Taken as a whole, 2011 was something of a tumultuous year: There was a rally in the summer when the economy looked to get back on track, then the events of the fall–after a debt crisis in Europe as well as re-rising unemployment and the Congressional debt debate domestically–slowed that train. Either way, it was an interesting time for commercial real estate. Here are our top 11 stories from 2011:

Highland Fairview Breaks Ground on Future Skechers Home
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger presided over the groundbreaking of Highland Fairview Corporate Park in Rancho Belago, Calif., which developer Highland Fairview says will be the largest green building of its kind in the United States.

Revel Secures $1.2B for Stalled Casino Project
The entertainment firm has closed on a financing package for the 6.2 million-square-foot Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. Money issues brought most construction activity at the $2.4 billion beachfront entertainment resort to a halt in January 2009, leaving the project half finished.

Philadelphia’s High-Rise Drought Eased by 34-Story Apartment Project
The $104 million project would be the first high-rise in any property category to get underway in the city since the 2008 opening of Comcast Center.

Renaissance Man: As Starwood Capital Turns 20, Founder Barry Sternlicht Explores New Paths
If the commercial real estate industry held a decathlon for executives, Barry Sternlicht would be a serious threat to run off with the trophy, and not just because Starwood Capital Group’s chairman & CEO looks as fit as the tennis player he was at Brown University 30 years ago.

Behind PNC’s Acquisition of RBC Bank USA
RBC has been a major player in the commercial real estate lending sector, and the transaction will now add to PNC’s commercial real estate portfolio.

Facebook Leases New 1 MSF HQ
The nine-building campus, located at 1601 Willow Road about 30 miles south of San Francisco in San Mateo County, materialized over a two-year period commencing in 1993. Oracle came into possession of the asset in January 2010, when it officially completed its $7.4 billion buyout of Sun Microsystems.

Grubb & Ellis in Exclusive Talks with C-III Capital & Colony Capital
The service firm is getting a major infusion of capital from two new stakeholders in a move that could point to a sale or other large strategic investment.

Why Blackstone’s $1.1B Bet Goes Against the Grain
The Blackstone Group’s $1.1 billion acquisition last week of a suburban office portfolio from Duke Realty Corp. challenges conventional wisdom on multiple fronts–and departs from the standard approach of grabbing core office product in a handful of markets.

Health Care REIT Buys Genesis for $2.4B
The sales transaction frenzy in the healthcare real estate sector continues as JER Partners and Formation Capital sign on to sell the company, which comes to the table with a portfolio of 147 properties in 11 states.

CoStar Amps Up Offerings with LoopNet Acquisition
The deal comes as no surprise to those who keep an eye on the ins and outs of the industry. B. Riley & Co. director of research Ian Corydon said, “It has made sense for a long, long time.”

Fannie Mae Reveals Top Multi-Family Lenders
Performance hit a higher level in 2010, with each of the 10 lender partners each contributing a minimum of $870 million in loan volume, compared to 2009’s minimum of $700 million.

Quarry Hill Apartments in Austin

It’s been a busy year for Bell Partners Inc. and it’s not over yet. The company recently purchased three communities encompassing an aggregate 682 units for approximately $76 million. With the acquisition of the properties, located in Florida, Texas and South Carolina, Bell partners has increased its multifamily portfolio to a total of 222 assets encompassing more than 65,000 units.

“Bell Partners is focused on acquiring well located, high quality properties in major markets throughout the Southeast, Southwest, and Mid-Atlantic,” Joe Cannon, vice president of investments with Bell Partners, told Commercial Property Executive. “Our acquisitions are oriented towards unique investment opportunities where we can add value through our extensive operating platform and deep market presence.”

It’s all part of a relatively new strategy. In August, the company announced the sale of the majority of its senior living portfolio to Senior Housing Properties Trust for $300 million, marking a major step in its plan to concentrate on its role as a national leader in apartment ownership and management.

