REJournals • 11th January 2022

Ongoing supply chain disruptions and virus spikes could spell feast or famine for industrial construction contractors in 2022

With nearly two full years of collectively pushing through the pandemic, we’d think that the construction supply chain and runaway costs would be under control by now, right? Wrong. As soon as cases drop and life starts going back to normal, another variant wreaks havoc on an already exhausted nation.

At this point, Chicago-area construction professionals have had enough time to adapt to the challenges. But it doesn’t help that the delays are growing and price increases are getting even bigger.

REJournals • 28th December 2021

The pandemic created a big opportunity for private equity, but squeezed independent Chicago landlords

For Chicago area multifamily property owners and operators, the pandemic has only been a part of the challenge that these last two years have represented. The stay at home orders, mass layoffs, eviction moratoriums and more, coincidentally come around the same time that rules have changed between the landlord and tenant relationship.

But despite it all, those who have been able to ride through the continuous waves of adversity may have found themselves in a very good situation.

REJournals • 30th November 2021

2021 By the Numbers: Here are the Chicago area’s biggest industrial leases and construction completions of the year

The year is nearly over but it’s safe to say that 2021 is one that will be remembered by commercial real estate professionals for many years to come. As developers rush to complete new projects and prospective client tenants compete for highly coveted Class A space, it’s as though the market can’t seem to expand fast enough. There has been a common theme in each quarter of 2021: dramatic demand.

REJournals • 18th November 2021

O’Hare inventory crunch is putting extra pressure on brokers and business owners in their search for space

Billions of dollars are being spent by the FAA on the ambitious modernization of Chicago’s busy O’Hare International Airport, but developers and their investor partners are also spending big bucks on the submarket’s sprawling industrial building stock that surrounds the airport.

REJournals • 16th November 2021

Chicago's biggest industrial developers discuss 2021 boom, predict continued rent growth in 2022

While we haven’t turned our calendars over just yet, it’s clear that 2021 was a banner year for the Chicago industrial real estate market. We witnessed a 20-year record low vacancy rate, record leasing activity, big absorption numbers, and in the meantime, there remains a tremendous amount of new product still on the way. It’s a great time to be a landlord in industrial real estate.

REJournals • 26th October 2021

Chicago law firm office leasing remains one bright spot in downtown pandemic woes

These last two years have undoubtedly been tough for commercial real estate investors and professionals whose business focuses primarily on office space. The ongoing pandemic has not only added more time to the clock and delayed countless businesses’ plans to return to the office, but it’s also changed the perspective of many employees and job seekers who now see a work-from-home or hybrid model as a necessity going forward.

REJournals • 19th October 2021

Jonathan F.P. Rose discusses the ongoing need for affordable housing, how to create more of it, and saving what's left

Last month, affordable housing developer Jonathan F.P. Rose of Jonathan Rose Companies was awarded the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development by the Urban Land Institute, the D.C.-based nonprofit housing and development policy organization. Along with a $100,000 prize, the prestigious award’s aim is to highlight and honor those who are blazing new trails and setting a high standard for quality in the land use and development field.

REJournals • 11th October 2021

Another big suburban office campus is being unloaded. Now what?

The pandemic-induced changes to the economy and the nature of the workplace are not only challenging conventional business wisdom, but leading to a larger evolution that is seeing the concept of remote work becoming permanent.

In other words, welcome to the “new normal.”

REJournals • 14th September 2021

Aviation Institute of Maintenance opens nation's largest aircraft mechanic school on the South Side of Chicago

After successfully developing a series of campuses across the country, the Aviation Institute of Maintenance set its eyes on the Chicago area a year ago as the location for its next outpost. And on Wednesday, September 15, elected leaders, community members and executives of the Aviation Institute of Maintenance will gather at 3711 S. Ashland Avenue in the McKinley Park neighborhood to celebrate and commence the opening of the nation’s single largest aviation maintenance education facility.

REJournals • 1st September 2021

Pullman National Monument visitor center is 'just the start' to site development and investment

After standing idle over the Pullman community for decades, the former Pullman Company’s Clock Tower & Administration Building is ready to begin its new life and career as the visitor center for the Pullman National Monument. The overhauled and reimagined building will open to the public this Labor Day weekend, with celebrations starting at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 4.

REJournals • 25th August 2021

How flexibility, innovation and strategic foresight helped Chicago’s construction industry push through the pandemic

While industrial development is booming, the construction industry has faced its fair share of headaches and setbacks over the last 18 months with material shortages, volatile pricing, and competition for skilled labor. Lengthy lead times for crucial construction components such as steel, insulation, precast concrete and more, have been major challenges this year, and will continue to be so for the coming months.

But when in a pinch, general contractors have to do more than put on their thinking caps.

