Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in.
My guest for this episode is Liz Beardsley, senior policy counsel for the U.S. Green Building Council. I spoke to Beardsley shortly after her return from COP30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held last month in Belém, Brazil.
Each year, nearly 200 countries participate in COP, or Conference of the Parties, to negotiate international treaties, assess progress on previous treaties, especially the Paris agreement, and develop strategies for reducing emissions and strengthening resilience. The U.S. did not send a negotiating delegate this year, and there was no U.S. pavilion. But subnational representatives and the private sector made a strong showing, according to Beardsley.
Resilience was a key focus at the conference along with emissions reduction, Beardsley said. While there has been a significant downcurve in emissions globally, the world is already at 1.2 or 1.3 degrees Celsius, and current Nationally Determined Contributions are not enough to maintain global warming to the Paris agreement's 1.5 degree Celsius target.
"We understand that we need to do more faster," Beardsley said. "That was the focus. It was really on scaling and doing more, not doing less."
Here are some of the topics our conversation covered:
As the daughter of a Washington, D.C.–based real estate private equity executive, Hilary Provinse grew up around the industry, but her early career on a ‘90s Wall Street trading floor shaped her resilience and sharpened her leadership instincts. Today, as executive vice president and head of mortgage banking at Berkadia, she manages a 400-person capital markets team spanning mortgage banking and investment sales.
Provinse is a 2018 CREW Network Distinguished Leader and Berkadia is a CREW Network Gold Level Partner. Commercial Property Executive Senior Editor Laura Valean invited her on the CREW Up podcast for a candid conversation about leadership, career evolution and women’s progress in commercial real estate. Navigating today’s reset in financing values, she reflects on the importance of understanding people’s strengths, building diverse teams and meeting clients where they are.
In this FTI Experts’ Hub podcast, we look back at one of the most pivotal moments in recent commercial real estate history—the early months of the pandemic—through the lens of two specialists from FTI Consulting’s Real Estate Solutions and Real Estate Advisory practices: Jahn Brodwin and Benjamin Steele.
Back in April 2020, as uncertainty gripped the industry, 40-year veteran Brodwin wrote a thought piece titled "The Office Market After COVID-19: Will It Be a Zero-Sum Game?" In it, he explored the opposing forces he believed would shape office demand in the years ahead, and he shared those same ideas in an early episode of FTI Experts’ Hub.
Nearly six years later, his predictions offer a compelling starting point for understanding just how differently the office sector has evolved. In this podcast with CPE Senior Editor Laura Valean, Brodwin examines the assumptions behind his 2020 outlook and reflects on which dynamics unfolded as he anticipated and which surprised him. Joining him is Benjamin Steele, part of the next generation of CRE advisors at FTI Consulting. Steele adds a fresh, data-driven perspective on the sector’s trajectory and challenges some of the 2020 assumptions with today’s realities.
On January 1, 2026, Jim Taylor will officially retire asCEO of Brixmor Property Group. In this conversation, recorded before his retirement was announced this fall, Taylor reflects on his long and eclectic journey in the industry. Over the past couple of decades, he’s traveled what he jokinglydescribes as “a checkered path” that ultimately led to the C-suite at Brixmor.
Before becoming a real estate executive, he was anaccountant, earned a law degree and worked as an investment banker. Taylor’s service to the industry also includes leadership roles in several industryorganizations. He’s been a member of Nareit’sexecutive board and he was the 2024 chairman of ICSC.
During his decade as Brixmor’s CEO, Jim Taylor has overseenan extensive program of reinvestment in the REIT’s 63-property, 354 million-square feet portfolio of open-air centers. As of the third quarter this year, Brixmor’s pipeline of property upgrades encompassed 375 million dollars’worth of enhancements across 35 properties.
In this conversation, Taylor discusses the factors that aredriving growth for open-air centers, how the capital markets view the asset category, Brixmor’s strategy of reinvestment and more. Take a listen.
