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As Labor Day nears, the effort to revitalize the World Trade Center has experienced significant forward motion as well as a few hitches. In the months to come, the massive rebuilding project is likely to show signs of progress as well as facing a series of difficult choices. Public agencies and private-sector interests swiftly addressed some of the 15 major challenges detailed June 30 by Christopher Ward, the recently appointed executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Ward, who addressed the New York Building Congress on Friday about the agency’s regional capital plans, warned that…

Current economic woes aren’t discouraging long-term planning in commercial real estate investment, not if the latest plans by privately held BentleyForbes are any indication. At the moment, the Century City, Calif.-based company owns a portfolio worth about $3 billion, including office, hotel, resort and single-tenant corporate properties. Its plan is to expand that portfolio to $12 billion by 2014. The key to such expansive plans? Partnerships with institutional funds or other private equity sources, according to the company. Such access to equity will prepare BentleyForbes for entering various international markets, continuing to buy within its core asset classes (office, hotel,…

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System came within inches of being sued by the Professional Engineers in California Government this week, but managed to avoid litigation after hours of talks between the two organizations on Thursday. On Wednesday, news emerged that PECG had threatened legal action against the $230 billion pension fund regarding an investment policy. The engineers’ union took issue with CalPERS’ planned investments in public-private partnerships through its Infrastructure Program, claiming that the program, if adopted, would lead to the outsourcing of public-sector jobs. On Aug. 13, Reuters broke the news of PECG’s plan to initiate a lawsuit…

Thompson National Properties has agreed to purchase a $110 million commercial and industrial portfolio from Storm Properties. The transaction, one of Southern California’s biggest deals in 2008, is for a total of approximately 1.5 million square feet of property. About half of the property in the sale is fully constructed commercial and industrial facilities, while the remainder of the portfolio is comprised of property that is presently under construction. The properties in the deal are in various stages of completion, ranging from fully operational and leased to finalized entitlements. Storm Properties will be responsible for finishing the developments not yet…

Two years after acquiring a group of nine Bradford Home Suites Hotels and renovating them at a cost of $15 million, a partnership involving Gencom Group and Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners has sold to RLJ Real Estate Fund III L.P. six of those properties, which had been re-branded as Hyatt Summerfield Suites hotels. The extended-stay lodging facilities are located in Texas, and Colorado. RLJ Fund III has tapped Aimbridge Hospitality to manage the three hotels located in the Dallas market, while White Lodging Services has been brought onboard to manage the properties in Austin and Houston, Tex., and Colorado…

Having declined the first merger proposal from competitor CoStar Group Inc., in June, commercial real estate market information provider REIS has rejected the second proposal, an identical one, much more quickly — and in much stronger terms. On June 30, REIS, based in Bethesda, Md., had declined CoStar’s June 5 offer of $8.75 a share with the simple comment that “the Board of Directors has determined that there is no reason to explore further” that proposal. In the latest go-around, CoStar repeated its offer on Tuesday, its proposal over the signature of CEO and president Andrew Florance noting that REIS’…

Only a day after the finalization of the sale of two Macklowe Properties buildings in Manhattan to Boston Properties, Paramount Group Inc. has closed on another of the buildings Macklowe owned for a while, 1301 Avenue of the Americas. The unconfirmed transaction price, widely reported when the deal was announced early this summer, is about $1.5 billion. The 45-story office tower is on Sixth Ave. in Manhattan (Avenue of the Americas) between 52nd and 53rd streets, giving it a Midtown location. Of early 1960s vintage, the building totals about 1.8 million square feet. Current major tenants include Lehman Bros., investment…

Just a day after announcing the closing of two New York City office building acquisitions from Macklowe Properties totaling $705 million, Boston Properties has completed its purchase of yet another Macklowe trophy office building, 125 West 55th St. The acquisition of 125 West 55th St. was part of a $3.95 billion, four-property portfolio purchase agreement Boston Properties and partners made with debt-ridden Macklowe earlier this year. To get its hands on the 591,000-square-foot Midtown Manhattan tower that Macklowe developed in 1989, Boston Properties agreed to a purchase price of $440 million, including the assumption of $263.5 million in debt with…

Centrum Properties Inc. and Angelo, Gordon & Co. have secured $56.3 million in financing to acquire and reposition the SFO Logistics Center, a 572,000-square-foot warehouse-distribution center and adjacent 5.2-acre land parcel in south San Francisco that had been owned by the federal government for decades. An HFF executive who arranged the financing told CPN today the entire deal is worth $80 million.Peter Smyslowski, managing d irector in the San Francisco office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, L.P., said the 25-acre property near the San Francisco International Airport had been owned by the GSA and used as a government services distribution center…

First Park Lakeville, First Industrial Realty Trust Inc.’s 1.4 million-square-foot master-planned industrial park in suburban Minneapolis, will soon get a new tenant, now that the developer has broken ground on a 285,000-square-foot distribution center for Uponor North America. Located in Lakeville, Minn., about 25 miles from Minneapolis, the 140-acre First Park is a project of First Industrial’s development and repositioning joint venture with public pension fund California State Teachers’ Retirement System.Commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis Inc. participated in the negotiation of the development deal between First Industrial and Uponor, whose facility will sit near CR 70 and Dodd…