The interplay of natural light and architecture is what creates great spaces. In Tanizaki’s essay, he goes on to make the case that modern spaces with electrical lighting are psychologically exhausting—that the eye and psyche are drained by modern environments. Recent studies agree, stating human beings need exposure to the full spectrum of light in order to thrive, and in retail environments, the use of natural light has been shown to not only warm the often times sterile spaces, but also increase sales due to higher energy levels in consumers .
In these dark days of commercial and retail development, we are all looking for a little illumination.
We have a great opportunity to adapt and create spaces that connect us to the quality of light we are designed to thrive in—to draw life back into retail spaces, and to banish the dim or glaring places of our traditional daily commerce. Through the creative use of transparent materials—like crystal clear glazing combined with passive and active shading devices, new technologies—like energy efficient lighting and ambient light level sensors, and sustainable design techniques—like climate-sensitive orientation, we can break down the barriers between inside and outside and between nature and urban life. We can enliven the previous dead zones of our streetscapes and bring transparency to our retail spaces by flipping the inside out, putting core building functions in the center and selling spaces on the perimeter.
I have been fortunate to test these ideas over time with various clients across the globe. My clients Seibu and Sogo—two of Japan’s largest department stores—are a great example of transformation through natural light.
At the beginning of our relationship, a typical store in Japan was designed to 1200 lux and a cool 4000-4500 degrees Kelvin, comparable to shopping in a refrigerator, or morgue that is lit like a supermarket—not exactly a romanced display of high fashion, beauty, accessories and home décor.
These overlit, glaring, narrow spectrum environments create sensory overload to the eye, decreasing perception and creating exhausted shoppers who simply want to get out as soon as possible. Over time we made great improvements on the quality of light in their stores, creating a clear distinction between their stores and the competition – with elegant, layered lighting effects that change from day to night, diffuse lighting effects that removed glare, and creating the opportunity for more dramatic effects in highlighted areas.
The inception of our design (currently under construction) for the Chengdu Landmark development in China was developed from the dramatic landscape and water features of the historic Dujiangyan area, and includes 490,000 square feet of retail at the base. The exterior is oriented toward the adjacent streets, activating streetscape and outwardly- focused retail, entry plazas are created for public gathering, along with interior focused gardens and public plaza community spaces. Light and nature are being brought back into the urban city center.
As Tanizaki notes “..the truth of the matter is that Japan wastes more electric light than any Western country except America.” Now we can do even more with less – through careful use of materials, technology, planning, and sustainable design – we can break down the barriers between inside and out, between nature and urban life, for the enhancement of the quality of life for the individual human spirit and the communities we build in. Now is the time to realize a vision of the new world, our bright future.
Junichiro Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows” is one of the more powerful writings on light in architecture. He writes, “Find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing another creates.”
Don’t you wonder what will be the lasting accomplishments of the federal stimulus package? As well as the intended and immediate impact on individuals? I believe it could greatly enhance the economy of states that agree to strategically allocate their respective share. Today, we discuss stimulus packages not in hundreds of millions but in hundreds of billions and even a trillion or more dollars.
I advocate using a fraction of those billions to statewide and nationally endorse Chicago’s pursuit to host the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016. Let’s use a tiny fraction of those available billions to significantly impact our bid pursuit with a goal to immediately stimulate the Chicago economy through job creation, urban renewal, infrastructure repair and for our own industry to create a new demand for office space.
It is long passed that an Olympic event is only a city event – let’s look at Sydney, Beijing, Athens and in 2012 – London. Each one of those had or will have their full government support. This is no longer just a seventeen day event for a global television audience. In 2016 it is an event that will begin generating global traffic through forward planning by the world’s travel and sport industry and media, establishment of each participant country’s outpost offices, and job creation that will commence this fall with the announcement of the host city.
Is there a current better business use for a few billion of those stimulus dollars? Is not infrastructure and job creation the single most important goal? My good friend Ron Harvey, Vice President of the Australian Olympic Committee, talked to an audience of Chicago business leaders, less than two years ago, about how Sydney benefitted from seven years of build-up, seventeen days of unbelievable free global exposure, and now continues to evidence many years of vibrancy from the transformation of the Olympic Village into a residential and business community.
Long have we believed that Chicago is not a second city to anywhere but actually a world class international gateway. Just a few billion of those very accountable dollars can help us elevate this bid into a powerful challenge. It should not be overlooked that the world applauded America’s choice of Barack Obama as our President, who just like Tony Blair and London would be supportive of his adopted home town winning the 2016 award. So many times, billions of tax dollars are unaccounted for on pet projects with little
or no impact. If we are awarded these billions then they do need to be accounted for, but they will also have a tangible immediate impact on the region and not just Chicago.
