No New Ballparks for a While

Maybe it’s a product of the bad economy, but any plans that you might have seen for a shiny new baseball stadium in your city are being put on hold. One has been pushed back a year, while the other may be on hold indefinitely.

The Miami Herald reports Wednesday that the Florida Marlins have pushed the opening of their 37,000-seat retractable roof stadium, on the old Orange Bowl site, back to 2012. Instead of economics, they blame a recent lawsuit by Miami auto dealer Norman Braman, who challenged the financing of the $515-million project but exhausted all arguments in court.

Grove Alert: Tough Holiday Ahead

The University of Florida’s latest consumer confidence index was released Tuesday, affirming the prospect that this will be the worst holiday shopping season in decades. The November number of 62 is five points above the all-time low recorded by UF back in the summer.

“Virtually all of the economic news this past month has been bad,” says Chris McCarty, director of the UF Survey Research Center. But he added: “The only thing keeping the index up at this point is optimism about the future.”

We shall see how hope for the future translates into retail sales the day after Thanksgiving. All those people lining up outside stores in the middle of the night surely won’t go just to browse.

Distress Signals

We get a lot of press releases about various transactions and trends, and we’re more than happy to share the best of the bunch with you—with a bit of value-added reporting, of course. However, we’re getting a lot of announcements lately, practically daily, about commercial real estate firms forming new divisions dedicated to handling distressed assets.

The GlobeSt.com Florida page had two of these stories from Miami just last week: Related Asset Advisors has been launched to provide financial advice and services for troubled real estate assets, while Colliers Abood Wood-Fay is getting ready to start its own advisory services group.

Grove Sound-Off: What Next for Citi?

The news for Citigroup this week seems to have gone from bad to worse. Monday it announced it would cut 53,000 jobs, including several thousand in Florida, though it didn’t offer many specifics as to where those layoffs will occur.

Now comes word Friday that Citi may sell off part or all of its operations, causing even more trepidation in an already frightening economy. That kind of news most definitely impacts the Sunshine State, where Citi has substantial operations in Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

Grove Alert: BayWalk Stumbles

The St. Petersburg Times reports Friday that the BayWalk retail/entertainment complex in Downtown St. Petersburg is nearing foreclosure after its $17-million mortgage was called. BayWalk opened at the start of this decade and was intended to be a catalyst for the city’s aging CBD.

Helping Those Who Help Santa

A few weeks back, I wrote of a scenario in which few people would visit shopping centers this holiday season. Of course, it is imaginary, but now I’m starting to wonder a little more.

The University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research released the results of a statewide survey Wednesday indicating that consumers plan to spend far less for gifts this year than in 2007, with reductions ranging from just under 20% to more than 50%. Not the kind of news that’s going to ring the bells at Florida retailers toward the end of an already tough 2008.

Visit Florida in November

The latest issue of Real Estate Florida has rolled off the presses, with plenty of news and information about commercial real estate from one end of this state to the other. Click here to peruse our pages online.

Among this month’s featured articles is a cover story on the CRE investment outlook for 2009, with potential buyers waiting for prices to bottom out and banks to unfreeze loans. There’s also a multi-page Women of Influence showcase, an update on the multifamily sector, a market spotlight on Jacksonville, an After Hours profile of a broker who likes to get his surf on (not with a computer, but a real board on water), and plenty of state and regional highlights.

If you’re a subscriber, your copy should show up in the mail soon. If not, fill out this handy subscription form. As always, feedback is encouraged in the comments section of this blog.

Auto Dealers Beating Each Other Down

It is said frequently that a bad economy is a good time to buy a car, as is the case with most other things. Now it’s starting to look like a good time to buy a car dealership, too.

Texas-based Classic Automotive Group says it is gearing up its $15-million bid for a massive Chevrolet franchise near Tampa from Bill Heard Enterprises, which filed Chapter 11 back in September. That price is half of what Heard paid for its 40 acres along Interstate 4 in Plant City four years ago, and Classic’s partners admit that they could never get a deal this good in normal times.

Grove Alert: Schwartz Out at ProLogis

GlobeSt.com reports that Jeffrey Schwartz has resigned as chairman and CEO of Denver-based ProLogis. Schwartz should be familiar to CRE folks in Florida because he was co-founder of Krauss/Schwartz Co. in Tampa, which ProLogis bought in 1994.

Schwartz is credited with having a big role in growing ProLogis internationally over the past 14 years, but now it appears the industrial REIT is going in a new direction that includes scaling back development and cutting costs. Where Schwartz lands, and what kind of parachute he gets, will likely be reported in weeks to come.

Miami Firm Goes Way Out West

In case you missed it, my GlobeSt.com colleague Brian Miller posted an article late last week about Miami-based Group 24 LLC buying a 50% stake in a proposed 40-story condo project in San Francisco called Turnberry Tower. Upon further review, this is the only project with which Group 24 is currently involved.

As is almost always the case, there is more to the story than what was initially reported. We tried finding out more about Group 24 itself and principal Mike Zoi, but admittedly didn’t get much farther than a PR representative who held us off from speaking to Zoi by explaining that he is an “intensely private” developer.

What is known about Zoi, aside from his love of Ferraris, is that he has substantial investments in a number of alternative energy companies. It would be interesting to learn how these future fuels relate to West Coast condos. Maybe we’ll find out soon enough.