Power Reads: 5 Interesting Articles That Will Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in leadership and the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners": corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. Each day we can become a better version of ourselves.

1. 4 Predictions For Atlanta CRE In 2021

One major effect of the coronavirus pandemic has been to freeze C-suite's real estate decision-making process, especially as their employees have shown how well they can work from home.

If a company's office lease was expiring last year, executives likely just signed short-term renewals to delay a more serious decision, Cushman & Wakefield Executive Director Ken Ashley said. That means office brokers will be busy during the second half of this year and into 2022.

“Tenant reps will have a smile on their faces in the second half of '21, because transaction activity is likely to increase,” Ashley said. “Today, executives are making the smallest decision possible, which means in real estate terms, they're extending leases for a year or 18 months. When you have thousands of executives doing the same thing, eventually the chickens are going to come home to roost.”

2. Landlords Preparing For Tenants' Return By Activating The Streets And Adding Green Spaces

As more people begin planning for a return to the downtown, some developers envision transforming the market with more outdoor spaces, permanent changes that will give workers and residents a feeling of security in a post-COVID world. Vaccines may curtail the virus’s spread, but worries about disease could persist, and properties with outdoor green spaces may have an advantage.

“We have to keep moving forward and prepare for a post-COVID world,” Peppercorn Capital owner and founder Phil Denny said.

His firm, which owns a large number of properties across the West Loop and Fulton Market, will take advantage of a vacancy at its 80K SF 240 North Ashland Ave. in West Fulton Market and transform its west side, adding green space and a new tenant entrance. Denny said 601W Cos.’ transformation of the Old Main Post Office’s rooftop into an amenity-rich green space is his inspiration.

3. Take Your Lunch Break!

In 2019, I was invited to share what I would consider a life well-lived. While 2019 looked considerably different than 2020, upon reflection, my answer remains the same:

“I’d consider my life well-lived if I took time to eat lunch during the workday almost every day. This means not at my desk, not in a meeting or while working, but connecting with someone, or even myself, while I eat mindfully.”
I’m committing to doubling down on this in 2021.

Remote working has made it nearly impossible to keep a commitment I try to stick to: to step away from work to eat lunch or go for a walk in the middle of the day. As we try to make sense of the painful year that just passed and plan for 2021 and the new normal at work, I’d like to add: let’s normalize a proper, generous lunch break — both in the remote work environment and especially when we return to any sort of regular, in-person office environment.

4. Workers will be lured back to the office, says Brookfield chief

As for office life, he argued for the importance of water-cooler conversations and their role in building a strong culture.

“In business and life there are always problems and having a personal connection with others helps you work through those situations. That’s why office spaces are important,” said Mr Flatt.

Brookfield Asset Management has been back in its New York office since June, and even took on another floor and a half because, pre-pandemic, a third of its staff would have been travelling on business. Three-quarters of the 750 New York-based staff are now working in the office, with vulnerable workers staying at home until vaccinations are available, said Mr Flatt.

5. How supply chains adjusted demand forecasts during the pandemic

"In normal conditions, the demand for some of these products and services is relatively non-volatile and, as a result, does not exhibit complex patterns," the team wrote in recent research published in the European Journal of Operational Research. "It is, thus, not very difficult to forecast. This is especially so for products in more mature markets such as pasta, rice, toiletries. However, during a pandemic, we expect the purchasing behaviors will become significantly more volatile because of consumer biases on the potential for scarcity."

The researchers used regression to look at the relationship between case numbers and a term's Google Trends index. For looking at the impact of a lockdown, they added a binary variable that is either a 1 or 0, depending on if a location was locked down or not.

The result was that the "models rightly predicted the panic buying effect and respective excess demand for groceries and electronics during the current wave of COVID-19," the researchers concluded.

Dan Mitchell, the director of global retail and CPG at SAS, said the analytics company also began adding Google Trends data to its models along with figures on COVID-19 case numbers and lockdowns.

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

Ken Ashley