west north

An NY Times article about urban hotels incorporating green construction technologies mentioned the first in what could be a chain of ALT Hotels, now under construction in Brossard, as part of a lifestyle center on Montréal’s South Shore. Several features — the building’s straightforwardly boxy look and uniform, $129-per-room pricing — raised my suspicions, confirmed by this:

In order to offer a quality hotel at the lowest possible prices, Groupe Germain and its Quebec partners have developed a totally new construction concept: the prefabricated room. Prefabricated rooms are currently being built at Rénova in Plessisville, one of the Group’s long-standing partners.

Finally! A modular hotel! A “Super Hotel” saved me late one night in Matsumoto: a tidy and super-efficient (bunk beds!) room for $67. All rooms were exactly identical, and the hotel appeared to have been built, Lego-like, from modular blocks; only the ground floor differed, and it housed a walk-through lobby, a continental-breakfast bar with lunchroom style seats, a business center, a little onsen and locker room, and the ubiquitous vending machines. The bathrooms, in particular, were definitely prefab, but still incorporated the latest in Japanese integrated bidet technology.

Not only the prefab construction cut costs, but the relative lack of unnecessary frills: the front desk staff doles out towels and toiletries upon check-in; a keycode printed on your receipt replaces actual keys; and everyone’s forced out of the hotel for cleaning during midday. (This being Japan, robots were undoubtedly involved.) I’ve always been an undemanding but cheap traveler, and this no-frills approach matches that pretty well.

Top 10 US air markets Originally uploaded by Payton Chung

I’d read before that NYC-CHI was the nation’s busiest air route, but here’s some proof in that pudding courtesy BTS. What always depresses me about flying this route (and I account for 0.0003% of that bar) is that there’s no adequate ground alternative. The only direct Amtrak service pulls into Penn Station around 7 PM, necessitating an extra night’s stay in NYC (over and above the night spent aboard the train). Not very effective, especially when average hotel rates in Manhattan are over $300/night.

Even more depressing? Back in 1938, trains made the NYC-CHI run in 16 hours, not the 21 hours it takes today. That’s right, it takes 31% more time to travel in the 21st century than it did during the Great Depression. (Oh, and the trains then? “[S]plendiferous… a speak-easy style midsection with side-seat nooks… like an intimate cocktail room.”) That “intimate cocktail room” (the Pennsy’s Broadway Limited) arrived at the old Penn Station at a much more reasonable hour: 8:30 AM. My, how our nation has declined, although I suppose we have more gizmos now.

The other thing this graph illuminates is the business logic underlying recent gossip about a merger between United and Delta. Currently, three of these top 10 routes connect two UA hubs: IAD-ORD, LAX-ORD, and DEN-ORD. Just ATL-JFK connects two DL hubs; ATL-MCO runs between a hub and a focus city. The respective carriers dominate 40-60% of the market on those routes, since they have strong local customer bases at both ends and high frequencies between.

However, three more connect UA and DL hubs: JFK-ORD, ATL-IAD, and IAD-JFK. That gives a combined carrier load-balanced, hub-to-hub frequencies on eight of the ten busiest air routes in the country, with the other two (NYC-FLL and CHI-LAS, both leisure routes rife with discounters) at least originating in one of the hubs. Even Pan Am (whose international route network, minus the Latin American routes that United tossed away, would be rejoined) never had this kind of a domestic network.

The strengths that Delta brings domestically are its Atlanta fortress, JFK gateway, and focus cities in competitive Boston and Orlando. If this merger takes place, Delta’s hubs at Salt Lake City and Cincinnati will go: Denver serves twice the population and 2.5X the passengers as SLC, and CVG accounts for just 4% of DL’s mainline boardings, just 29% of which is local traffic. JFK and IAD can work side by side: UA enplanes nearly twice as many mainline passengers at IAD as DL does at JFK, and IAD has growth potential which “intensely dungeonlike” JFK lacks.

Of course, all this dances around the real business logic behind putting UAL on the auction block, as described in the Motley Fool:

Upon a change of control in the airline, however, United’s latest proxy statement says that [UA's CEO Glenn] Tilton’s stock options would immediately vest, entitling Tilton to $24 million in compensation. If he was forced out of the executive suite within two years of the merger’s completion, he’d also receive an additional $12 million.