The recent purchases include a 310-residence property in Lake Mary, Fla., Bell Partners picked up the 11-year-old luxury complex, located in the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford area, for roughly $34.1 million. The company also shelled out nearly $21.9 million for Quarry Hill Apartments, a one-year-old, Class A+ apartment community offering 148 condo-quality units in Austin. Bell Partners also added the three-year-old Vinings at Brookfield Apartments in Greenville, S.C., to its holdings. Brookfield is a Class A property featuring 224 residences.

As part of Bell Partners’ recently launched marketing program, all three of the newly acquired assets will carry new names. The apartment communities will be known as Bell Timacuan, Bell Quarry Hill and Bell Brookfield, respectively.

There appears to be no end to Bell Partners’ buying binge as the company moves full steam ahead with its portfolio repositioning efforts. Between April and October of this year, Bell Partners acquired the 284-unit Autumn River Apartments in Raleigh, N.C.; Greensboro, N.C.’s Arbors at Landmark Apartments; The Ansley at Park Central Apartments, a 490-unit luxury property in Dallas; and the 170-unit Midtown Apartments in Nashville.

“We have a bullish view on apartment investment fundamentals for the foreseeable future,” Cannon said. “Development activity is coming off of historic lows, so today’s supply/demand characteristics bode very well for long term value appreciation.”

This year during the 2011 Convention & Marketplace, the Commercial Real Estate Women Network honored five women for extraordinary leadership contributions to the industry. Representing a variety of disciplines, these winners of the Impact Awards—and the top honor, the Achievement of Excellence Award—have orchestrated complex deals as pioneers, negotiators and mediators, while at the same time supporting colleagues and mentoring future leaders. Following is a video featuring their insights into leadership and business success, as well as an extended version of the write-ups on their experiences that first appeared in the November 2011 issue of Commercial Property Executive. For more on the awards themselves, log on to crewnetwork.org.

CPE TV Features: Interviews with the Award Winners

Achievement of Excellence Award/Entrepreneurial Spirit Award

Pamela Bundy Foster
President & CEO
Bundy Development Corp.

Pamela Bundy Foster did not set out to become a real estate developer, let alone partner on major mixed-use projects throughout Washington, D.C. But long before she founded her development company, she knew she never wanted to work for someone else.

Initially planning to become a psychologist, Foster realized it was not for her while doing doctoral work. The Hustle, Va., native instead went to work for 7-Eleven and then Pepsico as a district manager before realizing she had to take yet another direction.

Jobless but financially sound, having recently reorganized her priorities, she took a sales class and discovered real estate. “I knew I didn’t want real estate sales,” she said, so she became an appraiser. A client group with a mid-’90s approach to the Washington market gave her the idea of buying homes inexpensively, then building or renovating and selling them. Between 1995 and 1999, she averaged 10 to 12 houses per year, developing a blueprint for her company and incorporating as Pamela Bundy & Associates in 1996. She did not know much about development at the outset, but growing up in the lumber business had given her a sense of it and she hired people to fill the gaps in her own expertise. “I just wasn’t scared,” she said. “I was willing to learn the hard way, willing to get people to train me, to learn on the job.”

In 1999, she landed her first big deal, assembling a block of properties in Washington’s emerging Logan Circle submarket to develop The Castle, a $3.1 million, 13,000-square-foot condominium property, using ingenuity to win an audience with a tough property owner and distinguish herself. Bundy followed that project the next year with a second Logan Circle project, The Icon, a $5.2 million property that totaled 26,000 square feet. “I’m willing to explore neighborhoods other people wouldn’t,” she explained, naming NoMa as another early focus.

Those projects led to bigger deals, as developers like Lowe Enterprises, The JBG Cos. and Hines began inviting her to bring her condominium expertise to their mixed-use projects. Foster, however, had other plans. Though developers often wanted her to partner only on the condo portion of a project, “my business instincts tell me never to do that,” she declared. Instead, she insisted on a pari passu partnership, teaming with Hines on the $950 million CityCenterDC and Lowe Enterprises on the $220 million City Vista project. Another recent win: a five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity construction management contract for the District of Columbia.

