Demand For Industrial Space Near Port Houston Is Growing, Driven By Consumer Goods

Much like the coronavirus pandemic itself, the economic recession and associated rent debt it caused have disproportionately affected marginalized populations.

At the beginning of this year, 28% of respondents in the newest survey from Apartment List had rent debt, down from 33% in its October survey. Broken down by race, the picture is less positive: The proportion of Black renters with rent debt rose from 47% to 53%, while rent debt…

Read Full Story

The old saying goes that sunlight is the best disinfectant. But when it comes to Brookfield and its $88B public property subsidiary, the opposite may be true.

At the start of the year, Brookfield Asset Management made an offer to take private Brookfield Property Partners, the Nasdaq-listed real estate company it manages. Brookfield Property has issues, but it also has one of the largest portfolios of any listed company anywhere in the world. Taking Brookfield Property out of the limelight could allow BAM to address those problems and unlock opportunity for BAM and for other investors. 

"Once you are outside of the public eye, you have a lot more flexibility,” BMO Capital Markets Managing Director Sohrab Movahedi told Bisnow. 

Read the full story here.

In Case You Missed It...

PHILADELPHIA — In the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood of North Philadelphia, a Black-owned, social impact development company will soon break ground on an ambitious project.

TPP Capital Management, led by fund manager Anthony Miles and Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Clinton Bush, spent five years assembling parcels of largely vacant land in a five-block radius just to the west of Temple University Health System’s main campus. TPP intends to break ground there this quarter on the first phase of Tioga District, a mixed-use, wellness-focused development complex.

The Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood has a 35% poverty rate, with a median income of $21K, according to U.S. Census American Community Survey data, and $24K according to data from the city of Philadelphia. Even as neighborhoods like Point Breeze that had similar demographics at the start of the 21st century have gentrified, Tioga has remained stagnant or worse economically.

Tioga District is the first of what TPP hopes is many projects to be developed using capital from TPP Real Estate Development Fund, which Miles is operating as a qualified opportunity fund based on the opportunity zones program created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The fund has secured $30M in commitments out of its $100M target, and it is still looking for more investors into the fund and directly into Tioga District.

“We have the data to support why we’re doing what we’re doing, so we’re making a social impact, a community impact,” Bush said, noting that all of TPP’s assembled parcels sit within census tracts designated as opportunity zones. “Our model at TPP in terms of our social impact is built on food science, medical science and behavioral science. Our real estate is centered around a preventative health hub, which is really what the Tioga development is.”

Bush believes the project is a case study in responsible development in disinvested neighborhoods, and his firm is aiming to create a scalable solution that could be executed in other opportunity zones around the country. 

“We have a moral obligation as leaders to make these scalable solutions available to ... anyone who wants it because we are smack dab in the middle of a public health crisis,” Bush said. 

Read the full story here.

OAKLAND — There is a groundswell of support for the Oakland Athletics to get a new stadium.

Major League Baseball is treating it as a priority, saying the league can't move forward with expansion plans for new teams until the A’s and Tampa Bay Rays get updated facilities. The Oakland Coliseum, the team’s current home, was built in 1966, standing in contrast to the region’s newer sporting venues: San Francisco’s Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors, opened in 2019, and the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium opened in the South Bay in 2014. The San Francisco Giants’ Oracle Park, completed in 2000, recently underwent renovations.

And having lost the Raiders to Las Vegas in 2019 and the Warriors when they moved across the bay, Oakland residents are hungry to retain the Major League Baseball team. According to a 2018 poll by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, 74% of respondents supported the A's getting a new stadium in the city.

But the pursuit of a new stadium has been met with many challenges since the team began eyeing the Charles P. Howard Terminal at the Port of Oakland as a possible site in 2005. 

Details about where and when the team will build its new stadium have been slow to solidify. The current plan would entail redeveloping a 55-acre stretch of industrial waterfront for a major mixed-use project. However, the process, which formally began in 2018, has been hindered by several competing factors, and its targeted 2023 completion is at risk.

Read the full story here.