Q. In the post-auto age, what will the autoworkers do?

A. “They can make BICYCLES, naturally.” And, in Portland, not only has a local-loop, labor-intensive, high-value-added, craftsman economy coalesced and (re)grown around food, but another has developed around bicycles. One estimate says the number of direct jobs in cycling in Portland has quadrupled. William Yardley reports for the NYT from the thicket o’ hipsters:

[I]n a city often uncomfortable with corporate gloss, what is most distinctive about the emerging cycling industry here is the growing number of smaller businesses, whether bike frame builders or clothing makers, that often extol recycling as much as cycling, sustainability as much as success… [T]he city is nurturing the cycling industry, and there are about 125 bike-related businesses in Portland, including companies that make bike racks, high-end components for racing bikes and aluminum for bikes mass-produced elsewhere…

[City councilor Sam] Adams said he was preparing a budget proposal that would spend $24 million to add 110 miles to the city’s existing 20-mile network of bike boulevards, which are meant to get cyclists away from streets busy with cars. Doing so could “double or triple ridership,” he said…

“I think the biggest thing that’s come from the effort the city has put into this is the vote of confidence,” [frame-builder Sacha] White said, speaking of bike riders and bike makers. “They want us here.”

And, of course, the story’s opening and closing hook? Susan Peithman, who used to work here in Chicago for CBF.

They’re invading, too: I’m curious about the “PDX Lounge” installation I’ve been invited to — a conscious attempt, going even beyond the Canadian products pavilion at Greenbuild Expo, to set up a vision of Portland as an outside-the-[exhibit hall]-box, coordinated, social nexus of sustainable design.

Not really related, but here’s a route map for last week’s Wicker Park Critical Mass. I’m especially proud of the little stretch of Burling (quote: “my, someone’s doing well”) and the winding about in Old Town Triangle (”I love these tiny little streets!”). We even had a few people speaking wistfully about Lincoln Park when it was all over.

Greenbuild is this week, so expect infrequent updates. For conference coverage, see Greenbuild365 (includes keynote videos) and, of course, a blog from Oregonian.

A wrap-up of items from my latest week away:

* Paul Merrion in Crain’s points out that “intense opposition to [refinery] expansion plans following BP America Inc.’s scuttled proposal to dump more waste in Lake Michigan… raise the prospect of even higher prices at the pump if pollution-control technology makes refinery expansion unfeasible.” Well, duh (and that’s a good thing, IMO), but I wonder if all those drivers signing petitions against BP’s expansion realized that they, too, are part of the problem. Probably not, of course.

* Greg Hinz pre-emptively rued this week of fiscal crisis:

the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) will unveil a proposed 2008 budget that, unlike prior versions, almost certainly will be the real Doomsday thing… Mayor Richard M. Daley on Wednesday will unveil his own heaping helping of woes: service cuts and tax hikes that insiders have warned may include a stunning $100-million hike in the property tax… the Cook County Board considers an increase of 2% in the county’s sales tax proposed by county President Todd Stroger… as Springfield squabbles over a proposed property-tax hike that threatens to hit city homeowners with what County Assessor Jim Houlihan says would be an average 40% increase on bills due later this year… “It’s an all-out race to see who can raise taxes higher, faster than others in the race,” says Gerald Roper, president and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

My favorite: city water and sewer rates will go up by $65 million. This, in a city that (this never fails to astonish people elsewhere) has no water meters. That’s right, I of the paused showers and ultra-efficient dishwasher (hey, Californian parents will do that to you) pay the same rate as someone who runs the sprinkler 24/7. Maybe the infamously corrupt water department might consider adding meters, and charging people per use — instead of regressively raising rates across the board?