• Goals: Build a diversified real estate company, become an advisor in the company, develop staff members so they can take on more responsibility. “I’m clearly in the line of mentoring young talent—I see that as my biggest opportunity.”
• Greatest Challenges: Raising equity. Aligning principles or base values with people who invest in projects. “Deals work when everybody wins.” Her philosophy: If everyone doesn’t win, I don’t want to do the deal.
• Secrets to Her Success: A risk taker, not too afraid of anything. “And I don’t think I approach real estate in the traditional way.” Always prepared to walk away from deals, believes you should always have an option and be able to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
• Best Advice Received: Take your moment to cry, then get up and move on—and that doesn’t make you less of a businessperson. Never, never give up on yourself.
• Lessons Learned: Be prepared to walk away from deals. She didn’t have to model herself after large development firms to be successful.
• Advice to Women: Don’t be afraid to articulate your softer female views. “I don’t think I did enough of this.”
• Advice to Others in General: Do something each day that makes you scared. “I challenge myself every day.” Don’t be afraid to bring different perspective to the table.

Career Advancement for Women Award (Shared)

Char Fortune
Managing Director, Corporate Services
Grubb & Ellis Co.

Char Fortune has had plenty of experience as a leader in the real estate service business. Her 15 years in senior positions have included five years heading agency leasing and then corporate services groups for Trammell Crow Co. and six years running Southeast corporate services for Grubb & Ellis Co. Given these credentials, it should come as no surprise that she would launch a successful leadership program for CREW Atlanta that has graduated seven classes in the past 10 years.

“Women are smart and can do really well in this business, but there’s not a great critical mass and it’s hard to find people who are like you who can help you,” Fortune said in explaining the thinking behind the program’s creation. She and one-time colleague Lee Eastwood came up with the idea as a means to involve more CREW members in leadership, modeling Leadership CREW on comparable business programs. The year-long schedule is designed to enhance self-knowledge as a route to personal and professional advancement.

Last year, Fortune stepped back in to refocus the program. Working with Eastwood’s business partner, Christine Gorham, she introduced a personal strategic plan that helped attendees better shape their own strategies and goals.

Fortune broke into the real estate business right out of the starting gate. Graduating from West Virginia University with a degree in journalism, she went to work as a receptionist for a real estate developer and contractor in Raleigh. Knowing she aspired to do more, her boss gave her leasing responsibility for an office building and a retail strip center. During her 30-year career, she has been recruited to Cushman & Wakefield Inc., Beacon Properties Corp. and ARES Inc., with a stop at Internet service provider IntelliSpace Atlanta Inc. “My objective wherever I go is to make a difference, to move the needle,” she observed, adding, “You get back what you give out.”

• Goals: “My objective wherever I go is to make a difference, to move the needle.”
• Greatest Challenges: Competing for equal stature with men in the real estate industry.
• Secrets to Her Success: Always behaving as professionally as possible, always learning, always taking the high road, and giving back: “I’m always on that list of people to call.” Being a good listener and asking the right questions to learn about people and win them over.
• Best Advice Received: If you don’t have anything smart to say, don’t say anything at all (mother).
• Advice to Others: “You get back what you give out,” and your reputation is critical, so give your very best effort and always do the right thing. Plus, there are a lot of smart people out there—it’s how you set yourself apart that counts.

Lee Eastwood
President
Eastwood Real Estate Services L.L.C.

Healthcare real estate is attracting quite a following these days, but for Lee Eastwood it was a natural fit. A doctor’s daughter, she started her real estate career in 1978 by leasing office buildings, but her focus took a turn in 1989, when Kaiser Permanente sought to open its first location in Atlanta. She was then working for Faison and representing the Lakeside Office Park, where she saw an open space as ideal for the healthcare provider. It took nine months, but she got the lease signed.

That deal led to others and ultimately a full-time focus on healthcare overseeing Cousins Properties’ 1 million-square-foot medical office building portfolio. After four years in that capacity, she started her own company. With Taylor & Mathis, Faison (bought by Trammell Crow Co.) and ARES Inc. on her resume, “there wasn’t anybody else I wanted to work for,” she explained. Furthermore, she was receiving inquiries from the tenant side.

