10Sep
There are a few down sides to the new Cowboy’s stadium being so much closer to Fort Worth. Traffic being one of them. In an attempt to alleviate the issue the city is trying to find logical places to shuttle in large amounts of people. Residents at the T&P Lofts are not to happy that this hits so close to home with them.
Apparently there had been talk of utilizing the loft’s visitor parking along Lancaster to provide shuttle rides to the new stadium. This has met with some residential resistance, and it is my understanding that city is promoting parking along Vickery as an alternative. A $5 Dollar parking fee and another $5 ride fee should take you all the way to the stadium.
I can sympathize with the T&P residents, but it seems that this would be a good thing for the south end of downtown. If they really want to build vickery up to be pedestrian friendly this would be a great draw. Surely there will be some congestion added, but it’s relatively rare and seasonal. Also part of living in a growing and thriving city center. Perhaps some gains in our public transportation could aid this cause further.
24Aug
Here’s an interesting article talking about revitalizing vacant commercial and retail properties. Unfortunately thought, some do go unused.
Some time ago I wrote about the Big Box Blues, that is to say, what do we do when all of these very large chains go out of business? What do we do with all that extra space? It’s find if a local merchant can absorb some of these open properties, but I sure would like to see someone do something really creative with an old CompUSA, or Linens-n-Things. How about a niche library?
Rents really are becoming cheap in a lot of these areas, so you could feasibly start an ultra low cost gym or job training facility. Something that allows the property owner to monetize the property quickly; perhaps even on a month to month contract.
11Aug
Recently I feel like a lot of the market news is tending towards redundancy. Times are bad, and I hate counting the ways in which things have made a downward turn. Often times we have to remember that the problem is not purely economic, but can also be a symptom of over building.
This can be seen in recent numbers highlighting vacancies among retail properties. To be sure there is an economic factor as well, but at some point we have to begin to wonder when we have simply outbuilt the market. Currently there is about an 83.6% occupancy rate in DFW retail properties. This is down from close to 90% in 2005. It isn’t simply just a spurious factor that during this same time frame 22 million square feet of retail space was being built. Ain’t nobody using all that space (net absorption).
And guess where it’s worst? North Richland Hills to the tune of a 12% decline. Remember North Hills Mall? It just stood there vacant while the California owners fought over who would get the remains. While they were in court the entire area saw a serious exodus from retail space.
09Aug
Someone should really keep an eye on the Fort Worth Employees’ Retirement Fund. They haven’t done so hot lately (down about 30%), but who has done well lately. More specifically, I would be a little concerned about real property they may own.
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