* Sadly, two fascinating trial balloons that went up last week amidst the tax-hike frenzy got shot down really fast. A tax on parking spaces, apparently floated by the governor (and discussed here last year), appears to have disappeared into the muck. A city gas tax hike, and parking-meter increase, disappeared between last week’s rumors and this week’s proposal. Not that Fran Spielman didn’t get a chance to get a great quote about it:

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said she’s all for doubling the gas tax, but only if the Chicago Transit Authority gets the money. “I don’t think we’re going to get the help we need from Springfield. (CTA funding is) a critical issue for me, and I don’t see anybody paying attention,” she said.

* Andrea Johnson in LiveScience reports on an aerial survey by Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University that found three surface parking spaces for each licensed driver around Purdue. Not quite the seven I’ve seen quoted elsewhere (where’d that come from?), but then again this didn’t count residential garages, on-street parking, or structures of any sort. However, the fact that such a survey was possible

* I scribbled this down about Interbike in Las Vegas, over on Flyertalk:

I’m (hardly) old enough to remember CABDA, the last of the regional bicycle trade shows (and right next to the UA hub at ORD!). Eurobike Portland sounded interesting while talk of that lasted, and with the industry’s recent growth perhaps a competitor could’ve survived.

My employer treats our convention as an honor bestowed upon cities that meet our standards, since our attendees expect to learn from the cities they visit. APBP, Thunderhead, and other bike groups do the same. Granted, I see everything through the lens of the built environment, but wouldn’t it be cool if bike dealers could walk out of the convention center and see… people bicycling, thanks to good facilities and a healthy local bike culture? Maybe then they’d start to get excited about the changes possible in the communities outside their own shops — a great way to build overall demand and sales.

* A photo of me by Hayley Graham accompanied this Chicago Journal article about the Pilsen Park(ing) Day action.

* Counterintuitive: facing losses in 2005, CalTrain (which has a unique combination of an hourly pay structure and nearly equally balanced loads) worked its way out of a deficit by expanding service, particularly faster express trains. Fewer stops = more runs with the same crews. A virtuous-cycle, revenue-growth approach to budgeting, rather than the vicious-cycle, cost-cutting approach — they’d be easier if only transit captured more of the value it created, of course.

* NYC’s public-service bike safety ads carry the simplest, stupidest, but most necessary message possible: Look.

* I typically dislike freeway-median transit — it inhibits the potential for pedestrian friendly, transit oriented development, since the stations are necessarily embedded amidst stinky cars — but I could get behind Mark Oberholzer’s idea:

integrating turbines into the barriers between highway lanes that would harness the wind generated by passing cars to create energy. “Opposing streams of traffic create really incredible potential in terms of a guaranteed wind source,” Oberholzer says… “The technical problems of tying into the grid and managing the flow made me think of putting the power to a different use,” he says. “I’m pretty excited about integrating a subway or light-rail train right where the barrier is. I love the idea of siphoning off electricity generated by private transportation to run public transportation.”

Following up on the resort front, it’s interesting that Canadian ski operations giant Intrawest up and “bought” the town of Seaside last year. (Not really: just the cottage rental operation, i.e., the “hotel” operation side.) Intrawest has a “Placemaking”:http://www.placemaking.com division whose job is to build adorable little apres-ski mountain villages at its resorts, and it’s recently sought to diversify its portfolio in recent years — including investments elsewhere on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

According to Leah Stratmann in the Defuniak Herald last March (cutely titled “Selling Seaside by the Seashore”):

bq. [T]owns are not generally for sale, yet rumors about the sale of the “town” of Seaside swirled around south Walton County like a windstorm last week… “Like Seaside, Intrawest believes in creating a complete community experience. Like Seaside, Intrawest believes in the value of preserving a community’s sense of place. But beyond philosophy, Intrawest has solid processes, resources and experience at the ready for a successful rental management program. We believe our business approach will provide Seaside even more success and stability.”

It’s interesting to think that maybe “ownership” of Seaside might translate into a stronger commitment to placemaking throughout its operations.