To date, Eastwood has leased about 5 million square feet, representing both tenants and landlords, including Emory Healthcare, Grady Health System, Kaiser, Northside Hospital System and Saint Joseph’s Hospital. Last year, she brought in a partner: Christine Gorham, a 21-year veteran of medical operations.

Eastwood discovered real estate through a temporary job pursuing leads for a broker, earning a real estate license to do so. When she showed a client space at Perimeter Center, she wound up with a job offer from Taylor & Mathis.

Eastwood taught herself the business but has played an active role in helping other women progress in real estate. While head of the CREW Atlanta leadership committee, charged with trying to involve more members in Leadership Buckhead activities, she and one-time boss Char Fortune instead founded a new program, Leadership CREW, which launched in January 2000 with a class of 21 women and has since graduated six more classes.

• Goals: Keep on working to make clients happy. Write a book about medical office leasing and give seminars on the topic. Continue to expand her business.
• Greatest Challenges: In the early days, sexual harassment and wage disparity.
• Best Advice Received: Fake it ‘til you make it (Annette Meyer, former CREW Atlanta president). People love to talk about themselves (mother). If you get, give; if you learn, teach (Maya Angelou).
• Advice to Others: Your reputation is all you have; do whatever is necessary to keep it. It is not what you know but who you know; seek out those who can teach you and will support you. You have to be nice to people, work hard and put your ego aside.

Economic Improvement Award

Irene MacDougall
Partner
Tucker Ellis & West L.L.P.

Reaching an agreement on financing a 24-acre mixed-use project is no easy task, especially when it involves more than 33 public and private lenders. But Irene MacDougall achieved just that between 2007 and 2010 while coordinating the financing on the Flats East Bank project in Cleveland. “It was really very much a balancing act,” she recalled.

MacDougall brings a rare combination of skills to her focus on real estate and finance law. While she has learned finance on the job, she acquired her interest in real estate early on. The daughter of a civil engineer, she spent Sundays while growing up going on house tours, and she worked part time for a title agency while earning a political science degree and starting law studies at Case Western Reserve University.

A partner in Tucker Ellis & West L.L.P.’s Cleveland office for four and a half years, MacDougall took on a considerable challenge with the Flats East Bank project, a partnership of the Wolstein family and Fairmount Properties. Financing was scheduled to close in December 2008 but stalled when the capital markets collapsed; it included a collateral sharing arrangement among  multiple public lenders and a tax increment financing district that underwent repeated revisions, with 19 versions of the TIF document alone and some 30 versions of the collateral agreement for disbursement for development.

But MacDougall thrives on such complex deals. She also worked on financing for the expansion of the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, which closed at the end of 2009.

MacDougall, the mother of four, including triplets, likes deals where she needs to align entities’ priorities and individuals’ personalities rather than the traditional attorney’s role of holding the line for the client. “I’m able to bridge the gap for everyone (on large, complex transactions and) bring some more cooperative spirit,” she observed.

• Goals: Continue to work on more complex public-private developments, which provide a necessary synergy.
• Greatest Challenges: As a woman, being taken seriously in business: There aren’t many women in the position of running projects, “pulling it all together.”
• Secrets to Her Success: Treating everyone with respect.
• Best Advice Received: “You have to be your own nurturing parent” (former partner).
• Advice to Others: We all succeed when we work together, and that’s easier said than done.

Member-to-Member Business Award

Cindy Wolfe
Executive Vice President
Bank of the Ozarks

Despite the recession, Cindy Wolfe has kept busy—and has made sure fellow CREW Charlotte members have, too. When she provided construction financing on a 300-unit apartment complex in Greensboro, N.C., her mortgage broker and lender’s counsel were CREW associates. Her 40-odd distressed property deals have provided work for CREW-affiliated attorneys. And when her expanding team moved into new office space, she turned to fellow CREW members for office furniture, interior design and signage. With a new office on the way, CREW members will have the opportunity to bid on more work.

Wolfe returned to Charlotte to open a loan production office there for Bank of the Ozarks in 2001 and in the ensuing decade has added three other lenders and two loan assistants, increasing business and establishing a name in the commercial real estate market. The office move was an interim step while the bank builds a new, 10,000-square-foot property. A new branch business will further expand the bank; it acquired Woodlands Bank’s assets from the FDIC last year.

