Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles That May Help You This Week
/November 5th, 2018
Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners:" corporate real estate, technology,management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles.
There Is a Silver Lining for Losers of Amazon’s HQ2 Competition
"Amazon and its planned 50,000 employees will also strain infrastructure. Home prices in Seattle have risen faster than anywhere in the United States except San Francisco since the Standard & Poor’s CoreLogic Case-
Shiller home price indexes began tracking real estate values 18 years ago. It’s difficult to see how New Jersey could afford to spend lavishly on Amazon when the state a few years ago canceled a multi-billion-dollar overhaul of a critical century-old train link to New York City.
Losers won’t have those worries, and many will get a boost from Amazon anyway.
Cities hoping to host Amazon’s HQ2 might still benefit from the company even if they lose the contest.
According to the company’s figures, it has invested more than $4 billion and taken on more than 5,000 employees in New Jersey alone between 2011 and 2017, which is roughly half the time span of the promised HQ2 development. Over the same period, Virginia secured $29 billion of investment and over 8,500 jobs from Amazon. Even Tennessee, which is home to the finalist city of Nashville, has received more than $5 billion of investment and 6,500 jobs." www.nytimes.com
ILLUSTRATION: ANDREA CHRONOPOULOS
"...a funny thing happened on the way to the retail apocalypse. Stiffening competition, surging online advertising costs and cheap mall space have prompted these so-called digital natives to embrace what they call “offline” in a big way. In their push to become retail’s next household names they’re venturing beyond the coasts and major cities into suburban America. It’s also an acknowledgement that 90 cents of every retail dollar in the U.S. is still spent at a physical location, and industry watchers don’t expect it to fall below 75 cents until the middle of next decade." www.bloomberg.com
[tweet_box design="box_09" float="none"]a funny thing happened on the way to the retail apocalypse. Stiffening competition, surging online advertising costs and cheap mall space have prompted these so-called digital natives to embrace what they call “offline” in a big way.[/tweet_box]
When you have the floor to speak, you have the opportunity to command the room. You can command the room and lead even when you are not speaking. Follow these six nonverbal acts to establish your executive presence: www.forbes.com
How One Hospital Improved Patient Safety in 10 Minutes a Day
KELLY SILLASTE/GETTY IMAGES
Most modern health care improvements seem to involve expensive technology and an uncomfortable amount of change management. But clinical and nonclinical staff at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital have improved patient care and raised staff morale at a very modest cost: 10 minutes a day and a special deck of cards.Members of the hospital’s design thinking team were inspired by something they saw when they boarded a KLM Airline flight: During a pre-flight huddle of the cabin crew, team members introduced each other and then asked each other two questions on flight safety.When they got back to Rotterdam Eye Hospital, the managers asked themselves why couldn’t they add a similar feature to their own “team-start” huddles? After all, in some ways, the situations were similar: A group whose members may not have worked together before must form a close-knit team quickly and execute their duties in a way that meets the organization’s guidelines to the letter." www.hbr.org
City in a City: The 63,000 People Who Run The World's Busiest Airport
“The Atlanta airport is one of the reasons UPS moved its corporate headquarters to Atlanta from Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1990,” says Dan McMackin of UPS. “The fact that we can make hundreds of direct international flights was a major contributing factor in our choice of Atlanta as the location of our global headquarters.”But the airport also offers something simpler and more direct: jobs for more than 63,000 employees, which helps support a thriving middle class in and around the city. “Work at [the airport] makes mortgage payments and college tuition payments possible,” says Andrew Gobeil from the airport’s office of policy and communications."
Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!
I have a confession to make. For more than 17 years, I have been connected to the grid. Except for sleep, I was always tuned on. Yes, even on vacation, at night and certainly on weekends.I bet I’m not alone in this admission, but at least I can publically declare my addiction to connectivity. I was like a real estate Waffle House; always on and available. Some will say I was like their hash browns as well; scattered, smothered, covered and chopped – but that’s another story.But for 12 days in June, I had no iPhone, no computer, heck, not even a tin-can with a string. I accompanied my 15-year-old son Jonathan and his Boy Scout crew for a hiking expedition in the beautiful 
After reflecting on this experience for almost two weeks, I learned that you can, that you must, unplug occasionally. Just a few weeks ago I would have (and did) scoff at the very idea. I am now a full on convert to strategic digital vacations. They clear the mind, cleanse the soul, and allow one to have rich and meaningful conversations with those close to you.