On the back of a ticket stub: “[Denver Art Museum] programs are funded in large part by the citizens who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.” It’s nice to make these sometimes obscure special taxing districts a little more visible — and the cute little logo doesn’t hurt, either.

bq. “This is what I did with my nightclubs and hotels and I intend to do with people’s homes” [says Ian Schrager]. Imagine that: coming home and finding a shrieking gay Cuban bouncer with a clipboard on the door; three peroxided trust-fund brats with added silicone bits, all talking at once, locked in the bathroom; and a family from Idaho in town to see The Producers asleep in your bedroom… They boast that [a key decorative element is] an extrapolation from New York City street graffiti. So, after they clean up the street and move out the kids who do the graffiti, they offer you chic designer graffiti instead. No one seems to have noticed the irony of this or, indeed, seen the writing on the wall.

– A. A. Gill, taken aback by designer glass condo towers in NYC, writing in Vanity Fair

Here’s a first for me: bought a pair of pants recently. (Being at the thin end of America’s ever-widening size spectrum makes this a considerable challenge; indeed, this was from one of the few chains which carry my size.) In the fitting room, I thought “these are definitely too wide” but otherwise thought them fine. Once home, brought out the measuring tape and — sure enough — the tape says they’re 3″ wider than the label!

I’d heard last year that a certain large apparel chain had begun inching up men’s pant sizes (34″ was really 34 1/2″), but that chain had already excised my size years ago. Oh well; instead of hopping to New York to buy clothes, I guess I’ll have to try London and Hong Kong.

The future looks bleak and lonely for Marshall Field & Co., according to “the Trib’s”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0607230300jul23,1,4982727.story?coll=chi-business-hed Sandra Jones:

bq. Federated, for the most part, isn’t using the mothballed brand names in any substantial way. And the retailer has expressed no interest in selling or licensing them. But it doesn’t want competitors to gain access to the names, either. It’s a common tactic, and one that has become more widespread, particularly in the technology industry, as American business consolidates.

I must have written this in 2001 or so; it was posted to the Critical Mass list.

My deep hatred of cars stems first from having grown up in ugly,
inaccessible suburban sprawl. (Only later did I realize the magnitude of
the environmental damage wrought by cars.) Sprawl was *enabled* (note: not
“caused”) by widespread automobility; cars allowed people to exponentially
increase the distance that they could live from train stations,
workplaces, shopping areas, even friends and family. “Clean” cars, even if
they have limited ranges, won’t do ANYTHING about traffic congestion,
about sprawl, about parking woes, about dooring. To fight those, we need
*fewer* cars, not necessarily *cleaner* cars.

Also, “clean” cars still require far more materials (for construction)
than mass transit or bikes or Rollerblades or scooters or even Manolo
Blahniks. “Clean” cars are still far heavier than the pedestrians they’ll
run into (and thus kill). “Clean” car motors are still nowhere near as
energy efficient as a pair of human feet. (Even a very efficient, tiny VW
is one-twentieth as efficient as a bike - mostly because of the added
weight, but also because car engines are notoriously inefficient. Only 1%
of the energy a car burns goes to move the driver!) “Clean” cars are
currently heavily reliant on nonrenewable fuels like methane (CNG), but
cyclists use renewable (and tasty) fuel.

this was my comment from another thread on this topic a few months ago
(thanks to Jim Redd for helpfully putting it on the CCM website): “Even if
every car on the road was powered by corn oil, cars (and SUVs) would still
be cutting us off, dooring us, running us over, recklessly accelerating,
clogging up city streets (in motion and while parked), consuming tons of
nonrenewable resources in their construction, fostering the continued
growth of suburban sprawl, shutting people off from each other and from
fresh air, leaking nasty fluids into parking lots, and in general making
life miserable. That’s why the only ‘clean’ car is… a bike.”

If we completely get rid of cars, what are you going to tell all those union
workers who want to preserve their automaker jobs?
What jobs are you going to give them if they aren’t going to make
alternative cars? The auto industry employs a lot of people.

they can make BICYCLES, naturally. I’m not kidding, either. This “what
about the economic impact?” straw-man argument is always held up whenever
someone wants to do something good for the environment. I’m sorry, but
economics is not a zero-sum game. If demand for a certain product suddenly
and precipitously drops, then the money spent on that product will
reappear elsewhere in the economy. Indeed, given the immense social
*costs* of automobiles, one could probably make a pretty good case that
their production and consumption is a net loss or (at best) only a
marginal gain to the U.S. economy — especially if one factors in the
enormous opportunity costs involved. The $billions that automakers spend
every year on advertising, for instance, could be more productively used
feeding the hungry — but the twisted logic of capitalism misallocates
those resources to an endeavor of dubious ethical or economic merit.
(Advertising, after all, exists to sell otherwise unnecessary goods to
otherwise unwilling consumers.)

