'It's Pencils Down' As Atlanta Trophy Office Investors Await Fed Move

When representatives from Laredo, Texas, go to industry shows, they tout the city's trade opportunities with Mexico, its low cost of doing business and a young, eager workforce.

But companies interested in snagging space in Laredo have come across an issue hitting other border towns that have sold themselves too well: There's no industrial space available in the city. 

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On Chicago’s South Side, the site of the defunct Michael Reese Hospital is poised to evolve into the $3.8B Bronzeville Lakefront development, a project backers say will reinvigorate the region with innovation and jobs after decades of investment dollars flowing out of the area.

With ambitions to create 31,000 full-time jobs, some of which will be located in the 500K SF Bronzeville Innovation Center and a biotech incubator called Chicago ARC, the development promises “future-focused jobs,” according to developers, one of many benefits that convinced the city to rezone the site and spend $60M on infrastructure.

But as the project breaks ground this year, its plan to engage and educate the community to assume those jobs of the future is, like the development itself, a work in progress. As other Chicago life sciences developers tout the future potential of the industry as a job creator, the training details for locals aren’t yet clear. 

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LOS ANGELES — After a long search for a space for their vegan eatery Malinalli Superfoods, Eruve Peña and his wife finally struck gold when they found a storefront in an East LA building owned by the Community Owned Real Estate program.

Rents in most parts of fast-changing LA were out of reach for Peña, not to mention construction costs for any tenant finish. Malinalli started as a pop-up, but the city’s real estate market, combined with macroeconomic forces, hindered his vision of opening up the restaurant in a permanent space.

The story is a familiar one in LA, where property values have jumped in recent years. But as gentrification creeps into the city’s older — and often less White — neighborhoods, local activists, tenant organizations and neighborhood groups are pushing back in the form of community ownership like the CORE program that helped Peña make his dream a reality.

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