Editors’ Weekly News Round Up – Top 5 CRE Stories of 2024
An old adage holds that all politics is local, and evidently the same holds true for real estate. In counting down the five most-read Connect CRE stories for 2024, we found that each was originally a regional story, rather than a national one, although some appeared in our daily National newsletter as well.
Leading the roster was a Florida-based story with national and even international implications. Reported with the headline Two Florida Vacation Membership Giants Merge, the top-ranked story informed readers that the $1.5-billion union of Hilton Grand Vacations (HGV) and Bluegreen Vacations Holding Corp. increased HGV’s membership base by 40% to 740,000 vacation owners. Prior to the merger, Bluegreen was headquartered in Boca Raton, while HGV is based in Orlando. Its vacation destinations span the globe.
Connect CRE’s second most-read story also had a hospitality angle—and a distress angle as well. Buyer Purchases Distressed Scottsdale Resort detailed the acquisition of the 177-key Adero Scottsdale by GRMM Investment Fund, which planned to retain the resort’s employees as well as an agreement with Marriott to put the property in the company’s Autograph Collection.
Although the property at the center of 2024’s third most-read Connect CRE story wasn’t distressed, it was certainly disused. The 107-acre Tokyo Electron campus in Austin, TX was vacated by the tech firm in favor of a location elsewhere in the city.
As reported in Austin May Buy Vacant Tech Campus, the Austin City Council considered acquiring the campus, which included a large swath of developable land along with Tokyo Electron’s former offices. The two existing buildings on the campus would be used for a second Combined Technology and Emergency Communications Center, along with office space for future city needs. Later that month, the council decided to go ahead with the acquisition.
In fourth place was a story originating in the Midwest rather than in the Sunbelt, as the previous three stories did. 16-Story Tower at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis Tops Out reported the construction milestone for the Plaza West Tower and McCarthy Building Companies, which built it.
The tower rose as part of BJC HealthCare’s Campus Renewal Project, a long-term, $1-billion renewal of its Washington University Medical Campus. It’s expected to open in the fall of 2025.
Completing the top five was another story about surplus tech office space, this time from the vantage point of the would-be seller. In Broadcom Plans to Sell 1M SF of VMware’s Palo Alto Campus, we reported that the telecom giant proposed selling nearly two-thirds of the campus it acquired as part of its $69-billion deal for rival VMware. It would use the remaining 600,000 square feet for its headquarters, in the process vacating much of the space it occupies in San Jose. Nearly a year after the story appeared, though, a buyer for the former VMware space has yet to emerge.