Editors’ Weekly News Roundup September 9 – September 13
Development was a recurring theme in four of the five most read Connect CRE stories for the week ending Sept. 12. It’s been said that success begets success, and that’s among the object lessons in the past week’s most read story. Another Semiconductor Chip Company Looking at Phoenix Area reported that Hyperion Technologies is considering building a multibillion-dollar semiconductor manufacturing plant in Peoria, AZ.
If Hyperion does carry out this proposal, the company would be following the example of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which not only is building a massive chip plant in its own right but has spurred other local development in various sectors as well. Hyperion’s plan would have a $6.6-billion economic impact on the Phoenix region over a decade.
Coming in second was a development story in a different sector—multifamily—with overtones of the conversion movement. Here, the focal point was not so much the developer as the source of the developable land: surplus property at the edge of the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA.
The tech giant plans to sell a 5.2-acre Microsoft property, which includes a 42-year-old high tech/high flex building, to American Capital Group. We reported in Microsoft Selling Property in Redmond to MF Developerthat the site would support more than 640 apartments.
Not all of the past week’s development news was as positive. Our third most read story came out of California, where the state legislature wants to stem the tide of industrial building that has occurred statewide, notably in the Inland Empire.
As readers learned in CA Assembly Enacts Bill to Impose Rules for New Warehouse Development, Assembly Bill 98would tighten building standards for new warehouses, including minimum distances between homes and industrial projects; ban heavy-duty diesel truck traffic next to sensitive sites including homes, schools, parks and nursing homes; and require local governments to update truck routes to avoid residential streets. As of late last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s hadn’t yet signed the measure into law.
In the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna, GA, developers Rass Associates and 2800 Properties filed a permit request with the Developments of Regional Impact agency, which oversees large-scale projects that are likely to have regional effects beyond the local government jurisdiction in which they are located. That was the basis of Major Mixed-Use Project Planned for Cobb County, our fourth most read story of the week, and the development certainly has scale. It entails a 20-story apartment building with 650 units, two two-story buildings totaling 175,000 square feet of commercial space and an up-to 12-story building with 200,000 square feet of office space and 250 hotel rooms.
Rounding out the top five was another story involving a tech giant, in this case Meta Platforms. Here, the subject was not development but leasing—or more to the point, walking away from leases.
Meta Has Bailed Out of Nearly 1 Million-SF of Austin Office Space focused on the latest in a series of downsizings the Facebook parent has executed in the Texas tech hub since late 2022. This most recent move did lead to a happy resolution for the property’s landlord, though, as IBM will assume the entire 320,000-square-foot lease that Meta now considers surplus space.