Latest news with #commercialrealestate
Khaleej Times
a day ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
How Dubai's ICD Brookfield Place became a net-zero carbon landmark
How can imposing structures be made friends of the planet? What does it take to make a building breathe lighter; to make it feel like a wispy highlight in a skyline filled with concrete and steel? At ICD Brookfield Place, a premier lifestyle and business address in Dubai, and the tallest and largest LEED Platinum building in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, it takes intention backed by data, design powered by innovation, and a vision that extends beyond its own shimmering glass façade that stands out like a beacon in Dubai International Financial Centre. It means recalibrating how energy flows, how tenants interact with their space, and how materials are chosen, reused, or retired. From reducing its reliance on district cooling and electricity to embracing a smart digital twin for energy analytics, ICD Brookfield Place is shedding excess, optimising operations, and steadily lightening its carbon load. Every sensor, audit, and air-flow tweak becomes a silent contribution to a larger climate commitment to achieve net-zero operational carbon by 2030 and whole-life net-zero by 2050. But making a building breathe lighter isn't only about cutting emissions. It's about leading by example in a region poised for transformation. It's about showing that commercial real estate can be both ambitious and accountable without losing its architectural or commercial edge. It was amid these lofty environmental ideals and objectives that ICD Brookfield Place released their first Net Zero Carbon Pathway Report to communicate their sustainability efforts transparently and demonstrate accountability for their climate impact. Elaborating on the efforts that have gone into the four-acre property in the centre of Dubai's business district and its serious commitment to attain its goals, Haithem Ibraheem, Vice President - Operations, said the report aimed to provide greater visibility into their targets, actions, and performance. Acknowledging the evolving nature of climate disclosure in the region, he said they recognised the need to establish a benchmark rooted in data and measurable progress. It is important for all the stakeholders to know where the promises made by industry stalwarts on reducing carbon emissions are going, and which way they will steer the planet. 'Reaching net zero carbon requires consistency, transparency, and shared responsibility, and that's the approach we have taken. We are a signatory to the World Green Building Council's Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, which sets a clear framework,' says Ibraheem. This means they have agreed to a clear plan to reduce their carbon footprint in two key areas: direct emissions from their operations (known as Scope 1) and emissions from the energy they purchase (Scope 2). To tackle these, Ibraheem says, their strategy is: cut emissions at the source. 'We do this by improving energy efficiency across the building, upgrading systems where needed, and switching to renewable energy whenever possible. Only if these measures fall short will we consider using carbon offsets, and even then, only those that meet the highest standards.' For Scope 3 emissions — those that come indirectly through the people they work with, like tenants and suppliers — they believe change happens best through collaboration. 'So, we're working closely with everyone in our network to encourage aligned action, aiming for a bigger, shared impact,' Ibraheem adds. The fact that many companies and institutions that make mighty promises fail to follow through doesn't deter ICD Brookfield Place. 'Our skilled teams are the ones driving this forward, turning plans into measurable outcomes,' says Ibraheem. But people need firm blueprints to work on, and this, Ibraheem says, came with a structured approach involving precise steps, each requiring specialised expertise. 'At every step of the process, we engaged globally recognised consultants to carry out in-depth studies, helping us identify the most effective and achievable route to meet our sustainability goals,' he said. 'Their expertise was instrumental in shaping our detailed Net Zero Pathway roadmaps, which outlined various options supported by specific actions, timelines, budgets, and risk assessments.' 'In addition, they helped us establish interim targets aligned with climate science, providing a credible structure to measure our progress toward our 2030 objectives. Technical experts also played a key role in implementing sophisticated carbon management systems that allow us to monitor, track, and control emissions in real time with both precision and transparency.' By achieving a 16 per cent drop in cooling demand and a 7 per cent reduction in power consumption in 2024, ICD Brookfield Place has not only beaten others to the goalpost, but also helped design a framework for others to follow. Ibraheem says that from the outset, real-time energy monitoring tools such as utility metres and IoT sensors were installed across landlord-managed and tenant spaces. These are connected to