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Las Vegas-headquartered Olympia Group has acquired a controlling interest in Rumford, Maine-based Evergreen Mountain Enterprises L.L.C., the company that has proposed the development of the Evergreen Mountain Resort & Casino in Oxford County, Maine. While Olympia has taken control of the project developer–a transaction for which financial details have not been disclosed–voters of the State of Maine are still in control of the casino’s fate. Referendum Question 2, which would legalized the presence of a casino in Oxford County, must pass in November before creation of the premier resort casino can move forward. If all goes as planned, $100 million…

Bring on the bears. The brand-new 2008 State of the Market Survey from DLA Piper shows “a new record level of bearish sentiment,” 90 percent, among the survey’s 424 respondents, all C-level and other senior executives in commercial real estate. More specifically, in a last-minute supplementary survey following the Fannie-Freddie/Lehman Brothers/Merrill Lynch/AIG crisis, a majority of respondents, 60 percent, said this near meltdown of the capital markets has surpassed the 1989-to-early-1990s savings and loan debacle as the event having the greatest impact on commercial real estate in the past 20 years. Further, a strong majority of respondents don’t believe that…

The age of the investment bank is over. Once upon a time, a bank was a bank. Then the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 separated the banking world into deposit and investment realms, and even though Glass-Steagall was repealed by a deregulation-happy Congress in 1999, established investment banks at the time declined to get into the business of providing checking and savings accounts to ordinary folk. Now the two companies left standing after the great American investment bank bloodletting last week, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have thought better of their reticence to be deposit banks. The two petitioned the Federal…

Monday saw the continuation of frantic efforts to prevent the collapse of the U.S. financial system as the Federal Reserve converted Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to bank holding companies. The move transformed both companies from investment banks into depository banking institutions, brought them under the Fed’s regulatory control and marked an end to a Wall Street era. Unlike investment banks, depository banks may borrow at the Fed’s discount window. They also have access to funds held for depositors, which are insured by the Federal Depository Insurance Corp. (FDIC). In return, however, depository banks must submit to Fed regulations, including…

A weekend of frantic activity in Washington’s halls of economic power has produced a government approach that is diametrically opposite from what conservative administrations might be expected to favor—an enormous big-government plan to intervene in the free markets and to have taxpayers buy $700 billion of bad debt from the troubled financial sector. On Saturday President Bush emphasized his desire for direct government involvement and control in his radio address. “ My Administration is working with Congress on legislation which will approve the Federal government’s purchase of illiquid assets, such as troubled mortgages, from banks and other financial institutions. This…

Interstate Hotels & Resorts has announced that it has opened and will operate the aloft hotel Nashville-Cool Springs, in Tennessee. The 143-room, newly built hotel is owned by a joint venture in which Interstate and The John Buck Company of Chicago are partners.It is the second aloft hotel developed and opened by the partnership in 2008. The John Buck Co. oversees development of the hotels for the partnership. The aloft is Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ premium, select-service hotel brand. Including the Cool Springs hotel, there currently are 18 aloft hotels open in 12 states, Montreal, Canada, and Beijing, China, with…

ProLogis has announced that its new annualized dividend level for 2009 will be $2.28 a share, or $0.57 per quarter, representing a 10.2 percent increase over 2008, but that 2008 and 2009 guidance would be moved down.The company revised its 2008 FFO guidance from $4.65 – $4.85 per share to $4.00 – $4.35 per share, due to a more conservative outlook for valuation and contribution timing in its CDFS business, as well as the appreciation of the dollar relative to the exchange rates assumed in previous guidance. Approximately 75 percent of second-half FFO per share is expected to be recognized…

Changing tastes of Gen X, GenY and Baby Boomers, rising gas prices, and bumper-to-bumper commutes are all factors that are driving an increased focus on transit-oriented-developments, according to a panel that convened on Thursday at the Multi-Housing World Conference in Denver. Since the popularity of suburban development in post-World War II America, today’s younger generation, and some Baby Boomers, are turning their backs on suburban sprawl. “In Southern California, it used to be ‘drive until you qualify’ [for a house that is affordable,]” he said. “But, it’s a waste of time to sit in traffic 2, 3, 4 hours a…

Times are tough, and they’re likely to get tougher, so my question is this; Should you, or should you not, consider a move toward corporate re-engineering? Whether directly or indirectly, your business will likely face negative repercussions of the struggling economy at some point, and there will be tough decisions that need to be made. The mere discussion of corporate re-engineering can cause fear, anxiety, and in some cases even panic. This is so much the case that some CEOs will avoid restructuring initiatives at all costs. There are even some business theorists that warn against undertaking complex restructurings because…

It will be a strange weekend in Washington as Treasury and SEC officials say they will provide Congress with a plan–on Saturday–to deal with the financial turbulence of the past week. The proposal will not, in all likelihood, be a bona fide bill until Congress has had time to chew on it, but given the sense of urgency, movement by Congress will probably be preternaturally fast. But there may be time for a few add-ons. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has suggested bringing back, in some form, the Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corp., an independent government agency that made loans to banks,…