Wolfe expects to have plenty more work for her CREW colleagues, thanks to her philosophy to “live and breathe” her job—which she says does not prevent a balanced life. The mother of two boys is on the board of her district Girl Scout council and chair of the property committee, on the alumni board of Queens University of Charlotte, and active with the Charlotte Rotary and CREW Charlotte, for which she was president in 2009.

Wolfe got her start in information technology and project management at First Union Bank in Little Rock, Ark., in 1988. In the mid-’90s, she returned to school to study banking, then entered real estate finance with Boatmen’s Bank, now part of Bank of America. In 1998, she landed at Bank of the Ozarks. Now she just hopes for more market challenges. “That’s when you really make a name for yourself,” she said.

• Goals: To be the best bank in Charlotte.
• Greatest Challenges: This economy and the competition for deals: “It’s challenging to compete for deals, and it’s what I love about my job.”
• Secrets to Her Success: Never having a delineation between work hours and off hours (while at the same time having a life and a family).
• Best Advice Received: You need to live it and breathe it to be successful (Jean Arehart, director with Bank of the Ozarks).
• Advice to Others: “You just have to live and breathe it.” Also, get every piece of education you can, get a CCIM designation, then just get out there and learn and do as much as you can and meet everybody you can. And always take the most difficult deals—particularly the ones on which other people have fumbled the ball.

In football lingo, 2012 promises yet another grinding year of “three yards and a cloud of dust,” according to the annual Emerging Trends forecast from PwC and the Urban Land Institute, which was released Wednesday morning. The job market and consumer spending both face a tough year, while the markets best positioned for growth are the top 24-hour transportation hubs with global access. Despite some investor misgivings, Washington, D.C., took the top spot among markets for the third year in a row. Austin, meanwhile, has made a surprising leap into second place.

“In 2012, investors expect pricing to level off in the top markets – and overall ‘buy’ sentiment will subside, selling appetites will increase, and more owners will hold until the economy untracks,” said Mitch Roschelle, partner & U.S. real estate advisory practice leader for PwC. “This is part of ‘the new normal’ as investors are coming to grips that they may not be selling for more than they paid.” Although more assets may come to market next year, survey participants also believe that economic volatility may dampen buyer enthusiasm. Participants predict that 2012 will see an increased supply of properties for sale; however, due to economic uncertainty, interest among buyers may diminish.

Even as expectations for returns continue their decline, a modest piece of good news is respondents’ belief that well-leased, core properties in first-rank markets will provide solid single-digit, income-oriented yields. Meanwhile, more opportunistic investors are ratcheting down their outlooks, as dubious supply/demand dynamics make return projections in the mid-teens a likely stretch.

“Many players will back off from bidding on trophy properties in top-tier markets, fearing that pricing is outpacing the potential for recovery in net operating incomes,” commented Stephen Blank, ULI ‘s senior resident fellow for real estate finance. “Additionally, investors believe that cap rate compression has ended and a leveling off is expected with possible upticks in cap rates for some property sectors in certain markets.”

Despite the pessimistic mood, PwC/ULI survey participants offered a surprisingly positive assessment of individual markets. Fifty out of the 51 cities surveyed improved their investment scores in the survey. Moreover, 60 percent of those markets earned a grade of “fair” or better for their 2012 prospects—a big jump from the 40 percent of markets who got a ‘fair” rating for the current year.

Regarding individual markets, Washington, D.C., took the top honors for the third year in a row, although some survey respondents worried that government cuts may expose excessive froth in the capital’s real estate picture. Austin made a surprising appearance in the second spot, its relatively small size offset by the power of high-tech, education, energy and government jobs, sparked by the dynamic duo of the University of Austin and the state government.

San Francisco moved up to third place, rated by respondents as the best buy for both office properties and multi-family assets. Indeed, the survey found, “Bullish market investors are betting on office rent increases, pushing purchase pricing way ahead of fundamentals.” Mighty Manhattan slipped to fourth place in part because of challenges posed by the retrenchment of its crucial financial industry. Yet a dearth of supply and falling vacancies will push office rents up faster than in other markets. As for other sectors, Manhattan’s apartment rental rates could hit new peaks, and the city remains the nation’s strongest hotel market.