Lend your support to Pat Ryan, Mayor Daley and Chicago 2016.
Do you ever feel alone when you read or watch the news? The only one paying income taxes at the prescribed rates? The only one that resisted the urge to buy a bigger house? The only consumer that lives within your financial means? The only business or investment manager with morals and ethics? The only one that is not looking for a government bailout? The only one not getting anything from the bailout?
You are not alone. In fact 80-90% of Americans are with you. 80-90% pay taxes and their home mortgage and hope the government covers the core areas we expect them to cover. Unfortunately, we watch personal and corporate irresponsibility get confused with those that are rightfully worthy of our help. Yes, some people were taken advantage of, some are so unfortunate that health issues or job issues have caused them harm and yes, we need to protect those victims of predatory financial practices. You could even go so far as to say that some companies are long time American success stories and may need a hand to reach those levels that allow them to continue to employ our neighbors and pay taxes; and yes, we should reach out to help all of them, if it is in our collective interest.
However, too often we see the government rushing to the rescue of the undeserving. Whether it’s real estate speculators, bank executives, businesses without a viable model or the family in the bigger house with the fancy cars that lives well over the edge of financial responsibility, why are we there to bail them out or otherwise give them tax advantages? Is it in our collective interest? Are we reinforcing behavior that we find admirable? Where is the logic of “saving” firms that created unsustainable entitlements for themselves? One scary thought is that those responsible to decide where the bailout money goes are the same politicians that have the United States on a similar track as the U.S. auto industry – a model burdened with entitlements and financial mismanagement that ultimately is not sustainable.
Personal responsibility and accountability seem to be pushed aside for the risk-taking executive, the incompetent and the overleveraged consumer who knew or should have known that there was risk associated with their behavior. During the good times those individuals reaped the rewards. Now they stand with hands outstretched looking for compensation as shareholders are wiped out or for debt forgiveness as other Americans continue to make their payments as agreed. I don’t pass judgment on the behavior; risk takers are rewarded when they are right. But why are we bailing them out when they were wrong?
As we approach the 2nd quarter of 2009, several trends are becoming apparent:
Many institutional owners are under pressure to sell assets in order to redeem capital to their investors and, in some cases, to avoid violating loan covenants.
Special servicers for CMBS commercial loans in default appear increasingly willing to provide time to negotiate terms. Many want a pay down in the debt balance – most start foreclosure proceedings at default.
Strong regional and National banks are making more acquisitions and refinance loans, particularly for well capitalized owners. Their terms are often more competitive than life companies and CMBS lenders.
New “private capital” and offshore buyers are entering the market while most public REITs and pension funds remain on the sidelines. Private capital will account for an increasing share of acquisitions in 2009.
As a CEO, getting engaged with your workforce is one the best things you can do to drive performance, engender workforce loyalty, and boost morale. The topic of “employee engagement” is something that many CEOs tend to struggle with. I’ve written before about the critical importance of CEOs and entrepreneurs having an external focus. Long gone are the days where the executive leadership of a company can remain sequestered in their offices with an internal focus on hard metrics. Given the current economic climate it takes far more than cost-cutting to survive. It is the CEO who focuses on the soft metrics of customer centricity and employee engagement that will create sustainable growth in revenue and brand equity. In today’s post I’ll examine the need to have a fully engaged work force.
Before you read any further, I want you to stop and ask yourself the following question: How many of your employees are truly passionate about your company, its values, its vision, its mission, and the role that they play within the organization? Don’t fool yourself; conduct a harsh, critical analysis and come up with a true head count of the passionate employees within your organization.
Your answer to the question above should be a very telling sign about the overall health of your business. Are people just showing up and punching the clock to collect a paycheck, or are they personally consumed and committed to achieving the company vision? Are your employees corporate evangelists serving as a motivating force to be reckoned with, or do they gather in small groups to gripe and complain about all the things wrong with the company and its leadership?
The key to having an engaged workforce is to have a passionate workforce. And the simple truth of the matter is that no single person in the company can instill passion in the ranks like the CEO can. Despite the consensus recognition that employee engagement matters, the enormity of its impact on the company’s bottom line still appears to be misunderstood by most CEOs. I rarely talk to a CEO that doesn’t understand this principle in concept, but yet I rarely see chief executives who put theory into practice.
So it begs the question, why are CEOs listening but not taking action? The answer seems to be that CEOs continue to allocate considerable effort and resources toward engineering the corporate strategy, yet they seem to be unaware of what forces can prevent said strategy from being delivered successfully. Not surprisingly, employee engagement is often the critical missing factor.