a Centralized Management Platform, a custom digital system that compiles data from across the building and translates it into live dashboards. These dashboards not only show energy usage in real time but also help detect faults and analyse how systems behave. The team developed a detailed energy model and conducted extensive audits. This gave them the insights needed to identify inefficiencies and study how different systems performed under varying occupancy and weather conditions. Based on these findings, several key systems like HVAC, parking ventilation fans, lifts and escalators were reprogrammed to operate only when necessary and in energy-efficient modes. The ICD Brookfield Place building, Ibraheem contends, 'is designed to support both environmental sustainability and human sustainability, with a focus on wellbeing, culture, and experience. Every part of the design reflects a human-centric approach, where sustainability is about how people feel, connect, and thrive.' At its heart lies the Summer Garden, a soaring five-storey indoor atrium bathed in natural light and lined with tall trees. The space maintains a comfortable climate throughout the year and serves as a central social hub for both tenants and the wider community. Social wellbeing is nurtured through dedicated zones like Niche, a vibrant cultural space that hosts events, informal gatherings, and networking opportunities. Flexible workstations and shaded outdoor plazas encourage movement and a sense of balance throughout the day. To involve tenants in its sustainability goals, ICD Brookfield Place launched a phased tenant engagement programme. With nearly half its tenants already pursuing ESG or net zero targets, the initiative supports shared progress. The programme also fosters community through initiatives like Rooted, the annual sustainability market that unites tenants, innovators, and changemakers in celebrating collective action. Launching ambitious global initiatives like this and sustaining success at every step without setbacks is no easy feat. But it can also be amply rewarding, Ibraheem says. 'The opportunity to engage with people, including tenants, colleagues, and industry partners, around a cause that matters is hugely fulfilling. Sustainability opens the door to meaningful conversations, shared purpose, and new ways of working together. Seeing that sense of alignment grow has been a powerful reminder that real change begins with collective momentum.' From becoming a signatory to the World Green Building Council's Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment to publishing the region's first comprehensive Net Zero Carbon Pathway Report, ICD Brookfield Place has led with vision and accountability. It is nurturing a model for what the future of urban spaces can and should be — resilient, responsible, and quietly revolutionary.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Greystone Arranges $43.5 Million Debt Placement for Independent Living Community in Oregon
NEW YORK, July 14, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greystone, a leading national commercial real estate finance company, has arranged a $43,500,000 debt placement to refinance a Class A independent living community in Oregon. The financing was sourced by David Young, Managing Director. The 142-unit property is a recently built and stabilized Class A+ independent living community featuring upscale amenities tailored for senior residents. The debt placement, with a regional bank, includes a competitive floating rate priced in the 200s over SOFR, enabling the sponsor to refinance existing senior and subordinate construction debt, return capital to investors, and position the asset for a future permanent agency execution. 'We ran a targeted process across both banks and debt funds to source financing that would meet a stretch target for our client,' said Mr. Young. 'With strong trailing cash flows albeit on a shorter trailing period but a demonstrably clear upward trend, we were able to achieve highly favorable execution that materially exceeded expectations.' About GreystoneGreystone is a private national commercial real estate finance company with an established reputation as a leader in multifamily and healthcare finance, having ranked as a top FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac lender in these sectors. Loans are offered through Greystone Servicing Company LLC, Greystone Funding Company LLC and/or other Greystone affiliates. For more information, visit PRESS CONTACT:Karen
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Why The Future Of Remote Work Is Still Local