For number-five Boston, office investors are looking past its relatively high vacancy rates to the brainpower produced by local colleges and universities. Office projects will likely remain on the back burner, but both rental and for-sale multifamily sectors are expected to be top performers. Rounding out the survey’s top ten markets to watch are four West Coast cities: Seattle (no. 6), San Jose (7), Houston (8), Los Angeles (9) and San Diego (10). All told, California earned four of the top 10 spots.

Watch a discussion of the results by report authors Jonathan Miller and Stephen Blank on CPE TV.

Cotswold Village

Cotswold Village and Terraces at SouthPark, two retail destinations accounting for an aggregate 291,200 square feet, have traded for an aggregate $85 million. With the brokerage assistance of commercial real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis, affiliates of private real estate company Bell Partners Inc. sold the assets to shopping center REIT DDR Corp.

Located at 282 S. Sharon Amity Rd., Cotswold Village features approximately 262,600 square feet of Class a retail space on a sprawling 22-acre site in an affluent area of the city. The shopping center, built in 1950 and redeveloped in 2007, has three anchors, including a Harris Teeter grocery store occupying nearly 52,000 square feet.

The second property, the 28,600-square-foot Terraces at SouthPark, sits less than three miles south of Cotswold Village at 4717-4735 Sharon Rd. Serving an affluent residential community and a premier office market, the 11-year-old specialty retail center counts a 7,000-square-foot SunTrust Bank chain and a 6,700-square-foot FedEx/Kinko’s center as its lead tenants,

CBRE welcomed a bevy of bidders for the premier assets. “Cotswold Village represented a rare opportunity to purchase a market dominant grocery-anchored community center that contains all of the elements institutional investors are looking for today–market leading grocer, in-fill location, excellent demographics and opportunity for future growth,” Mike Burkard, senior vice president with CBRE’s National Retail Investment Group, said. “These characteristics were recognized by many of the country’s top shopping center owners who pursued the asset aggressively.”

As for Terraces at SouthPark, the property’s relatively high 95 percent occupancy level undoubtedly attracted investors’ attention. The vacancy rate for specialty centers in Charlotte was 8.1 percent in the second quarter, as per a report recently released by ChainLinks Retail Advisors.

The shopping centers, an approximate combined 3.9 million square feet, are primarily located in the Atlanta, Tampa and Orlando markets, with additional properties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and Maryland.

More to come on this story as it develops.

The Oasis at Waipahu

Lenders are slowly but surely becoming less shy about doling out commercial real estate loans, and the Oasis at Waipahu apartment community near Honolulu and the Renaissance Raleigh North Hills Hotel in Raleigh, N.C., and are among the latest to benefit from the defrosting of the capital markets. In separate transactions, the properties recently garnered an aggregate $103.5 million in financing.

Acting on behalf of Oasis’s owner – a joint venture led by The Bascom Group – commercial real estate and capital markets services provider Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. orchestrated a $56 million refinancing deal for the 406-unit townhome-style rental complex located approximately 16 miles outside of downtown Honolulu in Waipahu. The property originally opened in 1965; however, it has stood the test of time with the implementation of multiple upgrades, including substantial renovations in 2008 and 2009. Oasis is presently 97 percent leased, a factor that certainly played a positive role in obtaining the 36-month, floating-rate loan from national balance sheet lender Prime Finance.

If any commercial real estate sector is a particular favorite among lenders these days, it’s the apartment sector. By mid-year, the national vacancy rate had dropped to 5.9 percent, marking a year-over-year decline of 190 basis points, as per a report by commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield “The continued improvement in apartment market fundamentals has led to easing of underwriting requirements and improved access to financing for apartment transactions,” the report said.

The lending community has not been quite as keen on the hotel sector, but deals are certainly getting done – if the property is right. The Renaissance Raleigh was re-financed to the tune of $47.5 million with the assistance of real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis’ debt and equity finance group. Tapped by property owners Concord Hospitality and Kane Realty Corp., CBRE secured the fixed-rate first mortgage for the 229-room full-service hotel through RBS Commercial Real Estate.