Episode highlights:
· (1:47) A “checkered path” to the REIT C-suite
· (4:44) The No. 1 factor in company success
· (6:01) Topline trends in open-air centers
· (7:27) Inside Brixmor’s investment strategy
· (9:43) Adding value: works in progress
· (11:37) Disciplined capital allocation
· (13:00) Creating critical portfolio mass
· (14:44) An “unprecedented breadth” of tenantdemand
· (16:18) Why it’s competitive out there foracquisitions
· (18:37) Lenders open the gates
· (19:29) Growth trajectory: 2026 and beyond
Industrial real estate is balancing short-term headwinds with long-term opportunity. While new supply and slower leasing are shaping near-term performance, e-commerce, manufacturing expansion and data center growth continue to drive structural demand.
In this inaugural episode of Inside Industrial, Link Logistics' CFO Matthew Ostrower discusses how the company is positioning for these shifts and using data to stay ahead of market change.
Ostrower oversees corporate finance and also leads strategy and innovation at Link. The company, established by Blackstone in 2019, is the largest U.S.-only owner-operator of last-mile industrial real estate, with a nationwide portfolio of modern warehouses and distribution facilities and customer programs such as the Energy Solutions platform.
“Location really matters—spatial economics is everything,” Ostrower said, noting that decisions increasingly hinge on where long-term demand is most durable. He also outlines how insights from Link’s portfolio guide capital allocation and why he expects momentum to build again over the next couple of years.
Take a listen as Commercial Property Executive’s Diana Firtea explores these themes with Ostrower in the first episode of Inside Industrial.
Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in.
Last week, I attended the Greenbuild conference in Los Angeles where I got to sit down with Rhiannon Jacobsen, managing director of market transformation & development for the U.S. Green Building Council, which hosts the global sustainability event.
If you don't know, Greenbuild is an annual conference that draws thousands of executives from around the globe to talk about making buildings and communities more sustainable. Building resilience was a big focus for this year's program, but so was decarbonization, energy efficiency, the circular economy, wellbeing in buildings, the increasing role of data and so much more.
Jacobsen and I talked about the overall theme of the conference "Better Buildings, Better Futures," about the new LEED v5 and about how U.S. sustainability is faring now that the federal government has rolled back support.
"We see incredible work happening at the city, at the state, at the county level," she told me. "We're going to continue to encourage that, and, of course, we're going to be available to speak with and support federal initiatives."
You can find other highlights from our conversation here:
A year of mixed sentiment across global commercial real estate, with sharp contrasts between regions—this is the main takeaway from the latest Global Commercial Property Monitor released by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in London. While investor confidence is firming in markets such as the U.S., India and the UAE, markets such as China, France and Germany face sluggish demand and subdued outlooks. “Uncertainty around trade, interest rates, geopolitics continue to cloud the outlook as they have done most of the year,” said Head of Market Analytics Tarrant Parsons, in the final podcast episode of RICS Monitor in 2025.
Press play for the full podcast, hosted by CPE Senior Editor Laura Valean!
It’s no secret that the proliferation of AI has propelled data center demand to new heights these past two years. This resulted in unprecedented pressure on the nation’s power grid, leading developers and operators in search of new solutions. In this environment, power availability is the most important factor in developing new data centers.In this inaugural episode of Alternative Disruptors, guest Alex Stoewer, CEO of Greenlight Data Centers, drives home this point. His new company develops 'right-size' data centers, with a speed-to-market approach, capitalizing on pockets of power across the U.S., especially in smaller markets, where it can deliver modern facilities without the constraints that hyperscale projects face."For the majority of data center functions, especially now with AI and GPU-based computing, it's really all about the power," Stoewer said. "The power is the real estate. If you go and gain control of a certain amount of power in a place where a data center is viable, in a place where the latency is reasonable, and you have all the other ingredients that you need—that power is the land, effectively."What's more, Greenlight actively avoids competing with big hyperscalers for that power by targeting locations where obtaining 20 to 50 megawatts quickly is viable. Besides this availability, incentives are also a big factor in the decision-making process. Take a listen as Commercial Property Executive Senior Associate Editor Tudor Scolca-Seușan talks about these issues with Stoewer.Here's a summary of their discussion:
Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in.
For this episode, I'm going inside CRE's power predicament: The U.S. power grid is having a hard time keeping up with ever-increasing demands for power from industrial users and and rapidly expanding data center providers.
My guests for this episode are Josephine Tucker, Americas head of energy and sustainability for JLL, and Meaghan Elwell, global president of JLL’s industrials business within Work Dynamics.
