Looking Toward Atlanta

You can’t blame commercial real estate developers in Florida for becoming Atlanta Falcons fans this NFL season. But it has little to do with the fact that our three teams down here have four wins between them so far.

Orlando-based New Broad Street Cos. and St. Petersburg-based Sembler Co. remain in the running to redevelop General Motors’ former plant site along Interstate 285 in suburban Doraville, GA. Both firms have mixed-use plans for the 165-acre site that include a new stadium for the Falcons, whose owner Arthur Blank wants to move from the Georgia Dome in Downtown Atlanta.

Marlins Must Make Right Call

Do you love baseball? Do you love it enough to commit a vast amount of your community’s future funds to build the ideal ballpark?

That’s what residents of Miami-Dade County are about to do, starting with city commissioners’ approval Thursday of a new $634-million stadium for the Florida Marlins where the Orange Bowl used to be. It’s taken a lot to get to this point, from a failed legal squeeze by a local business leader to an attempted deal with minority contractors that struck out.

County commissioners are set to vote on the measure Monday, after which cranes are expected to go up immediately in Little Havana and hundreds of much-needed construction jobs will be secured. Yet even before the Marlins break ground, they’re already behind in the count—their new stadium is worth about half the price of New York’s new $1.3-billion Yankee Stadium, and the price is certain to go up in years to come.

Naiop Modifies Its Identity

The group formerly known as the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties has turned its acronym into a noun, emphasizing its expansion into a commercial real estate development association. With 56 chapters throughout North America, including six in Florida, the change is expected to open the way for more membership.

“Naiop is the leading association for the development industry, extending its reach beyond office and industrial product types into mixed-use, medical office, retail and more,” states Thomas Bisacquino, the group’s corporate president in Herndon, VA. “We recognize that our members engage in diverse development opportunities, and our brand expansion supports our vision of advancing responsible commercial real estate development.”

Grove Alert: Proscenium in Peril

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that the $1-billion Proscenium mixed-use project may be drawing to a close. Sales contracts on 18 land parcels totaling seven acres in Downtown Sarasota are expected to lapse later today.

Quite frankly, this project seemed overly ambitious from the outset when it was announced in May 2007. The developers, who had not previously attempted anything of this magnitude, were adamant that it would be finished by late 2010. Maybe they could have pulled it off, absent of this latest recession, but now we may never know.

Southshore Commons Still a Go

Tuesday I told you about NAIOP Florida president Steve Tombrink being dismissed at Equity Inc. in Tampa and expressed a thought about how that affects its massive mixed-use development in south Hillsborough County. I got my answer Wednesday morning, straight from the company chief in Ohio.

Equity CEO Steve Wathen tells me that Southshore Commons, a long-term project eventually covering 128 acres near Interstate 75, is still a go despite a postponement of its original groundbreaking planned this past summer. He says the $280-million project has financing and “will be the shining star of that region” when it’s finished over the coming decade, adding that Tombrink was not involved with it.