The property, which made its debut at the mixed-use North Hills Lifestyle Center in 2009, comes with all the bells and whistles, including 8,000 square feet of meeting space, an upscale restaurant and an adjoining spa and $10 million fitness facility. “The hotel financing market remains difficult, but well-located hotels with a proven track record, like the Renaissance Raleigh North Hills Hotel, will always be attractive to sophisticated investors and lenders,” Concord president/CEO Mark Laport noted in a prepared statement.

In an off-market transaction valued at $74 million, Cole Real Estate Investments has become the owner of a 300,000-square-foot portfolio of 11 retail stores fully occupied by pet-products provider PetSmart Inc. under a single triple-net-lease agreement. The transaction marks the second recent, major acquisition of PetSmart for Cole in the last two weeks, as just last week, the firm snapped up PetSmart’s 356,000-square-foot corporate campus in Phoenix for $102.5 million.

The stores, which can be described generally as free-standing, are located in Westlake Village, Calif.; Tallahassee, Plantation, Lake Mary and Boca Raton, Fla.; Evanston, Ill.; Oxon Hill, Md.; Braintree, Mass.; Flint, Mich.; Southlake and Dallas, Tex. “There’s a great geographic diversification for this portfolio,” Chad Adams, director of single-tenant retail acquisitions with Cole, told Commercial Property Executive. “If you review the five-mile demographic on each property, they’re just extremely strong locations.”

Cole will not have to worry about vacancies any time soon; 10 years remain under PetSmart’s original 20-year master-lease agreement and three automatic renewals allow for an extension of occupancy for as many as 20 additional years.

A portfolio of fully leased retail stores with a long-term income stream is high on most investors’ radar now, but Cole looked beyond the obvious attributes before signing on the dotted line. “One of the key things that we feel sets us apart is the underwriting we go through,” Adams said. “The acquisitions team is your first set of eyes on it. The second set of eyes is when our underwriting group takes over. They start really figuring out if we’ve priced this appropriately, and start digging into the lease extensively and all the underlying documents that are associated with any property.”

But their due diligence does not end with paperwork.

“Obviously we send someone to every property to walk it, talk to the manager, drive the trade area, report on any vacancies so that we know for sure exactly what we’re buying,” he added. “Cole does a very thorough job in getting our hands dirty and figuring out exactly what we have.”

Cole, which focuses on net-leased, single-tenant and multi-tenant retail properties under long-term leases, has been quite active in enhancing its portfolio this year. Just this month the company paid $91.5 million for a 496,000-square-foot freezer and cold storage distribution warehouse leased to Wal-Mart in Riverside, Calif., and shelled out a respective $34.3 million and 25.5 million for the 190,000 square-foot Forum power center in Ft. Myers, Fla., and the 139,000-square-foot Santa Rosa Commons shopping center in Pace, Fla.

Ferreting out assets that meet Cole’s criteria is no simple feat. Investors are salivating over well-located properties that are net leased to high-credit tenants under long-term agreements. Deals in the last few months include Harbor Group International L.L.C.’s acquisition of four Walgreens stores in metropolitan Chicago for $27.8 million and the Inland Real Estate Group of Companies Inc.’s purchase of a 118,000 square-foot, net-leased retail portfolio consisting of 16 properties individually occupied by such leading tenants as AT&T, Bank of America and Walgreens.

Finding the right opportunities frequently depends on having the right connections. “Right now, we are in a supply-constrained market,” Adams noted. “Therefore, we are using our extensive relationships in the marketplace to get to sellers who, perhaps, typically wouldn’t be a seller, and approach them with our credentials and our history of delivering and doing what we say we’re going to do. Obviously, the brokerage community is extremely important and we work with them all the time, but then we also have to take it upon ourselves to try to turn up deals that are attractive to Cole.”