Tucker and Elwell break down the causes of the supply and demand imbalances and the widespread repercussions. They also highlight the innovation that this situation has sparked.
"Right now, what we see is only about 2 percent of land that is industrial zoned is actually ready—build ready with power and utilities already there," Elwell said. "And then on top of that, if the power isn't there, it can take up to six years."
Here are some of the topics we covered:
Demand for data centers has never been higher. AI's rapid advancement and the associated compute requirements have been key drivers of development nationwide.
“Even when potentially facing a large tariff, it’s not necessarily stopping people from developing data centers because it’s a long-term play,” said McRae Thompson, senior managing director & leader of the Real Estate Tax Advisory group at FTI Consulting, in the latest FTI Experts’ Hub podcast episode with Commercial Property Executive Senior Editor Laura Valean.
Tune in to find out what it takes to develop data centers today!
Alison Beddard has a degree in nutrition and dietetics, and was always encouraged by her family to go into the sciences field. But everyone kept telling her she would be great in sales, so she gave it a try and took on a brokerage job. And for three years, she only grew. Then the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 hit, and she lost everything she had built. That’s when she found CREW Seattle—right when she was looking for support and guidance to broaden her professional network.
Get to know Beddard, CREW Network's new CEO, by listening to her conversation with CPE Senior Editor Laura Valean!
When it comes to office fundamentals, Boston truly continues to shine, keeping a leading development pipeline nationally, stable sales and vacancy rates. Yet, the metro did not remain immune to the current economic environment. As construction costs remain high and the life science sector is slowing, landlords now rely less on rent cuts and more on creative incentives, Hunneman’s Executive Vice President & Managing Principal, Peter Evans, points out in today’s episode of Step Into My Office.
From the Back Bay’s resilience, the struggles of Class B space and the rise of amenity-rich trophy towers, Evans explains how Boston’s market is stabilizing and why the next year might be more about finding balance than a rebound. We explore the playbook that supports deals today, which tenants are opting for flex office and debunk some myths around the “flight to quality” movement that took over the office market.
Here’s what we discussed about:
Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in. My guest for this episode is Marta Schantz, director of sustainability for AvalonBay Communities.
During her time at ULI, Schantz was one of the leading voices for sustainability in commercial real estate as the co-director of the Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability and ULI’s GreenPrint Center for Building Performance. And she was a frequent guest on this podcast.
Last November, Shantz left the non-profit side and joined AvalonBay Communities as director of sustainability. So this is the first time she is bringing an in-house expert perspective on decarbonization, green new construction, building performance standards and more to the podcast.
She and I discuss AvalonBay's ambitious environmental sustainability goals, including its sweeping plans for solar energy, and we talk about what she's learned since assuming her new role.
"I was always on the outside with all of my prior roles," Schantz said. "I got to tout all of these best practices, innovative case studies, share the shiniest, newest innovations. And on the inside, it's sometimes a little less shiny, but with a much more direct impact."
Here are some key moments from our conversation:
Macroeconomic instability and tariff talks were front and center in the second quarter, yet the commercial real estate sector showed a surprising degree of resilience, the latest Global Commercial Property Monitor released by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in London found.
What should you expect going forward? "Many of the current themes that are causing uncertainty at the macro level are most likely going to linger through the second half of 2025," said Tarrant Parsons, head of market analytics, in the latest RICS Monitor podcast episode.
Tune in to get all the details!
According to Alex Nyhan, it’s a great time to be a neighborhood retail owner. Booming retail sales, digital retailers’ drive to establish a brick-and-mortar presence, and the desire to get close to the customer are all powering occupancy.
In this lively discussion, the CEO of First Washington Realty tells how the company is bringing fresh ideas to a 140-property that spans 22 states and Washington, D.C. He details a brand-new experiential concept at their property in West Hartford, Conn., as well as a redevelopment project that’s breathing new life into a vintage property in Kansas City.
Nyhan brings an eclectic background to his role as First Washington’s leader. He spent several years working in Latin America between college and graduate school, an experience that informed a challenge he faced years later as First Washington’s CEO.
He’s earned an MBA and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard, served as an adviser for the World Bank and handled complex real estate deals for Washington, D.C.’s economic development department. After making the transition to commercial real estate, he held leadership positions for Forest City Enterprises.