Besides, auto production is not very labor-intensive. Hundreds of
thousands (if not millions) of American jobs in auto production have been
moved overseas or eliminated due to technological change. Bikes, solar
cells, and adobe walls (just three examples of sustainable technologies)
use less *energy* in production than cars, nuclear power plants, and
drywall, but are more labor-intensive. As energy prices increase from
their currently absurdly low levels, that trade-off will make more
economic sense. More jobs, less energy, a cleaner environment. Aaah.

[xpost: "Gristmill":http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/6/21/20825/2413]

Contrary to popular belief, most developers don’t bulldoze Bambi solely to satisfy their innate avarice. Instead, they pave the Earth at the bidding of their clients — by which I mean lenders and investors, not homebuyers, office tenants, or other such “end users.” Regardless of how exciting and cool a development proposal is, it just won’t happen if some faceless banker doesn’t advance a big pile of cash.

As rapacious national banks swallow smaller, local competitors by the dozen, these lending decisions have increasingly fallen to bankers blindly applying generic guidelines. The result: a paint-by-numbers landscape of interchangeable (but financially safe) subdivisions, strip malls, and office parks. Any developer who dared to innovate (say, by developing on “a brownfield site”:http://www.realestatejournal.com/propertyreport/newsandtrends/20060418-haughney.html)would have to do so on his own dime — and sure enough, many pioneering examples of New Urbanism have been backed by “nontraditional” investors like “old-money families”:http://www.mashpeecommons.com, large corporations (like “Microsoft”:http://www.issaquahhighlands.com/MultiuseProject.html, “Disney”:http://www.celebrationfl.com, “EDS”:http://www.legacyinplano.com/community/town_center.aspx, and “Ebsco”:http://www.mtlaurel.com/our_vision.cfm), and even charitable foundations. Despite growing interest in “socially responsible investing”:http://www.socialinvest.org, few investors have thought of how to clean up the picture in the building industry — source of, “say some”:http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek06/0203/0203globalwarming.cfm, half of America’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, Philip Langdon of “New Urban News”:http://newurbannews.com/InvestpoolJune06.html reports on a new generation of private-equity investment funds have started up to match socially responsible real estate investors and leading-edge developers. Green developer extraordinaire “Jonathan Rose”:http://www.rose-network.com, of New York, sees his new “$100 million fund”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/business/businessspecial2/17leeds.html?pagewanted=2 as an investor alternative to “buying stocks in REITs [Real Estate Investment Trusts, publicly traded corporations whose primary business is real estate] which are based on sprawl.” Perhaps the most promising is the $100 million Green Living Fund, based in Santa Cruz and launched by Kacey Fitzpatrick:

bq. Fitzpatrick, cofounder and vice president of sustainability at the Green Living Fund, said her pool is the result of a desire “to promote the right kind of development.” She observes: “Our goal is to promote the creation of vibrant, pedestrian-oriented, walkable communities with a mix of uses and a mix of housing types and incomes. Transit is a key piece of what we are doing.” The fund will use “the LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] standards for “Neighborhood Development”:http://www.usgbc.org/leed/nd as the criteria for our initial assessment of a location,” she says. Buildings will have to qualify for at least a LEED-Silver designation.

Whereas Rose hopes to raise funds from private and nonprofit investors, Fitzpatrick (an architect by training who hopes to make a bigger impact) hopes to gain substantial funding from public pension funds. If these funds successfully quantify the financial benefits of investing in green development, they could attract more investment, thereby mainstreaming now-unconventional forms of development.

I often liken the process of changing the way America builds cities to turning around a giant ship; many will be frustrated with the slow pace, but taking a trillion-dollar industry optimized to efficiently turn forests and fields into sprawl at the rate of five acres a minute means a lot of change. If investors — the ones paying for the bulldozers — catch on, we can count on those bulldozers being used far more gently in the future.

