Real Estate News

1. The Wall Street Journal reports that shopping centers, even lifestyle centers, are starting to have a hard time finding tenants, in "Too Many Malls, Too Few Tenants."

Of course, there has been a lot of coverage on retail chains closing stores, reducing expansion plans, and declaring bankruptcy. For example, also from the WSJ, "Retailer's Collapse Hits Mall Owners."

2. Regarding the points made in the piece yesterday about Jane Jacobs, there was an article in the New York Times about the difficulty that Brooklyn Brewery is having in finding property so that they can expand. Property owners aren't renting their industrial land because they are working to get it rezoned to residential and make more money off it. See "Double Edge to Brooklyn’s Success." Note that the Brewery started paying $3/s.f. for space and is now paying $9/s.f.

DC and other cities have done studies covering the necessity of protecting industrial use zones, because at the end of the day, you can't outsource all your "production, distribution and repair" especially because it still has to come back into the city over a congested road network.

-- Industrial Land Use Study (DC)
-- Industrial Area Design Guidelines (San Francisco)
-- Industrial Protection Zones (San Francisco)
-- various studies are listed on the NYC Department of Planning website, but aren't available as online documents.