The historic Manhattan building at 148 Lafayette St. was just a diamond in the rough when Property Group Partners picked it up for approximately $60.4 million in 2007, and now the office asset, buffed to a shine, has traded for approximately $131.7 million.

Roosevelt University in Chicago has its institutional eyes focused on an ambitious building project that’s starting to come online: a “vertical campus,” a $118 million, 32-story, 413,000-square-foot building that includes student housing.

Starwood Property Trust has just originated a $170 million first-mortgage loan on a 600,000-square-foot complex that will be called One SoHo Square in the city’s Midtown district.

Debt financing has returned to the commercial real estate markets, deleveraging will likely continue over the next few years and the stream of distressed loans will continue to flow into the market, according to speakers on financing panels at the 2012 ULI Spring Meeting held last week in Charlotte, N.C.

Some of the services firms have seen some major personnel shifts of late. Peter Bacille is joining UBS as the global head of real estate. CBRE CEO Brett White will retire, succeeded by Robert Sulentic. And Brookfield has made two major changes in anticipation of a new portfolio launch.

Consumer sentiment spiked to its highest level since early 2008. This year’s Mother’s Day spending is predicted to have reached $18.6 billion, up 8 percent from last year. And Greece seems increasingly likely to exit the euro zone, which would be unprecedented.

With no signs of weakness in Northern Virginia’s data-center market, Digital Realty Trust is preparing to expand its Northern Virginia campus in Ashburn, Va. The REIT has just kicked off construction of a 214,000-square-foot facility at the complex.

There was some moderately good economic news, but some worrying trends also emerged. CPE’s economic analyst, Dees Stribling, gives his podcast for the week ending May 11, 2012.

Aveo Pharmaceuticals just inked a lease for 126,000 square feet of laboratory and office space at BioMed Realty Trust’s 280,000-square-foot property at 650 E. Kendall St., marking another life-sciences transaction in the Cambridge, Mass., market.

In a transaction valued at approximately $289 million, Glimcher has acquired an 80 percent indirect interest in Pearlridge Center, a 1 million-square-foot shopping mall in the community of Aiea, in metropolitan Honolulu.