“Wal Mart Watch”:http://walmartwatch.com/battlemart recently posted Battle-Mart, where “you’ll find the resources to draw a line in the sand and defend your community.” Sections include a BattlePlan, updates on strategies from around the country, and a blog by anti-Wal crusader Al Norman.

Why make an example out of Mall*Wart? “Charles Fishman”:http://www.fastcompany.com/online/77/walmart.html has a clear-headed exposé of the corporation’s impact on America’s macro-economy in, of all publications, _Fast Company_. Perhaps the most succinct sentence:

bq. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: “We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world — yet we aren’t willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions.”

The conventional wisdom doubts that space for really funky stores could ever be financed. Well, one interesting experiment in doing so appears to be under way in Toronto, where the the developers of the Distillery District, a brownfield complex near downtown, have filled their buildings with cool local artisans. Sure, many cities have Artspace projects for subsidized studios downtown, but the Distillery District “is an initiative of private entrepreneurs on privately owned land with no public support.” Seems to get good reviews, too.

The same model appears to work for the Urbanspace Property Group in the office market, as well — notably the Centre for Social Innovation shared space for small nonprofits, but also in their pioneering rehab of 401 Richmond and its activation of the King-Spadina area.

[posted at craigslist forums/housing]

“In 2004, 36% of properties sold were second homes, the bulk of them purchased as investments.”

a cautionary tale:
my uncle sunk a few $mil into apartments overlooking downtown LA during the late ’80s boom. since WW2, LA real estate had consistently returned great yields, and he’d racked up a fortune in small deals. the ’80s saw a tidal wave of money wash up on the beach: defense contracts rained from the sky, the bubble in Japan spun off billions that completely remade downtown, interest rates were way down, new tax laws encouraged speculative construction, thrifts were practically giving away cash, it was an up and coming neighborhood with strong population growth from immigration. it was a CAN’T LOSE proposition. everyone was doing it! and it had worked for so long!

fast forward to 1990. the aerospace industry was in freefall, the dozens of new skyscrapers and malls downtown were eerily dark at night, people were fleeing the city, racial tensions were about to boil over into the streets, and prices were down 30%–if you could find a buyer.

when the tax lawyers came in to process his estate, the entire thing was underwater. it all went back to the banks–well, sort of, since many of the banks had also drowned. prices were stuck in the gutter until the late ’90s.

just a warning.

A succinct summary of the brewing economic storm, from Paul Kasriel’s “15 November 2005″:http://www.northerntrust.com/library/econ_research/weekly/us/pc111505.pdf economic commentary:

* McMansions and SUVs ^1^ will not make us more productive in the future.
* Foreign creditors^2^ could start to question how we will be able to pay future interest and dividend payments without resorting to “printing” dollars.
* If foreign creditors should question our ability and willingness to repay them without resorting to the currency printing press, there could be a run on the dollar.
* A run on the dollar would lead to sharply higher U.S. interest rates.
* Sharply higher interest rates would do great harm to household finances and the housing market.
* A sharp decline in the housing market would result in a spike in mortgage defaults.
* A rise in mortgage defaults would cripple the banking system.^3^
* A crippled banking system would render Fed interest rate cuts less potent in reviving the economy.

My clarifications, drawn from statistics he presented:
# Household spending has been the basis of our economic growth in the past decade, with American consumers assuming record amounts of debt to keep up a spending spree: household deficits reached $531.5B in Q3 2005, vs a $108.7B surplus in Q3 1987; household liabilities relative to assets are up 29.8% in the same time.
# Foreign creditors, on a percentage basis, own three times more of U.S. capital stock now than in 1987, and five times more than in 1982.
# Mortgage assets comprise 62% of banks’ earning assets, more than twice the level of 1985.

Downtown office impresario John Buck says in an article by Alby Gallun in today’s Crain’s that his next wave of real estate investments will focus on turning around distressed condo projects in Chicago:

bq. “I feel there’s overbuilding,” Mr. Buck says. “If we’re right about that, then I think there will be more takeovers by the lending community, who we enjoy a good reputation with, and that’s really what our focus will be.”

