BOMA!
Bisnow went to Orlando this week to cover the BOMA 2014 Every Building Conference & Expo (or so we said, but resisting Space Mountain is very difficult), as the event’s official national media partner. Like commercial real estate, BOMA’s in growth mode these days.
We sat down with BOMA prez/COO Henry Chamberlain to get an update on the org's six-month-old strategic plan. You can probably deduce from the flags behind him that it's quite worldly—Henry says he has been traveling with BOMA officers for much of the past few months talking to owners and institutions about the value of BOMA and building its international reach (now at 93 US affiliates and 17 more worldwide, with 16 additional countries repped at the conference). Countries it's specifically targeting for growth are Mexico, China (the second BOMA conference in Shanghai is in September), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Japan. (Picking a World Cup favorite must be hard.)
On the expo floor, we bumped into Colliers' Jackson Taunton IV and Holladay Properties' Laura Ragans. Jackson says he's finally seeing rent growth, but Laura's celebrating a less tangible gain: The firm's latest Kingsley surveys showed that her MOBs in Central Florida received the highest year-over-year increase in tenant satisfaction across the company's 18M SF portfolio. (It's pretty important to keep doctors happy, especially dentists.)
It was the Battle of the Stuffed Animal Swag. Not only was the Behr Bear (an adorable teddy bear that looked like the Behr logo) making the expo floor rounds, there were plenty of folks walking around with the AlliedBarton Alligator. (So it's only proper that the firm's Andrew Daniels, who handles biz development for the entire state of Florida, shows off the crocodilian.) So who comes out on top? There are a few YouTube videos out there showing the potential face-off between both species in the wild, but we say the clear winners are the kids, who got some new fuzzy playthings when Mom and Dad got home from the conference.
Who doesn't like a good raffle? Congrats to the big prize winner: Stiles Property Management's Devon Newton from Miami walked away with $1,000. (We'd totally buy a hi-tech touchless toilet with that windfall.) BOMA's Lisa Prats also picked three lucky pros to spin the wheel for gift cards.