Companies have settled on the hybrid model to embrace both the benefits of working from home and ... More maintaining company culture. While most workers remember a time when daily commutes were the norm, millions of people joined the job market since 2020, and all they have known – up until the return-to-office (RTO) movement – is working from home. According to the AI-powered education data company Admissionsly, there are approximately 4.16 million new graduates a year entering the job force. That means up to 20 million recent graduates only know working from home (WFH), remote work, or have never been to the office five days a week. If you asked me five years ago about WFH, I would have told you that companies would exclusively hire remote employees indefinitely. Companies' talent pools increased exponentially (literally to all 50 states) and included strong candidates from lower-cost-of-living areas. It was a gift that kept on giving: more candidates at a cheaper price. Plus, companies could save money by decreasing or eliminating their commercial real estate footprint. Companies may spend upwards of 20% of their revenue on office space and commercial property. Time is the one asset you can never get back. WFH gave people hours of their time back because they didn't have to commute to and from their offices. On average, remote workers save 55 minutes per day, according to the U.S. Career Institute, by eliminating their commute. That was extra time to work, spend time with their kids, or have breakfast and dinner in peace. Those small perks were vital during such a tough time. And, on a side note, imagine how much better it was for our climate that we didn't have thousands of cars sitting in traffic! Lastly, many people, ironically, felt a sense of freedom and excitement (discounting the fear of a killer virus) because they could work from anywhere. I know people who traveled the country in an Airstream, sometimes working in one state one day and another the next. Some people, primarily younger and without children, traveled the world working through VPNs. Many people and families decided to finally make the move to their dream home, which was usually out of the city and into more remote areas of the country. Well, my prediction in 2020 was wrong. On May 5, 2023, the RTO debate began when the World Health Organization officially declared the pandemic over. But was it ever a debate? The statistics say WFH wasn't as common as you might believe. It Seemed Like Everyone Was Working Remotely, Right? Except for first responders, I felt all private workers were WFH 100% of the time. Only about 7.3% of employed Americans were working remotely before the pandemic, according to George Washington University Professor Hilary Silver. However, by the end of 2020 – the height of the pandemic – the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated only 22% of US workers were working remotely 100% of the time. The Federal Bank of Atlanta estimated it was only 15% by January 2021. Many more were working partly from home. Gallup's June 2022 poll found 70 million, 56% of full-time employees, said they can do their job remotely. Another five in 10 (35 million) worked at home part of the time. A large portion of the U.S. working population was already working the hybrid model. WFH Versus RTO is a Corporate Culture Battle Culture is a collection of values, principles, and beliefs that a group of people share. Before the pandemic, our corporate culture was based on a straightforward social contract: you commute to the office Monday through Friday. You take paid time off or sick time when you're not in the office. Pretty simple. After the pandemic, what changed was not our expectation that we would have the ability to work remotely exclusively; instead, it was our understanding of what it means to work remotely. The question became: how many days a week are we going back into the office? How safe was it to have people crammed into an office at the same time, while there were still seasonal spikes in COVID cases? How could we create hygienic and safe work environments? The simple social contract we had pre-pandemic was not nullified. It was renegotiated. And my prediction that WFH and exclusively remote work was the future was inherently flawed. Cities are heavily reliant on workers commuting. I live in New York City, and the pandemic brought the five boroughs back to the 1980s. Small businesses shut down, restaurants were closed, and the theater district was decimated. NYC lost its soul and culture. The same goes for the other major cities in the U.S., especially San Francisco, which has only recently regained its normalcy. The commercial real estate industry is vital to the U.S. economy. If people aren't going to offices, leases are broken, and loans default, we would have another Great Recession. We need businesses to pay rent. Office space attracts commuters, who purchase breakfast and lunch from local businesses, who in turn pay taxes that support their local municipalities' infrastructure and growth. It's a positive feedback loop. And, most importantly, human interaction. Humans are social beings. Zoom and Teams meetings and happy hours saved our sanity in 2020 and 2021, but there's nothing more important to mental health than physically being around other people, whether you like them or not. Along those lines, CEOs of companies of all different sizes are using company culture as the main reason for creating RTO policies. I, professionally, believe that companies can only maintain, control, and enhance their cultures by having people in the office interacting, gossiping, brainstorming, and engaging in all the activities we were doing before 2020. I also professionally believe the company culture reason is being overused, abused, and