Skyline Views

Is it time to add shovel-ready to the dictionary?

By Dana Hartline

ATLANTA (April 24, 2009) - Anyone following discussions about The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka the economic stimulus package) has undoubtedly heard the word shovel-ready--numerous times.  It's quickly become the buzzword to define projects or initiatives that should be (or want to be) funded.

Wikipedia only offers a brief, three-sentence definition including notation of the utterance of the words by President Barack Obama in December of 2008 in a Meet the Press interview that likely became the trigger moment for shovel-ready becoming one of the most frequently used adjectives in stimulus conversation.  In fact, by early January, the Washington Post was already calling shovel-ready the Obama buzzword that "hit pay dirt."

Look it up today and you'll likely find:

• More than 2,000 pieces of news coverage mentioning shovel ready over the past month--including more than 350 in the past wee
• Approximately 42,500 blog posts on the topic (add one more with this post)

• Roughly 715,000 mentions throughout the Web

Shovel ready isn't yet in Merriam-Webster's dictionary, but perhaps it should be.  In fact, I think I'll submit it to their open dictionary now. Agh, it looks like someone beat me to it on December 30.  Darn you, J.C. Moore of Pennsylvania.

WSJ Spotlight on Atlanta Stirs Breakfast Crowd

By Tony Wilbert (twitter.com/twilbert)

ATLANTA (April 22, 2009) - Atlanta's commercial real estate industry is abuzz and a-Twitter this morning, thanks to a major Wall Street Journal story that focuses on the Buckhead office market and The Street of Buckhead.

Commercial real estate reporter Alex Frangos' story, "In Atlanta, Irrational Building Exuberance," starts off in the one-mile stretch of Buckhead centered on Peachtree Road and the former Buckhead Loop (now Lenox Road). The crux: In Buckhead, four developers are about to deliver new spec office buildings with one tenant signed among them.

The article is accompanied by a graphic with photos of the buildings, complete with vital stats (as in 0 percent occupancy/prelease). The headline for the graphic reads "Faulty Towers."

Several in Atlanta commercial real estate community said they knew the article was coming and were glad that it's out. The article reflects reality right now. There's not a lot of good news flowing from Atlanta's toniest submarket.

Bank of America emerged as a focus of the article when Frangos discovered that the Charlotte bank financed two of the four spec office towers and provided a loan to The Streets of Buckhead, the $600 million retail center that's been temporarily shelved at Peachtree and West Paces Ferry roads. In an odd move, Bank of America declined to comment for the story. It's always best to comment, even if you can't say a lot.

Frangos' story was more than two months in the making. He came to the city in mid-February and met with several top execs, including Cousins Properties CEO Tom Bell and Mike Elting, who heads Cushman & Wakefield's Atlanta office and Southeast region. (Have to give credit to Jarred Schenke, marketing director at Ackerman & Co. for urging Frangos to act on his feeling that checking out Atlanta would be worth while.)

Bell had the comment of the story. When asked for his reaction when Crescent Resources and Manulife Financial announced plans to move froward with Phipps Tower, the fourth spec tower, Bell told Frangos, "I threw up my hands. The world's gone crazy."

I spent some time with Frangos, and the guy knows what he's doing. In two days, he garnered a solid understanding of Atlanta's commercial real estate market and followed up what he found back in New York. He attended Tishman Speyer's party to show off the renovations at Midtown Plaza and spoke with more than a dozen brokers while there.

Most comments I've heard today say the story is fair, well-written and "is what it is." I met Cushman & Wakefield broker Ken Ashley this morning for breakfast at the City Club of Buckhead, and the article dominated the first part of our conversation. He's quoted in the piece.

No word yet from Ben Carter.

Pitts Leaves Grubb, Resurrects Kellogg Partners

By Tony Wilbert

ATLANTA (April 13, 2009) - Kellogg Partners, of the country's few tenant rep firms owned and led by African-Americans when it launched in 2005, is back after a short hiatus.

James Pitts, who co-founded Kellogg Partners with long-time friend and fellow Kellogg School of Management grad William Lampley, left Grubb & Ellis late last month and reopened Kellogg Partners. "It's good to be back out there," Pitts (shown at left) tells Skyline Views.

Pitts and Lampley garned national attention when they launched Kellogg Partners. I helped announce Kellogg Partners while at Jackson Spalding, and the press found it refreshing to see some new faces on the scene - especially some from the African-American community that is greatly underrepresented in commercial real estate.