As the CEO you must also become the chief engagement officer. Operating in a vacuum and being out of touch is never a good position to find yourself in as the CEO. I have consistently espoused the value of walking the floor, dropping in on meetings on an impromptu basis, taking employees of all ranks to lunch, and any number of other items that focus on raising your internal awareness and creating a passionate workforce.
It is your passionate employees who are the franchise talent (regardless of position) that you should be building around. If you can’t get employees to see the light and become passionate about the company and their contribution, then seek to replace them as quickly as possible. Just as passion is a positive, contagious trait so are apathy and dissatisfaction. Passionate employees are productive, energized, committed and loyal assets. Apathetic employees quickly become disenfranchised liabilities that will hurt both productivity and morale. To drive home the point of how much I value passionate employees, I would take a moderately talented but passionate employee over a very talented but complacent employee 11 times out of 10.
Truly great companies are built around passionate employees. When you walk into a dynamic, thriving company you can sense the passion, you feel a certain buzz and fervor that pervades everything. Contrast this with a company that feels as if it has no pulse. If you’ve ever walked into an organization that feels like corporate rigor-mortis has set in you know what I’m referring to. In today’s economy, the old saying that “the only thing worse than an employee who quits and leaves is the employee who quits and stays” has never been more accurate.
As a leader, you need to understand that your employees not only want to be led, but they want to be led by a passionate leader. Ultimately employees want to be passionate about what they do; in fact, they’ll go to the ends of earth and sacrifice tremendously if passionate about the endeavor. Think of the employees that started off with Gates and Allen at Microsoft, or those that worked with Phil Knight in his garage before Nike even had a name, or those employees that endured the early days with Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google. It was their passion and commitment that helped change the landscape of business, not their starting salaries.
To build an extraordinary company, you must light the “fire in the bellies,” of your workforce. You must get them to feel passion about your organization and to connect with your vision. You must get your employees to engage. As the CEO, your ability to transfer your passion to your employees is the essence of being a great leader, so much so that if you can’t accomplish this, you simply can’t be a great leader. Think of any great leader, and while you’ll find varying degrees of skill sets, intellect and ability, I challenge you to name even one that did not have passion.
It is February 17th, and we are more than half way through the “Winter of our Real Estate Indecision”. Two or three warmer days teased us earlier this month, only to hear that frigid conditions will be returning to Chicago this week. However, we have learned that spring does return, and that is what motivates all of us to anticipate baseball, outdoor dining, golf and hot August nights.
Wow, does it not read like a page from the Wall Street Journal, or a current economic overview? It appears that every piece of good economic news is “blasted” by five pieces sighting layoffs, public companies missing earnings expectations, or one more company filing for bankruptcy protection.
However, we are seeing encouraging signs such as compromise on the passage of the government’s stimulus package, large tenants making commitments to existing projects in the central business district, and at least one company, Prologis, being reported to having received as many as eighty offers on pieces of the 33.23 million square feet of industrial space that they are marketing for sale nationwide.
I try to read only good news, be realistic of the challenges, but spend more of my time strategizing with colleagues on how best to continue to motivate my young professionals, add value to clients and celebrate successes, rather than dwell on the negativity.
Indecision is not an inherent trait that will last – business leaders have thankfully learned from the past that this is a very good time to reshape their workforce, identify talent, reduce expenditures, efficiently plan their space to be more cost effective, and recruit talent that has not been available in the last decade.
Real estate is still an asset that can be valued. It has a determinable income stream that can be valued. Once the future expectations for rent growth are clearly re-established then buildings will be priced accordingly, and product will test the marketplace. Those values will be very different than prices paid in 2006 and early 2007 but new pricing with clear underwriting will start to bring about re-establishing confidence from debt sources to lend once again.
Bottom line, it is a great time to strategically plan, a great time to seize opportunity during this malaise of indecision, and in our industry a great time to add value to each of your clients in their real estate decision making process.
Don’t expect government infrastructure jobs to bail out the commercial real estate industry. A recent story on the Inland Empire area of California shows the limitation of a government-created job market. The 9.5% unemployment rate in the area matches Detroit as the worst in the nation. At the same time, Riverside (one of the Inland Empire communities), has almost $1 billion worth of public-works projects underway or planned, from widening roads to building a new jail. The area illustrates both the promise and the limitations of President Obama’s spending proposal to pull the U.S. economy out of a recession through government infrastructure projects. The commercial real estate market will more closely follow unemployment and investment in the sector, not infrastructure spending.
