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Denver-based UDR Inc. broke ground today on a $1 billion, 99-acre multi-family, retail and commercial development in the Dallas suburb of Addison, Texas. In addition to being the largest development ever undertaken by UDR, the project–dubbed Vitruvian Park–is also Addison’s first major sustainable green initiative.  The first development phase will feature 667 multi-family housing units and a 12-acre public park. Leasing is projected to begin by the end of 2009 with occupancy expected to be available at the beginning of 2010. All phases of Vitruvian Park (pictured) are expected to be completed in 2017. “The proximity to jobs, entertainment and…

The San Diego area’s economy will remain beset by job losses in real estate and weak growth in other sectors for at least another two quarters, according to the annual UCLA Anderson Forecast from the University of California–Los Angeles Anderson School of Management.  The report was presented this morning at the UCLA Anderson Forecast San Diego Conference to an audience from the San Diego business community.  “Our forecast for the next two years looks for real estate weakness to gain the upper hand in the next two quarters, leading to small losses in non-farm payroll employment, a modest spate of…

If you’re an apartment property buyer and can obtain financing, now is a good time to find opportunities. But developers would do well to lay low. That was the message from Greg Willett, vice president of research & analysis for M/PF Yieldstar, speaking today during the session “The Flight to Multi-Family: Today’s Apartment Market” at the National Association of Real Estate Editors’ 42nd annual real estate journalism conference.  Generally speaking, few U.S. cities have been overbuilt, he noted, listing only Houston, Phoenix and Austin as markets with significant overdevelopment and Atlanta and Seattle as markets to watch. But the credit…

Newsweek has signed a long-term lease for approximately 163,000 square feet at 395 Hudson St., owned by the New York City District of Carpenters Pension Fund.The lease involved three separate parties and the swap of two floors by tenant Thomson Reuters, allowing Newsweek to lease the contiguous third and partial fourth floors of the 10-story office building in Hudson Square. Newsweek will relocate from 1775 Broadway, where it has occupied nine floors for the past 15 years. Cushman & Wakefield vice chairman Josh Kuriloff, executive vice president Gus Field and executive director Melissa Bazar represented Newsweek in its site search…

ProLogis has unveiled plans to develop and lease an 860,000-square-foot industrial facility in northern Spain to Bosch-Siemens Home Appliance. The building (pictured) will be developed in Zaragoza, a growing distribution hub situation halfway between Madrid and Barcelona. BSH, which currently operated seven factories and two offices in Spain, will use the space, located along the A-2 Highway, to distribute its brand-name cooktops, ovens, washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers and small electronics to its network of retailers in southern Europe. The warehouse will feature sustainable design features and technologies, including roof-mounted solar panels that generate electricity, a rainwater storage system, energy-efficient lighting…

A panel at the CoreNet Global Summit in San Diego concluded on Tuesday that U.S. corporations must institute worker mobility programs to substantially reduce their carbon footprints. Approximately 73 million square feet of office space was delivered in the United States in 2007, according to Gervais Tompkin, principal at the architecture firm Gensler. He noted that studies have found have that 55 percent of office space is underutilized. “Think of the squandering of space that represents,” Tompkin said. Chris Hood, program manager of the HP Workplace at Hewlett Packard, said a walk through the average corporation raises a question among…

A financing package valued at $72.1 million has been put in place for the 371,400-square-foot office building at 550 West Washington in Chicago. The borrower, Beacon Capital Partners L.L.C.’s Beacon Capital Strategic Partners IV fund, has owned the Class A asset since 2006 when it acquired a 2.4 million-square-foot, four-property former Trizec office portfolio from Blackstone for about $500 million. Landesbank Hessen-Thuringen Girozentrale (Helaba) provided 550 West Washington’s financing in the form of a five-year loan at a fixed rate of 5.84 percent, which Beacon used to pay off an existing loan on the property. Situated in Chicago’s West Loop…

KBR, a Houston-based global engineering, construction and services company, has announced that it will acquire BE&K Inc., a privately held, Birmingham, Ala.–based engineering, construction and maintenance services company, in a transaction valued at $550 million.The closing is scheduled for July, subject to regulatory approval. A conference call this morning reported that BE&K had revenues of approximately $2.0 billion in the year ended March 30, 2008, with a backlog of a similar amount. The company ranks in the top 10 for food processing plant contracting and chemical plant contracting, among other areas, according to Engineering News-Record magazine. ENR also ranked BE&K…

New York City-based Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. today launched a real estate investment fund–dubbed Cantor Real Estate L.L.C.–and appointed Andrew Stark as executive managing director. Stark will direct the creation of a real estate opportunity fund that focuses on investments in various real estate sectors including dislocated assets. While no official goal has been set for fundraising, a Cantor spokesperson said the company hopes to raise between $300 to $350 million and will use leverage of about 50 percent. “Our attention is keenly focused on development and redevelopment opportunities that have strong underlying fundamentals, but are caught up in the credit…

The Tropicana Atlantic City casino today said that it is not part of the Chapter 11 filing by corporate parent, Tropicana Entertainment L.L.C., and is continuing normal operations.Tropicana Atlantic City has not been controlled by Tropicana Entertainment since Dec. 12, 2007, when former New Jersey State Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein was appointed to oversee the hotel’s operations as trustee and later as conservator. This followed the denial of the renewal of its operating license to William Yung, president of Columbia-Sussex, parent company of Tropicana Entertainment.The New Jersey Casino Control Commission’s statement following that 4-1 vote, said that “Tropicana Casinos…