twisted. The New Social Contract: The Hybrid Model As a recruiting professional, I can say that my recruiting strategy is back to where it was pre-pandemic: focusing on finding local candidates. I do executive recruitment and contingent staffing. Contingent staffing is a fancy term for temporary workers and contractors. Temporary and contract workers are the only subset of U.S. workers who can work remotely. This comes down to both cost and efficiency; temps and contractors are working on specific projects that have a beginning and an end. Companies engage contractors to help with projects that need to be completed without having to bring on permanent employees who require benefits, paid time off, and are eligible for bonuses. From an executive recruitment standpoint, I work primarily in financial services, so I can say that, based on empirical evidence, foreign banking organizations are my only clients that require their employees to be in the office five days a week. My fintech and crypto clients are the only ones that are open to fully remote employees. However, they are becoming less open to that option. They want people in the office. As a corporate culture, we have settled on a hybrid model, which we refer to as either two or three days a week in the office. The other days are WFH days. This is common across industries, as a Pew Research Center report in January indicated that 75% of survey respondents have employers who require some time in the office, and 72% of workers even indicated they prefer hybrid as opposed to working remotely full-time. Company culture only exists when people are in the office at the same time. Many companies have hybrid models that require employees to be in the office two or three days a week. It is useless and inefficient (and perhaps counterproductive) to have people come in on random days or whenever they choose. You are not building a company culture if employees come in on Mondays or Fridays to be on virtual calls all day. I highly recommend that, as you refine your RTO policy, you make sure that employees are in the office on the same days so they can interact in person, build relationships, maintain a healthy mindset through socialization, and get face time with executives who make decisions on promotions. Having people waste time commuting only to spend time doing what they could have done at home is going against the new corporate culture and social contract.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Blackstone Gobbles Up Another $2 Billion In Commercial Real Estate Loans
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Private-equity giant Blackstone (NYSE: BX) recently acquired $2 billion in discounted commercial real estate loans. The company has been aggressively buying commercial loans for much of the last two years, and the latest acquisition brings the total value of its shopping spree to $20 billion. Blackstone bought these loans from Richmond-based lender Atlantic Union Bankshares (NYSE:AUB). Although most of the loans are performing, Atlantic Union made them before interest rates started increasing, which has significantly diminished their value. Blackstone was able to use the loan's decline in value to negotiate a 7% discount off their face value. Don't Miss: Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's , starting today. $100k+ in investable assets? – no cost, no obligation. Buying discounted commercial loans is one of Blackstone's major profit centers, and the current state of the commercial market is creating ample opportunity for Blackstone to make new acquisitions. The runup in interest rates has put many regional lenders in a difficult position. Many of them began lending aggressively in the commercial sector after the 2008 financial crisis led the Federal Reserve to dramatically lower interest rates. They viewed commercial loans as safer than residential loans, and the size of the deals made them extremely profitable in the short term. Many banks got overextended, although they didn't necessarily realize it until the Federal Reserve began rapidly raising rates after the COVID crisis. The crisis caused vacancy rates to spike, which led commercial real estate owners to lower rents. Together, these factors drastically reduced property values and investor returns. The kick-on effect for commercial lenders is that many of them found they were holding loans on properties that were upside down. Several regional banks went under because the unrealized losses in their commercial loan portfolios exceeded the bank's total assets. Other banks sought to prevent that possibility by selling off large tranches of their commercial loan portfolios at a discount. Trending: BlackRock is calling 2025 the year of alternative assets. That's where Blackstone comes into the equation. Blackstone's most recent purchase comes on the heels of Atlantic Union's April merger with Maryland-based regional lender Sandy Spring Bancorp. A majority of the discounted portfolio Blackstone purchased consists of loans that originated with Sandy Spring. According to the Journal, discounting Sandy Spring's portfolio was a condition of the merger agreement. The Journal also speculates that there could