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By 2039, commercial real estate is expected to be thriving. But over the next 25 years, it will be greatly influenced by changes in demographics, technology, globalization, and economic and environmental realities, according to CNBC.
Commercial practitioners gave CNBC several “bold” predictions for commercial real estate sector in the U.S. by 2039:
1: The fading away of shopping malls. Malls are expected to continue declining due to the rise in e-commerce. Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council, expects some teardowns, but repurposing will give new life to these spaces. “Established places like shopping malls will become like town centers, where people can come together, where their doctors and day care will be, where they can gather after major devastations.”
2: Baby boomers drive a construction boom. Several areas of commercial real estate will likely continue to see baby boomers’ influence, experts predict. For one, “we’re an aging population, so in 25 years, there’s going to be a heavy focus on medical-related facilities,” says Kenneth Riggs, president and CEO of Real Estate Research Corp. Riggs also predicts a shift toward affordable multigenerational housing, particularly near mass transit. Also, more boomers may turn to senior housing, and growth will be explosive, Riggs predicts. “Right now, senior housing is a food group in real estate, but it’s like vegan or something, not that established,” Riggs says. “In 25 years, it will be a major food group.”
3: Urbanization will boom. This trend will, in part, be driven by Gen Xers and Yers who have shown preferences for living and working in compact areas. The multifamily residential market is expected to show gains due to the growing preferences of urbanization, and more companies will be moving to downtown areas to aid in recruitment efforts, says Rick Cleveland, a managing director at Cushman & Wakefield. Suburbs will also remain important, but may look to replicate the city experience more with greater mixed-use projects that comprise rental, retail, and office. “The way most of the suburbs will evolve is that there’s an interim step: They’ll be connected to cities by high-speed or light rail, and they’ll become walkable communities with a sense of place,” says Fedrizzi.
4: Green building continues to evolve. Efforts to meet environmental standards tend to be costly, but industries realize that they are important in the long-run. Commercial buildings 25 years from now will need to be up to the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards, according to the commercial experts interviewed by CNBC. That may mean some existing structures will need to be torn down or undergo a retrofit.
By: Daily Real Estate News (REALTORMag)
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A groundswell is building in Albuquerque that could turn Central Avenue from Downtown to Nob Hill into a bustling center for research, innovation and new businesses.
Much of it is bubbling up around the Innovate ABQ initiative and companion projects, which aim to establish a high-tech research district that starts in the heart of Downtown and emanates east and west along Central Avenue.

Albuquerque Mayor Richard J. Berry and his new Economic Development Department Director Gary Oppedahl stand together on the Civic Plaza in Downtown Albuquerque last week. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
But at its foundation is a novel economic development strategy – led by the city in cooperation with academic and business leaders – that squarely focuses on inspiring individual and private-sector innovation as the basis for growing Albuquerque’s economy, rather than continue its historical dependence on government investment.
The goal is to forge public-private partnerships and programs that help build entrepreneurial skills and know-how among Albuquerque’s workforce and investors, providing them with the technical assistance, business training and resource support needed to create homegrown companies that grow and thrive.
“For the first time in a long time, there is an urgency and bipartisan understanding that we must diversify our economy and not keep all our eggs in one basket with federal dependency,” Mayor Richard Berry said.
“We want to build an entrepreneurial spirit here from the bottom up, starting with youth in middle school and high school and spreading from there to include the entire community. We need to start thinking much more from the private-sector standpoint about how to create our own opportunities to grow.”
Division of duties
The city continues to work on luring new companies to Albuquerque from elsewhere – such as continuing efforts to convince Tesla Motors to establish a massive battery factory here that could bring some 6,500 jobs – and to retain existing companies in the state.

This is an aerial view from last year of Downtown Albuquerque, which appears to be home to the beginnings of a high-technology research district. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
But it’s largely leaving those efforts to the nonprofit Albuquerque Economic Development organization, which is under contract with the city to recruit businesses from other places.
That leaves the city’s Economic Development Department to concentrate more on workforce development and homegrown business creation, said Gary Oppedahl, Albuquerque’s new economic development director, who took office in early December.
“We want to build an environment here where entrepreneurs are enabled, facilitated and encouraged to create jobs,” said Oppedahl, who along with the mayor spoke to the Journal in an interview.
“We want to make Albuquerque the most entrepreneurial city in the country. Recruitment and retention of businesses remain important, but the third leg of the stool is ‘grow your own.’”
Berry chose Oppedahl to lead that effort because of his stellar reputation as a serial entrepreneur with 30 years of management and executive experience in creating and growing private companies.
Oppedahl spent more than a decade, from 1984-1996, as an engineering manager at Intel Corp., helping that company build its facilities in Albuquerque and Ireland.
Since then, he has held top executive positions in four high-tech startup companies in Albuquerque and the Silicon Valley in California. And in 2005, he started a local health-care company, TBAB Health Care Services, which today generates nearly $7 million in annual revenue.
Building partnerships
Oppedahl and the mayor are now building partnerships with local schools, the universities and private-sector organizations to provide hands-on training programs that inspire people to either start their own businesses or develop the skills they need to get good-paying jobs in today’s modern, tech-based economy. Through workforce development, the city can create the talent pool needed for businesses to grow here, Oppedahl said.
The latest initiatives include:

• An agreement with Central New Mexico Community College to open a new educational center in the Galeria building at First Plaza Downtown, where it will offer accelerated programs to rapidly train workers in skills needed by local businesses. It will provide special courses to help aspiring entrepreneurs launch companies, plus fully equipped labs for them to prototype and test new products and services.

• Mission Graduate, a communitywide effort spearheaded by United Way of Central New Mexico and supported by local businesses, to produce 60,000 higher-education graduates by 2020.

• My Life My Business, an entrepreneurial program for high-school students that began this year at Amy Biehl High School and will later spread to more schools. The program brings local entrepreneurs into the classroom to talk with students, and it offers them site visits to companies to inspire entrepreneurial passion among youth.

• Talent ABQ, an initiative to encourage skills-based hiring by businesses rather than selection based on educational degrees. The program offers free skills testing for workers at 26 centers around the city, followed by online training to improve their abilities in targeted areas.

The city is also developing a new “business accelerator” program to train and mentor entrepreneurs to turn great ideas into solid business plans.
Tech research district
The city’s efforts are directly connected to the broader strategy of building a high-tech research district Downtown that acts as a catalyst for innovation, startup development and expanding commercial activity.
That includes the Innovate ABQ initiative at Central and Broadway, plus other emerging projects connected to it, such as CNM’s new Downtown learning center and a new information technology incubator that private developers plan to open in April at the old Albuquerque High School complex.
“The concept started with Innovate ABQ, but like the ‘big bang theory,’ we’re creating the conditions for it to expand and explode up and down Central,” Oppedahl said.
The city has worked closely with UNM since fall 2012 to help develop the university’s Innovate ABQ initiative, but it’s now taking a leading role in building an “innovation network” that unites the public and private sectors around the broader development strategy, said UNM Chief Economic Development Officer Lisa Kuuttila.
“The city has embraced a long-term vision for economic development that should be applauded,” she said.
Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Terri Cole said the planets finally are lining up for revitalizing Downtown and beyond.
“We have the right leadership at the right time and place to move this forward,” Cole told the Journal. “The pieces are all falling into place to make this successful.”
By: Kevin Robinson-Avila (Albuquerque Journal)
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RIO RANCHO – The city of Rio Rancho is waiting to hear how much it will have to pay after it lost a lawsuit over RR’s impact-fee moratorium in which Curb North was seeking $5.6 million in damages.
In a District Court non-jury trial earlier this month, Judge James Lawrence Sanchez of Valencia County found in favor of the plaintiff, Cabezon developer Curb North, city spokesman Peter Wells said.
The judge will decide the amount of damages in coming weeks.
“Legal fees and damages are not covered by the city’s insurance,” Wells said in an email. “These costs will have to come from the city’s general fund.”
Curb North sued the city in October 2012 after a majority of the governing body approved a two-year moratorium on 50 percent of residential impact fees and all of commercial impact fees. Impact fees are payments developers make to the city to offset system-level infrastructure improvements or expansions the city has to make to accommodate new development.
Curb North had put in more infrastructure than required for Cabezon, so the city issued it impact-fee credits. The developer could use those credits to avoid paying impact fees on future developments or sell to them other developers, which could, in turn, use the credits to avoid impact fees.
Curb North argued that the city was causing financial harm to the company by severely decreasing its opportunity to sell its impact-fee credits.
In an interview, outgoing Mayor Tom Swisstack said he and Curb North warned of lawsuits if the moratorium went forward, devaluing Curb North’s credits. Swisstack opposed the moratorium, but the city charter doesn’t allow him to vote at governing body meetings except in the case of a tie, which didn’t happen with the moratorium.
“I think this is a clear indication that what might be perceived as good economic development, if it has a negative impact on one of the larger developers in the area, that has to be taken into consideration before we consider extending this impact-fee moratorium again,” Swisstack said.
The city will be held accountable for any continuing devaluation of Curb North’s impact-fee credits, he added.
The moratorium expires this fall. After the judge’s final order on damages is issued, the city will decide whether to appeal.
By: Argen Duncan (Albuquerque Journal)
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