series of efforts by businesses in Arizona to get more of their energy without relying on the power grid. Other sports teams have also begun solar power initiatives. The San Francisco Giants were the first baseball team to…

University of California San Diego, as part of an environment and sustainability initiative that started in 2005, has begun a unique “forestation” program at its La Jolla campus near San Diego. Steel solar trees have been planted on top of two garages, creating a “Solar Grove” to provide shade and clean energy. The creation of the Solar Grove is the brainchild of Envision Solar International’s Robert Noble, a sustainable architect and a disciple of Biomimicry. Biomimicry is a relatively new science that studies models, systems, processes and elements that occur in the natural environment, and then imitates or takes creative…

In a coordinated counterattack on a looming global financial meltdown, central banks in the U.S. and across the world cut their key lending rates today. The Federal Reserve slashed its rate from 2 percent to 1.5 percent, and the Bank of England similarly cut its rate by 50 basis points, to 4.5 percent. Other institutions cutting their rates included the European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Sweden, Switzerland and China. The Fed’s participation suggested urgency, since it was taken in advance of the agency’s next scheduled meeting, on Oct. 28. The Fed had not cut its rate…

Buy! Sell! Buy! Sell! It was another day like that among stock traders, but ultimately the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 189 points, or 2 percent, today after being up as much as 250 points. In the last five days, the Dow has lost about 13 percent of its value. Today the Nasdaq lost 0.8 percent and the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 1.1 percent. American International Group, lately embarrassed by their exec’s fondness for luxury resorts, is getting another $37.8 billion loan, this time from the New York Federal Reserve. The money comes in addition to the…

ProLogis has announced it has leased a total of approximately 460,000 square feet to two customers in Shanghai, China In the Pudong submarket of Shanghai, at ProLogis Park Jinqiao, ProLogis has leased approximately 192,000 square feet to Parker Hannifin, a firm involved in motion and control technologies, providing precision-engineered solutions. The company will use the space for assembly and light manufacturing.In the Hangzhou submarket of Shanghai, at ProLogis Park HEDA, ProLogis has leased approximately 266,000 square feet to Joyoung Co. Ltd., a home-appliance manufacturer, to support its distribution needs across the Shanghai region.”Shanghai and several other major cities in the…

Hard numbers are confirming what real estate professionals have suspected for months about the nation’s largest office market. According to Cushman & Wakefield’s third-quarter report, Manhattan is showing the clearest signs yet of softening since the credit crisis began last year. By most measures, the balance of power is finally shifting away from landlords. “If you’re a tenant, it’s a good time to be out there,” said Joseph Harbert (pictured), COO for the firm’s New York City metropolitan region, at a briefing this morning. “If you’re a credit tenant, it’s a great time to be out there.” Vacancy in all…

In further efforts today to limit the growing damage from the world financial crisis, the Federal Reserve announced that it will step into a new area, buying unsecured commercial paper, and the finance ministers of the European Union appeared poised to finally coordinate their initiatives. And following the warning by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke (pictured) this afternoon at the National Association for Business Economics that “the outlook for economic growth has worsened,” expectations rose that the Fed will lower its prime rate by month’s end if not sooner. The Fed’s plan would in theory help un-stick the currently moribund…

Oops, there go another 500 points, or 5.11 percent, off the Dow. Only a year ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a peak of 14,164.53; since then, it has lost fully 33.3 percent. Other indexes lost a lot of ground as well: the Nasdaq lost 5.8 percent and the S&P 500 lost 5.74 percent. Part of the stock-value decline was due to a rumor that Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group was chickening out of a deal to acquire as much a quarter of the voting shares of Morgan Stanley–which sent the former investment bank’s stock down by about 25 percent….