REJournals • 23rd August 2021

'More time was put back on the clock': Chicago office market hangs on despite another bumpy summer

Towards the beginning of summer, it seemed that the increasingly lower COVID cases coupled with higher vaccination numbers provided enough hope that some business leaders were patiently waiting for in order to announce a return to the office. But as Labor Day approaches and cases are back on the rise, it’s really anyone’s guess as to what exactly will happen in the coming months in regards to the office market.

At least, this is what some CRE professionals in the office world are suggesting.

REJournals • 18th August 2021

Chicagoland apartment rental market has bounced back from pandemic dip

After a bleak winter of uncertainty and challenges, the Chicago area rental market has not only shown signs of life in recent months, but in many ways and in many geographic pockets, the region has witnessed a return to pre-pandemic levels of rent growth, occupancy, and general optimism. And investor interest in multifamily properties remains strong as apartment buildings in Chicago neighborhoods routinely trade at big prices.

But what about stories of suburban flight? Or concerns with living i

REJournals • 21st July 2021

Joel Carlins on his career, Lakeshore East, and building a village in the heart of the city

The world of real estate is one of high risk and high reward, and developer Joel Carlins certainly understands the intricacies of this dynamic from his 25 years of building in Chicago.

Co-founder and former CEO of Magellan Development Group, Carlins’ first big deal almost seemed to have fallen into his lap, but years of economic turbulence following the Savings and Loan Crisis and recession in the early ‘90s nearly cost him the opportunity. Nevertheless, Carlins worked out a deal with the Salvation Army and the rest is history.

REJournals • 20th July 2021

The biggest challenges and opportunities in Chicago industrial real estate right now

Having hit the halfway point of 2021, it’s not only safe to say that the Chicago industrial real estate market is having a strong year, but it’s essentially a unanimous consensus. The flurry of press releases about new spec development starts continues to hit our inbox at a steady pace while quarterly reports back up the empirical evidence with hard data, detailing exactly how much demand there is for new Class A industrial across the metro region.

REJournals • 9th July 2021

Chicago's white hot industrial market means all hands on deck for property managers

As commercial real estate’s wild ride continues well into the warmer summer months, industrial landlords and investors have found themselves in one of the best imaginable situations compared to other asset classes. With high demand for and investor interest in industrial space, it truly is a landlord’s market in 2021.

However, this doesn’t mean that industrial property management is a set it and forget it proposition. If anything, the white hot demand for industrial means that landlords have to be more involved than ever in their lease deals.

REJournals • 27th May 2021

As entrepreneurs breathe new life into aging industrial properties, institutional investors see an opportunity

When partners Mike Healy, Jim Lasko and Elyse Agnello were conducting the site selection process for their member-based event venue, maker space, and commercial kitchen venture back in 2016, the team settled on a row of older industrial buildings near the Chicago River in the Avondale community. The aging structures at Rockwell and Fletcher were ripe for adaptive reuse, not just purely for the floor plan and total square footage, but because they were tucked into a residential area.

REJournals • 19th May 2021

Industrial's biggest players see continued growth, demand and competition for deals in Chicago area

Local leaders of top industrial developers haven’t had much of a break in recent months as interest in Chicago-area industrial continues to reach new heights. And it’s not all pandemic-related upticks in e-commerce — though, that’s certainly a big part of the story. Despite the disruption the pandemic caused in 2020, this year is already shaping up to be a busy one for builders, brokers and industrial tenants. But where are the big industrial developers building?

REJournals • 27th April 2021

The Goose Island office boom is just getting started

Delivering a new office building in the days leading up to the stay at home order issued by Governor Pritzker in March 2020 is not exactly an ideal situation for a developer. However, after years of plotting and planning various projects on Goose Island, developer R2 Companies did exactly that by taking the wraps off 1315 North Branch, a 120,000-square-foot industrial conversion, early last year.

REJournals • 21st April 2021

Chicago office designers envision post-pandemic workplaces that function and feel like neighborhoods

What will the post-pandemic office look like when workers return to downtown Chicago? One only needs to take a walk around their neighborhood to get an idea. At least this is what some top office interior designers and builders are saying as business leaders finally start preparing their strategies for bringing employees back downtown.

But another key theme that will come about from the tidal wave of the pandemic, and after spending more than a year working from home, will be the idea of control.

REJournals • 29th March 2021

An idea for bringing life back to the Loop? Close State Street to vehicle traffic

A year after the city saw downtown workplaces and small businesses shutter due to the state’s ongoing stay at home orders, Loop stakeholders are hatching a plan to bring people back into the heart of the central business district in way that provides a safe environment to gather and experience cultural programming.

The Chicago Loop Alliance recently unveiled a proposal to shut down the stretch of State Street between Lake and Madison streets to vehicle traffic each Sunday for up to 12 weeks.