be an uptick in loan portfolio sales if merger activity among regional banks continues to increase. A more relaxed regulatory atmosphere under President Donald Trump could pave the way for that scenario. In the meantime, there is no indication that Blackstone is slowing down its acquisitions of commercial loan portfolios. It remains to be seen if Blackstone's approach will pay off in the long term. Acquiring the loans at a discount, plus having them secured by underlying commercial assets, may be enough protection from the downside potential, but there is no guarantee. The commercial sector must exhibit sustained momentum over several years to reverse its slide. If that happens, Blackstone's discounted loan portfolios could be a big winner for investors. Read Next: In terms of getting money back, . Over the last five years, the price of gold has increased by approximately 83% — Investors like Bill O'Reilly and Rudy Giuliani are . Image: Shutterstock This article Blackstone Gobbles Up Another $2 Billion In Commercial Real Estate Loans originally appeared on
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Edmonton City Centre mall owner goes into receivership
The company that owns Edmonton City Centre mall and three attached office towers in the downtown core is in receivership. A court order granted on Monday put accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in charge of managing and operating assets owned by Edmonton City Centre Inc. That includes the mall, TD Tower, 102A Tower, Centre Point Place and building parkades — in total, about 1.4 million square feet of office and retail space. Montreal-based commercial real-estate lender Otéra Capital Inc. filed a statement of claim last week seeking the receivership order. According to the filing, Edmonton City Centre owes Otéra nearly $140 million under credit agreements struck in August 2019. The statement of claim alleges Edmonton City Centre defaulted on the terms of two loans, with an initial failure to make a required payment in December 2024, followed by further missing payments. Otéra agreed to hold off on taking further action until July 1, but after making a final demand for the outstanding amounts, filed a lawsuit on July 2. In a legal brief outlining arguments for the receivership order, Otéra representatives said City Centre is a "complex property" that needs active management by a receiver during the sales process. "Otéra's security needs protection and safeguarding from waste because City Centre is not being properly funded and maintained," the brief says. In a statement to CBC, a representative for LaSalle Asset Management — one of the named beneficial owners of Edmonton City Centre — said, "Unprecedented market shifts in recent years have created unique challenges for this property. "We've worked closely with all parties, including our investors and lender, to find the best possible resolution. Edmonton City Centre remains open and committed to providing service to all its visitors." Edmonton City Centre has lost several large tenants in recent years — Hudson's Bay shut down its store in 2020, and Sport Chek pulled out in 2023. A former Coles bookstore location also shuttered in 2022, but a new Revolver location recently opened in its former space, selling records, movies and pop culture items. CBC Edmonton is also a tenant in Edmonton City Centre. Mall key to 'trajectory of downtown' Edmonton Downtown Business Association CEO Puneeta McBryan said news of the receivership isn't necessarily a surprise to people who live and work downtown. "We know that the asset owners have been pretty stretched for some time," she said. Challenges bringing people and businesses back to downtown Edmonton after the COVID pandemic are nothing new, especially as a significant portion of the downtown workforce began working from home at least part of the week. But McBryan said struggles for Edmonton City Centre started earlier, with the January 2020 closure of Holt Renfrew in Manulife Place, which is connected to the mall. Many downtown shopping centres across the country are struggling, McBryan said. But in Edmonton, there's just too much retail space for the current size of the downtown population. "So we need to do two things: We need to rapidly grow our population, which we're working on trying to get more residential built, but likely also demolish or repurpose a huge portion of our retail." The Edmonton City Centre property stretches from 101st to 103rd Street in between 103rd and 102nd Avenue. At the intersection of two LRT lines, with Rogers Place just to the north and Churchill Square, the Winspear Centre, Citadel Theatre and Art Gallery of Alberta nearby, it's a consequential piece of downtown. "It's this sort of wall right now at the centre of our downtown. And what happens in the mall is inextricably tied to the trajectory of our downtown," McBryan said. "I think whoever comes next, whoever buys the asset … we're all crossing our fingers that that happens soon, and it's someone with a really good plan. They should bring in an expert and really put together a strategy that reimagines this property for what our downtown really needs and what the market will actually support."