But the diversity of Nyhan’s experience extends beyond real estate. He’s also an accomplished musician who plays keyboards in a band that performs in the Washington, D.C., area. For a change of pace, we’ll even take a few minutes at the end of our conversation to talk music. Take a listen.
Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in.
While the ideal balance between in office and at-home work is still a work in progress for many companies, one thing is clear: Workplace wellness is top of mind for employers even as, or more so, with the definition of the workplace expanding.
My guest for this episode is Rachel Hodgdon, president & CEO of the International WELL Building Institute, which recently announced that adoption of the WELL building standard now exceeds 6 billion square feet.
Hogdgon and I discuss how companies are navigating the ongoing debate about hybrid work and using IWBI's tools to decide what's best for their individual enterprises.
Regardless of how many in-office days employers require, she said, employers—and building owners as a result—are learning quickly that they are now in competition with the home environment.
"If you don't earn the commute by creating a place that is more conducive to at least certain types of work, where employees feel more productive than they could at home, then you're gonna lose out in terms of recruitment and retention," she said.
Listen to the episode to hear more insights from Hodgdon. Here’s a sample of the topics we discussed:
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Dallas may be known for its sprawling layout, business-friendly climate and good fundamentals, but its office sector tells a more layered story. Whereas the vacancy rate is still lagging and some landlords are rethinking their investment strategies due to underperformance and volatility, some fundamentals still shine.
One segment of the office market is defined by outdated buildings dragging up vacancy, whereas the other is led by high-quality trophy assets drawing strong tenant interest. Financial institutions remain the main tenant base, but investors can find opportunities everywhere if they look at the bigger picture.
In this episode of Step Into My Office, I am joined by Newmark’s Head of SE Research, Ching-ting Wang and Executive Managing Director of Global Research, David Bitner, as we zoom into the market’s performance. Although some fundamentals might pose challenges, office absorption across the metro still performs well, especially in submarkets such as Uptown Turtle Creek and suburban areas. The evolution of workplace strategies, paired with current volatility in the sector, calls for caution, but also optimism.Most of the time, it’s about perspective, they say. So, what will shape the next chapter of Dallas’ office market and how is it comparable to other markets across the US?
Here’s what we discussed about:
Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in.
For this episode, I'm talking about mass timber construction with Varun Kohli, director of sustainability for Corgan, a global architecture and design firm with 19 offices.
In a recent study, sustainability and research teams at Corgan joined together to get a better understanding of the lifecycle of mass timber—from forest to installation and beyond—and the variables that impact its use. The goal was to help architects and developers account for all the embodied carbon associated with this increasingly popular building material.
The results of their study are helping dispel some of the myths about mass timber, and a mass timber carbon calculator now sits on the company's website.
" That's really where we want to make an impact," Kohli said. "You can't simply say, 'we want to use mass timber.' Let's get into the specifics of where it's coming from, how it's being managed and see how that impacts your overall carbon emissions."
Here’s a sample of the topics we discussed:
Follow, rate and review CPE’s podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube!
When going through a merger, acquisition or carve-out, you need to act with extreme care to ensure a smooth transition for everyone involved. To avoid pitfalls and subsequent issues, real estate strategy is one aspect that requires special attention.
“CRE leaders need to be involved in those key upfront stages so they know where the business plans to grow and contract in the two to three years post-merger, so that they can configure de footprint and the real estate operating model to meet the business where the business is at the right time,” said Rob Raymond, managing director in FTI Consulting’s Real Estate Solutions Group, in the second FTI Experts’ Hub podcast this year.
Listen to the entire conversation to find out all about the critical questions you should be asking in order to understand the impact of the M&A or carve-out on your real estate portfolio and operating model!
Press play for a conversation on CREW Network Foundation's mission and programs! Chair Gayle Bourdeau talks to CPE's Laura Calugar about all the way the foundation is making a difference.
Bourdeau first learned about CREW Network in 1998 while she was a summer associate in the business department of a title insurance company. She joined CREW Boston in 2003 and since then has held multiple positions within the organization. Today, she is the chair of CREW Network Foundation, dedicating all her resources to accelerating success for women and bringing more young girls into commercial real estate.