The Nightlife King Who Turned On The Mob Is Helping The Resurgence Of Watson Island

Super Bowl LIV may have been entertaining, but some residents near where it was played have been steaming over the price tag. South Florida taxpayers will be on the hook for $20M in costs for hosting the game, with $1M of that going toward hotel rooms "provided to players earning millions…

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The federal government in December put out a call that it was looking for co-working space nationwide. A request for proposals from the General Services Administration noted that 50% of dollars allotted would go toward small businesses — but coworking operators would have to be active in at least four…

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In Case You Missed It...

You are head of the UK for one of the world’s two biggest real estate investors, with almost unlimited firepower at your disposal, a huge portfolio to asset manage and a development portfolio to die for. There are not many people who would leave that situation. 

But Martin Jepson did.

“I’d spent basically my entire life in the corporate sector, so it was nice to come out of that and have a bit more freedom and a bit more of a chance to express myself,” he said. “I wanted to test myself.”

Jepson was UK president and chief operating officer at Brookfield Property Partners, overseeing a portfolio of 4M SF of offices in London, including developments. He had ramped up Brookfield’s exposure to London, moving to the company from Hammerson and then buying his old shop’s London portfolio for £500M in 2012, a deal that came to be seen as an absolute steal.

But in 2017 he left to “pursue other opportunities”, and was absent from the spotlight until 2019.

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BOSTON — Four skyscraper projects taller than 500 feet are underway in downtown Boston, which stands out in a city where critics almost always chide towers for casting new shadows and go to great lengths to stall their approval. 

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CHICAGO — The world’s largest Starbucks store opened on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile just before Thanksgiving, and the location at 646 North Michigan Ave. quickly became a destination for shoppers from around the region.

Attracting coffee drinkers from afar helped keep the five-floor, 35K SF Starbucks Reserve Roastery, a former flagship Crate & Barrel store, busy throughout the Christmas season, with nearly 50% of the customers traveling from more than 30 miles away, according to Placer.ai, a Los Altos, California-based foot traffic analytics platform that analyzes cellphone data.

That is welcome news for all nearby retailers. The Magnificent Mile was known for generations as the Chicago region’s top shopping district, but the recent plague of retail closures and bankruptcies hit the street hard, leaving it dotted with empty storefronts. 

"[Starbucks] created a new story for the street that's not about vacancy, and that's important," Stone Real Estate principal John Vance said.

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DENVER — Denver's iconic Crawford Hill Mansion, built in 1906 for a Victorian industrialist, recently hit the market and is zoned for a number of uses. 

“The Crawford Hill Mansion was one of the largest Denver residences at the time of construction, and it has been lovingly restored and renovated into one-of-a-kind office space by the current owners, who have occupied the property for the past 30 years," CBRE’s Monica Wiley said. "The result is one of Denver’s most well-preserved and unique historic properties."

Located at 150 East 10th Ave. and 933 Sherman St., it was built for early 20th century Denver businessman Crawford Hill, who made a fortune in publishing, industry and land, and his wife, Louise. It was last purchased in 1990 and renovated into office space. 

This might sound unique, but the city’s historical mansion-to-office scene is alive and well. 

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