The Need For Speed Is Driving Life Sciences Lab Conversion Boom

The last year and a half has been anything but normal for college students coping with remote learning, Covid and dire economic prospects. But for those looking to get into commercial real estate, the rapid shifts in the industry and overall economic picture this spring portend better chances for landing jobs, albeit it during an unprecedented time of flux.

“The fortunate thing for students in 2021 is that some of the darkness has started to lift,” Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate, Roosevelt University Executive Director Collete English Dixon said. 

But that coming light perhaps has only illuminated many of the tricky situations inherent in getting hired for that first CRE job in 2021.

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When the coronavirus pandemic shuttered restaurants, clubs and bars, Tricia La Belle's businesses, like so many others, were thrown into flux. The owner of Boardners bar in Hollywood, Dave’s On Broadway in Glendale, and Bon Vivant Market & Cafe in Atwater Village said that when the city of Los Angeles gave the green light for restaurants to add outdoor seating in the street, often in public parking spaces, she received approval to take over five parking spaces in front of Bon Vivant.

The feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive since she opened in June, La Belle said. Street parking on the independent business-filled stretch of Glendale Boulevard where her business is located is tight, but there has so far only been one instance of anyone voicing a complaint about the lost parking to her, and it came from a neighboring business owner once restaurants were allowed to increase indoor capacity to 25% in March.

As the pandemic pushed restaurants through an obstacle course of closures, reopenings and occupancy restrictions, cities across the country rushed to offer a life preserver to the industry in the form of emergency outdoor dining programs. These programs allowed restaurants to quickly and easily set up tables on sidewalks, in private parking lots and, in some cases, in street parking spaces, and restaurant professionals say they have been vital to their ongoing recovery.

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There has been a lot of talk about diversity and tackling discrimination in commercial real estate over the past year. But tangible action, with targets that can be measured, assessed and judged a success or failure? Not so much.

After the tumultuous events of last summer, BentallGreenOak Chief Executive Sonny Kalsi knew he had to do more. And so he led an initiative to put in place a target at the $62B global investment manager in which two-thirds of new hires had to be minorities or women. He and the firm’s senior management team wanted to ensure that BentallGreenOak is not the typical majority male and White real estate firm, but is reflective of society more broadly. 

The new policy is still in its early stages, and the baseline from which BGO is looking to diversify is still being ascertained. But Kalsi and the firm have committed that if targets are missed, money will be taken from the bonus pool and reattributed to causes the company already supports that promote diversity and inclusion. Having a hiring policy with a set target aimed at improving diversity and inclusion is rare in real estate, and that policy being public is even rarer.

Kalsi talked Bisnow through the initiative: how and why it came about, how it works in practice, the challenges and successes so far, the disappointments and how, if you want to improve diversity but don’t know what to do about it, you should just get started. 

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Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster’s property company, has completed its fifth deal to provide capital to help its tenants expand, as the 300-year-old company looks to innovate and diversify its operations. 

The company has completed a deal to provide finance to British fashion-design house Roland Mouret, one of its tenants in a store on Mount Street in Mayfair, London. The capital will be used to help the brand expand its online presence and invest in its new line of athleisure wear. 

All told, the company has roughly £7M in deals closed and in the pipeline for what it calls its tenant investment fund.

It is extremely rare for a property owner to provide capital to its tenants in this way; mall owner Simon Property has bought struggling retailers out of bankruptcy in the U.S., but providing capital to help tenants expand is not a role landlords have typically played. 

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