The company relies on funds raised through a series of non-traded REIT products to make its purchases, and is primed to continue its shopping spree. “Our acquisition goal for 2011 is $3 billion,” Adams said. “About half of that is in single-tenant retail, a quarter of that number is in single-tenant office and industrial and the remaining portion is in multi-tenant retail, primarily power centers and grocery-anchored centers.”

The Gallery at Cameron Village

The lending community’s interest in financing development projects in the booming multifamily sector is evident in premier markets across the country. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. has handily orchestrated financing for a luxury apartment community in Raleigh, N.C., and another just outside of Manhattan in Lyndhurst, N.J.

HFF arranged just over $44 million for Crescent Resources L.L.C.’s development of Gallery at Cameron Village, a 282-unit property near North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The financing package came in the form of a $34.3 million construction loan from Capital One and a $9.7 million mezzanine loan from Nationwide. The six-story apartment building is being erected at the intersection of Oberlin Rd. and Clark Ave. within the sprawling Cameron Village shopping center. Gallery, which will also feature 16,000 square feet of retail space and 8,000 square feet of resident service space, will hold the distinction of being the very first residential property at the 600,000 square-foot retail destination.

HFF also orchestrated financing for Meadow Crossing, a project located seven miles west of Manhattan at 340 Orient Way in Lyndhurst. Acting on behalf of the project developer, Russo Development, the commercial real estate and capital markets services provider secured a 24-month loan from Wells Fargo Bank N.A to fund the first phase of Meadow Crossing, which will yield 172 residences. Ultimately the property will feature a total of 296 units.

Construction of Gallery is on track to reach completion in spring 2013, while Meadow Crossing is scheduled to open its doors in 2012.

Both projects are located in high-demand apartment markets. The average vacancy rate in the Raleigh-Durham area dropped 60 basis points in the second quarter to 5.8 percent, according to a report by REIS Services L.L.C., and in Northern New Jersey, the average vacancy rate declined 30 basis points to 4.4 percent.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg has advised residents to be prepared.

The week started with an earthquake and it’s ending with a hurricane.

According to the National Weather Service, locations from eastern North Carolina and the eastern Mid-Atlantic states to Long Island to southern New England are all in the potential path of Hurricane Irene. While there is historical precedence for a hurricane impacting the major metropolitan areas of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, these hurricanes are rare. However, with a population explosion along coastal areas of the Northeast during the past several decades, a hurricane this strong hasn’t affected the Northeast urban corridor for at least the past two decades.

Nate Silver, writer of the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog, tries to calculate the value of property damage were Irene to hit New York City directly. “History suggests that the economic damage could run into the tens of billions of dollars, depending on the severity of the storm and how close it comes to the city. Unlikely but theoretically plausible scenarios could have the damage entering the realm of the costliest natural disasters of all time, and perhaps being large enough to have a materially negative effect on the nation’s gross domestic product,” he writes.

Commercial Property Executive spoke with Greg Hulbert, a senior vice president with Jones Lang LaSalle, earlier this week about what do in the aftermath of the 5.9 tremor on Tuesday. Many of his comments hold true for a weather-related disaster as well. “If something in a building is damaged,” he said, “cracks in columns, settling in masonry or with a ceiling grid out of alignment, I recommend calling a structural engineer to give the building a structural analysis. If need be, they can tell you the necessary repairs or they can red-tag a building,” closing it off to all use.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg told residents to “prepare for the worst” as the area braces for the oncoming storm, expected to hit late Saturday. As of 10:15 a.m. Friday, states of emergency had been declared in North Carolina for counties east of Interstate 95 as well as in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and parts of New York, with other coastal regions expected to follow.

“It’s better not to wait until the last minute to prepare for a natural disaster,” said Mark Lewis, vice president of InStar, a firm that helps businesses recover after disasters. “Given a little more time, our first and foremost advice is to ensure you have sufficient insurance coverage for wind-, water- and earthquake-related damages. In addition, make sure you have adequate business-interruption insurance, not just to cover your losses but to help defray the costs of a temporary business location if necessary.”

In preparation, New York City is advising residents in low-lying coastal areas, such as Coney Island and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, Far Rockaway and Broad Channel in Queens, and Midland Beach and other parts of Staten Island, that evacuations may be necessary.