The fundamental economic problem cannot be solved by government employment and contracting. You don’t have to go far for an example. I visited Havana, Cuba a few years ago and as I watched thousands of people out walking and chatting into the early morning hours on a Tuesday night, I asked my uncle who was born and still lives in Havana, “Don’t these people have jobs to go to in the morning?” He responded, “We all have jobs. We all work for the government. Tomorrow we’ll get to work around noon and do the same thing we are doing right now – chat.” The city of Havana looks like something out of a zombie movie with buildings falling apart after decades of neglect and decay and people spending most of the day without any particular purpose other than looking for something to eat. The system is so dysfunctional Cuba actually imports sugar, one of the few natural resources it enjoys and formerly its largest export. Now the Cuban government’s most effective resource is asking others for aid.
Ultimately the private sector will carry most of the weight to resolve the recession. America needs to make something, invent something; we need to provide a service with value. The government must put more effort into making it compelling to invest, grow and create an environment where businesses are motivated to hire and consumers have the confidence to spend.
Investment and spending will drive us out of this cycle. Uncertainty, fear and lack of confidence along with expanding the national deficit and debt will prolong it.
“Leadership Lessons from Abraham Lincoln” is the second in a two-part series celebrating Presidents’ Day by examining the leadership traits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
In yesterday’s post I examined the unimpeachable character of our first president, and in today’s post I’ll examine the resolve of our sixteenth. It is an astute person who studies history and applies the lessons learned to their present day life as a method for preventing the completely avoidable mistakes that plague many. I hope that these brief examinations into the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln will help you become a better and more effective leader, thus making your path to continued success more pleasant and fruitful.
If I were to take a casual poll asking readers to name our two greatest presidents, it would not shock me at all if Washington and Lincoln would show very well among their peers. However, what I find so interesting in comparing and contrasting these two great men is that while they were both men of staunch character, willing to do the right thing regardless of opposition or public opinion, they were also men who rose to their place in history by taking very different paths.
Washington was seemingly blessed with success at every turn, while Lincoln failed much more often than he succeeded during his lifetime. Even during Washington’s early years, when he was often considered to be brash and impetuous, he was nonetheless considered a bright light and incredibly successful for his age. He was always seeking out positions of leadership and responsibility, and met with very few setbacks.
By contrast, for the majority of Lincoln’s life, he was largely regarded as a person of little consequence, if he was regarded at all. While he sought positions of leadership and responsibility, he was met with continuous challenges and defeats. Interestingly enough, many of Lincoln’s perceived successes ended in failure.
Simply put, Abraham Lincoln is one of the most inspirational case studies in examining the leadership traits of persistence, commitment, determination, passion, conviction and overcoming failure. There is perhaps no greater lesson the world can offer in overcoming failures and understanding the value of persistence than what can be learned from looking at the life of Abraham Lincoln. Born into poverty, Mr. Lincoln was faced with defeat throughout most of his life. He twice failed in business, lost eight different elections and suffered a nervous breakdown.
The following bullet points summarize Lincoln’s path to the White House:
• 1816: Lincoln’s family lost their home and he had to quit school to support them.
• 1818: His mother passed away.
• 1831: He failed in business.
• 1832: He ran for state legislature and lost, also lost his job, and while he wanted to go to law school he couldn’t get in.
• 1833: He borrowed money to start a new business and was bankrupt by the end of the year. He spent the next 17 years paying off the debt.
• 1834: He ran for state legislature again and this time he won.
• 1835: He was engaged to be married and his fiancee died.
• 1836: Mr. Lincoln suffered a total nervous breakdown and spent six months in bed recovering.
• 1838: He sought to become speaker of the state legislature and was again defeated.
• 1840: He sought to become elector and was defeated.
• 1843: Lincoln ran for Congress and lost.
• 1846: He ran for Congress again and this time he won.
• 1848: Lincoln lost his re-election race for Congress.
• 1849: He sought the position of land officer in his home state and was turned down.
• 1854: Lincoln ran for the U.S. Senate and lost.
• 1856: He sought the vice-presidential nomination and lost, receiving less than 100 votes.
• 1858: He ran yet again for the U.S. Senate and lost.
• 1860: Abraham Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth President of the United States.
It was in fact Abraham Lincoln who later said: “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” Lincoln was obviously someone who was more focused on pursuing his goals than being guided by a fear of public opinion or of failure. Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times before he successfully invented the light bulb and he was later quoted as saying: “Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
The bottom line is that great leaders are not easily deterred. While most professionals don’t naturally associate the words “success” and “failure” as having anything to do with one another, under the right circumstances failure is absolutely the best experiential learning tool available. In fact, I would go so far as to say failure is an essential element of becoming successful. You can easily validate this premise by placing any individual under the scrutiny of the following litmus test: if you show me a professional who has never experienced failure I’ll say that person is likely an underachiever who either hasn’t tried hard enough or is very new to the world of business. Great leaders don’t fear failure, rather they fear the loss of what could have been achieved had they not had the courage to press on.
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