See? Conservation is useful after all! As quoted in the WSJ: “President Bush took the unusual step yesterday of urging Americans not to buy gasoline if they don’t have to. ‘Americans should be prudent in their use of energy,” he said in brief Oval Office remarks. “Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it.’

My favorite scathing hurricane related editorials of recent days come courtesy of Joan Walsh and the War Room at Salon and, naturally, “the Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01thu1.html.

You know there’s a bubble when… people throw hugely expensive parties for no discernable reason other than “to build buzz.” A NYT dispatch by Abby Goodnough from Miami:

“The food’s got to be better, the lighting’s got to be better, the D.J.’s got to be really good. The new norm is the quarter-million-dollar party.” No expense is spared because the stakes are high: about 70,000 condo units are planned, under construction or newly finished in Miami proper, home to fewer than 400,000 people.

On the bright side, it’s nice to know that Aqua does exist in real life. I’ve never seen so much as a construction photo, only the same old renderings. (The article mentions that the townhouses are moving slowly; I suppose one could have figured that vacation-home buyers, who make up probably 70% of the market there, would prefer condos to townhouses.) As for the gates, the architect reports that it was the multifamily-fearing neighbors, not the style-conscious developer, who asked for them.

A closer look at the plan reveals a nice touch I hadn’t seen before: rotating the center block by about 15 degrees creates two wedges of space, to be planted with fruit trees (mango and citrus). Of course: fruit trees, like everything else, grow unassisted in Miami, and encourage interaction like no other planting, from fragrant flower to juicy harvest. They encourage almost too much interaction in public spaces — people climb up into the trees to grab fruit, breaking branches — but in a semi-private, well policed area they’re more likely to survive.

David Roeder writes today:

Some 46 percent of lenders believe there’s “significant overvaluation” in real estate, said the business turnaround specialists Phoenix Management Services. The firm surveyed 122 commercial lenders. “Belief in the existence of a real estate bubble appears to be gaining some momentum,” said E. Talbot Briddell, Phoenix managing director. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents disavowed belief in a bubble

Since a bubble is by definition a confidence game, it’s in big trouble if the lenders (the ones underwriting the game) begin to back away.

In other news, he also says that construction on the Kinzie Station North residential and supermarket components on the old Milwaukee Road land across/catty-corner from Blommer Chocolate should begin this fall, now that RDM Development and Jewel have cleared plans with the city. (This is remarkable only because Milwaukee, Desplaines, and Kinzie is an integral junction in my bike commute; Kinzie is a great low-traffic shortcut across River North/River West.) Jewel received TIF funds, apparently for infrastructure, a parking deck, and since it will straddle the Blue Line subway. Now that I think about it, though, the Blue Line should continue along Milwaukee Avenue’s alignment and thus under the residential block at the southeast corner of Kinzie/Desplaines, not under Jewel’s site on the southwest corner. Oh well.

Apologies for the absence: I was in Boston last weekend (photos soon) and have been putzing with a new Treo this week. Can’t figure out how to post from it yet, though.

Terry Lundgren threatens to strangle America’s retailing history with his bare hands:

Well, it looks like fewer than 100 malls are truly threatened by the merger. What I’m worried about is the forthcoming death of perhaps a dozen regional department store names — each of them with a longstanding connection to regional histories and, for Filene’s and Field’s, a strong connection to some great American stories. In fact, I’d be genuinely mad if the Field’s name were axed–I’m not even from the Midwest and moved to Chicago precisely because it seemed distant and unknown, and yet the brand still meant something to me upon my arrival. Macy’s, on the other hand, never excited me.

The newspaper accounts I’ve scanned from Chicago, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and New York are pretty evenly split about the chance of Federated retiring Field’s, although the analysts who predict its death seem more certain. In the press conference, Lundgren left the possibility of keeping Field’s and Lord & Taylor alive after market research. On the other hand, there may not be enough ex-May stores in the Upper Midwest to permit Federated to do a full rollout of Macy’s while keeping one or two other brands around.
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