Pitts and Lampley shelved Kellogg Partners in late 2006, when they both joined Grubb & Ellis' Atlanta office. While at Grubb, Lampley led an initiative to create a Strategic Accounts Group that emulated a similar Jones Lang LaSalle program of targeting Fortune 1000 companies for exclusive representation. Lampley and Pitts were very successful brokers at JLL for several years before forming Kellogg Partners.

Lampley left Grubb in late 2008 and quickly landed as president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Atlanta. Pitts remained at Grubb & Ellis for the first quarter of 2009 but left last week.

Companies can combat green fatigue with authenticity and storytelling

By Dana Hartline

ATLANTA (April 8, 2009) As the conversation around the environment, sustainability and green has evolved - from interest to infatuation to perhaps green fatigue, it's leaving many in the real estate world wondering how to talk about green building efforts without appearing like a johnny-come-lately jumping on the latest bandwagon or without turning of their intended audiences who may be so overwhelmed with green information that they don't know what to believe or do.

This green fatigue or green paralysis isn't confined to the real estate industry, of course. Almost a year ago, Advertising Age noted, "The recent Cone/Boston College survey showed that more than half of American consumers are 'overwhelmed' by the tsunami of environment-related messaging. Less than half trust companies to tell them the truth about sustainable practices and products. Even fewer consumers believe companies are accurately communicating their environmental impact."

It's no different for business-to-business audiences either.  Green building capabilities and a focus on sustainability are increasingly "givens," thresholds for entry, but how do you cut through the clutter of information to let prospective clients, building owners, buyers, tenants, et al know about your capabilities and how you differ from your competitors?

It's something my colleague Tony Wilbert and I discussed along with Jim Hackler (The Urbane Environmentalist) during a session at Greenprints a couple of weeks ago. To put it simply:

• Be transparent and trustworthy.  That's the core of every relationship, right?  And real estate is indeed an industry built upon relationships as we all know. Edelman's most recent Trust Barometer survey found that trust in business declined by 20% in the U.S. since our last survey a year ago.  Given all that's going on with the financial collapse of once revered companies, that decline in trust is understandable.  However, with trust in business at its lowest point in the 11 years Edelman's been conducting its annual survey, there are critical implications for companies - requiring business to operate and communicate with an even greater emphasis on transparency.  
• Be authentic. Tell your story.  And I do mean story. Stories are memorable. Interface's Ray Anderson and Jacoby Development's Jim Jacoby (for whom Edelman has worked in the past) each had different personal and professional reasons to pursue green.  Those nuances make for compelling stories.  How did you come to focus on sustainability?  What's your point of view?  What within your company dynamics and culture makes sustainability a focus? One of the most geniune speeches that I've heard recently came from Governor Sonny Perdue when he spoke at an event for an Edelman client to kick off Keeping Forests in Forests^SM - a carbon offset program that helps conserve Georgia's forests. With other speakers addressing carbon emissions, a likely cap and trade system in the U.S., etc., I'm sure plenty of attendees were wondering how Georgia's Republican governor would approach the topic. He confidently stepped up to the podium, put his prepared remarks to the side and spoke from the heart about the value of Georgia's forests.  Carrying a conservationist point of view, he understandably sidestepped the politically sensitive topic of cap and trade and focused on something dear to his heart - telling his story and making it authentic.  It wasn't stuffy or political-speak; it was geniune and not lost on anyone in the crowd. 
• Engage with your audiences.  The concept of town hall meetings, one-on-one information sessions and the like are nothing new for any developer, architect or planner that's been through a rezoning process, but as the communication landscape shifts, the need for engagement increases.  It's not just for zoning proceedings anymore.  Your target audiences (whether consumers, retailers or partners) want to be engaged in dialogue.  They want a voice, and they are turning to both traditional and non-traditional ways for doing so. Online communities, forums and other information sources (from journalists and everyday folk) are on the rise.  A couple of years ago, Edelman's research found that on average, two in ten blog readers have taken some sort of action as a result of reading a blog, and the readership and influence of blogs and other social networking forums only continue to grow. Such online forums also present opportunities for you to engage with those who are trusted voices in subject matters related to your business and create avenues for you to share your point of view and insights directly. Once again, it's about building relationships rather than top-down, one-way communication.