Editors’ Weekly News Roundup March 3 – March 7
Although the maxim that all real estate is local continues to hold true, all five of the past week’s most-read stories reflected broader national trends, and four of the five had a link to Washington, DC. Leading the rankings was a story arising from the ongoing shortage of housing stock, Walton Sells 90-Acre Site in Upper Marlboro to D.R. Horton.
D.R. Horton, of course, is one of the nation’s leading homebuilders, and the acreage it acquired from Walton Global will support development of a master plan community in Prince George’s County, MD, less than 10 miles from the nation’s capital. The D.R. Horton community will be just one component of the larger Westphalia Town Center Master Plan, which supports residential, commercial and industrial use.
Redevelopment of defunct or struggling malls is another story playing out all over the U.S. For Connect CRE’s second most-read story, the market is Dallas/Fort Worth, and the shopping center in question, the Shops at Willow Bend, hadn’t been revitalized by millions of dollars spent by its previous owner.
Enter repositioning specialist Centennial, which has been given the go-ahead to reconstruct much of the property in a new configuration. As described in Onetime Plano Mall to Start Transformation, that includes apartments, townhomes, retail, a hotel, office and restaurant space.
The week’s third most-read story carried over from the previous week, suggesting that the implications of the subject matter are very top much top of mind for Connect CRE readers. DOGE Terminates More Than 2.3M SF of Office Leasesoriginated in our Washington, DC newsletter, but what happens in DC doesn’t always stay in DC. Federal agencies have been a reliable, bread-and-butter group of tenants for office landlords nationwide, and now that appears to be changing.
Another story that originated locally in DC went out as a breaking news alert this past week. President Trump and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation CEO CC Wei announced the company’s largest manufacturing commitment in the U.S. to date.
With the tech firm having already planned to deliver a total of three Arizona chip factories at a cost of $65 billion, TSMC to Invest $100B More in U.S. Chip Manufacturingreported that the company planned to more than double its investment here. Subsequently, our Phoenix page followed up with further details on TSMC’s plans.
The latest news from a partnership that was established in 2019 rounded out the past week’s top five. We reported in Cantor Fitzgerald, Silverstein Close Opportunity Zone Fund with More Than $470Mthat Cantor Silverstein Opportunity Zone Trust II, Inc. includes four planned multifamily and mixed-use developments totaling 1,932 multifamily units and 1.5 million square feet and located in Tempe, AZ, Richmond, VA, Summerville, SC and Huntsville, AL.
Although only one of those developments falls within Connect CRE’s Washington, DC coverage map, the DC connection stems from the Qualified Opportunity Zone’s establishment as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted by Congress in late 2017. Indirectly, there’s another connection to the seat of government: Howard Lutnick, the erstwhile chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is now Commerce Secretary.