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Industrial property behemoth ProLogis has inked a deal with Bay Valley Foods, a specialist in private label food products, to develop a 600,000-square-foot distribution center for the company in Rochelle, Ill. Bay Valley will use the building primarily as a warehouse and distribution center for its products, as well as for packaging and labeling canned soup products.The built-to-suit property for Valley Foods will be located in ProLogis Park Rochelle, a 300-acre business park located at the junction of I-88 and I-39. Rochelle, about 75 miles west of Chicago, is already a major distribution hub. Besides the meeting of interstates, the…

Peter Roberts, Jones Lang LaSalle’s CEO of the Americas, said the complementary cultures of the two firms was a major reason behind the merger of Jones Lang LaSalle and The Staubach Co., which was announced Monday evening. The desire of clients to deal with one service provider was also another strong reason for the two companies to combine, he said. “What drove this was our clients’ needs, and the opportunities it will create for our people,” Roberts (pictured) noted. “We saw the opportunity to serve our clients with one global platform.” Talks with Staubach intensified over the last six months,…

Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis has awarded construction management responsibilities for a new children’s hospital to Skanska USA. The construction tab comes to $146 million, while Le Bonheur’s total cost will add up to approximately $327 million. The project (pictured) has broken ground and is scheduled for completion in 2010. Skanska has been busy with hospitals lately. Last week, the company announced the start of work on a $76.6 million cardiac hospital in Dayton, Ohio, for Miami Valley Hospital. “Hospital construction is going strong,” Steve Gressel, a senior vice president with Skanska USA told CPN today. “Over the…

Lehman Bros. announced today a net loss of $2.8 billion for the second quarter, ended May 31, 2008, compared to net income of $489 million for the first fiscal quarter of this year, and $1.8 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2007. The firm also said it reduced exposure to residential mortgages, commercial mortgages and real estate investments by 20 percent in each asset class. Lehman made major news in an attempt to shore up investor confidence last week, as it replaced CFO Erin Callan and president & CEO Joseph Gregory. Bart McDade will serve as new president &…

Scheer Partners has joined forces with The JBG Cos. on the creation of a new $100 million fund that will target life sciences real estate. Greater Washington Life Sciences Fund will allow for the investment of $300 million in properties across the Metropolitan Washington, D.C., region over the next three years. The fund’s activities will run the gamut from acquisitions of existing properties to redevelopments to new ground-up construction projects. Scheer is a specialist in this real estate sector, having completed over 500 projects with life sciences entities since its inception in 1991. The company’s leasing acquisition, design and construction…

Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. and The Staubach Co. have reached a definitive merger agreement, the companies announced today. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter.Per the agreement, Jones Lang will pay $613 million, with $123 million in cash and $100 million in stock paid at the transaction close and the balance paid out in cash over five years, for all of the outstanding capital stock of Staubach Holdings Inc. Additionally, the agreement calls for potential earn out payments of up to $114 million that are subject to the achievement of certain performance metrics measured over a period…

Since the title of today’s column is “Recognizing the Need for Change,” I’m going to switch things up a bit and ask you to answer a question posed by me. I first warned readers of the slowing economy more than a year ago, so my question is this: “In the last year what proactive changes have you made to ayour business to improve your ability to navigate the changing economic conditions that are presently vexing many a CEO?” In the text that follows I’ll give you a few places you might want to look at if you haven’t already.Savvy CEOs…

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s plans to dispose of the last 2,000-plus gas stations it owns reflects the movement by energy companies to monetize their real estate assets, industry experts say. “Really what they’re doing is taking the capital out of the land and investing it back into the company,” explained Don Naughton, a Houston-based managing director for Grubb & Ellis Co. For the past several years, Naughton has represented Royal Dutch Shell in a similar program and has sold upwards of 500 Shell service stations. CB Richard Ellis Inc. is also marketing stations for Shell. Each Exxon Mobil station could command…

Proposed changes to bond ratings are raising the hackles of real estate finance groups, which worry that the Security and Exchange Commission’s new rules would slow the recovery of the CMBS market. “It would create extended period of market disruption, and right now, everybody’s trying to figure out an end to the market disruption,” Dottie Cunningham, CEO of the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association, told CPN this morning. At issue are the wide-ranging reforms formally proposed Wednesday by SEC. New rules would require ratings agencies to use different symbols for structured products. For example, the designation “SF,” for structured finance, or…

Continuing to do its part to fulfill Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan for the development and preservation of 165,000 affordable housing units over a 10-year period, the New York City Housing Development Corporation has issued bonds for the construction and conservation of nearly 2,200 such residences across the city’s five boroughs. The largest bond issuance of the group, supplied as part of HDC’s Low-Income Affordable Marketplace Program, was $120 million to provide permanent financing for the construction of 1,000 units to be contained within as many as nine new projects in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Under its New…