July 12, 2018 – Just back from a one week family vacation where we visited some remarkable parts of our country. The week in Napa was a wine and food centric five days, amidst an agricultural heaven featuring the freshest local fruits, vegetables, cheese and wine. Within this incredible area of natural beauty and abundance, was the visible reminder of the charred trees and lonely foundations of homes burned in last summer’s wild fires. Even more troubling were current fires just north of the area. Despite all this area has to offer, nothing seems to be able to control the recurrent fire hazard triggered by human action coupled with drought, which many consider a component of our looming environmental crisis.
We next visited Yosemite National Park, a place many consider the most physically beautiful place in our country. John Muir, Galen Clark and their group of forward thinking environmentalists, long before it was popular to be one, persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to set aside this area including the Mariposa Grove of sequoia trees in a California Trust, preventing development and preserving the area. The waterfalls and views were extraordinary, but the charred trees from prior fires were more than a bit troubling. We were told nature has always experienced burns, as almost a natural way of nature’s survival of the fittest. The diversity of the visitors from all over our country and world was exceptional, very much like the Miami I have long called home.
The final leg was a quick visit to Rapid City, South Dakota to check off a long-standing bucket list site, Mt. Rushmore. Four unique giant head sculptures cut out of a granite mountain featuring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. The project was entirely privately funded with money raised by local people, and now run by the National Park Service, but still with private funding. Well there was not much diversity here, but it was an amazing example of how one person dreams an idea, raises the capital to do it and then make sure the governance is in place to preserve it going forward for generations to come to admire.
As we headed home at the end after enjoying the company of a lot of family members, I could not help but marvel what a remarkable country of individual dreamers we Americans have been, envisioning big ideas and projects for the future, and having the boldness to execute our plans, making them happen. The fire damage we witnessed, may we’ll be what happens if we are not careful with the precious resources of our republic. All we need is a little care to preserve what we have, to enable us to make the future better.
Stephen Bittel
Napa, Yosemite, and Rapid City – West Coast Family Vacation
/in Bittel on BusinessJuly 12, 2018 – Just back from a one week family vacation where we visited some remarkable parts of our country. The week in Napa was a wine and food centric five days, amidst an agricultural heaven featuring the freshest local fruits, vegetables, cheese and wine. Within this incredible area of natural beauty and abundance, was the visible reminder of the charred trees and lonely foundations of homes burned in last summer’s wild fires. Even more troubling were current fires just north of the area. Despite all this area has to offer, nothing seems to be able to control the recurrent fire hazard triggered by human action coupled with drought, which many consider a component of our looming environmental crisis.
We next visited Yosemite National Park, a place many consider the most physically beautiful place in our country. John Muir, Galen Clark and their group of forward thinking environmentalists, long before it was popular to be one, persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to set aside this area including the Mariposa Grove of sequoia trees in a California Trust, preventing development and preserving the area. The waterfalls and views were extraordinary, but the charred trees from prior fires were more than a bit troubling. We were told nature has always experienced burns, as almost a natural way of nature’s survival of the fittest. The diversity of the visitors from all over our country and world was exceptional, very much like the Miami I have long called home.
The final leg was a quick visit to Rapid City, South Dakota to check off a long-standing bucket list site, Mt. Rushmore. Four unique giant head sculptures cut out of a granite mountain featuring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. The project was entirely privately funded with money raised by local people, and now run by the National Park Service, but still with private funding. Well there was not much diversity here, but it was an amazing example of how one person dreams an idea, raises the capital to do it and then make sure the governance is in place to preserve it going forward for generations to come to admire.
As we headed home at the end after enjoying the company of a lot of family members, I could not help but marvel what a remarkable country of individual dreamers we Americans have been, envisioning big ideas and projects for the future, and having the boldness to execute our plans, making them happen. The fire damage we witnessed, may we’ll be what happens if we are not careful with the precious resources of our republic. All we need is a little care to preserve what we have, to enable us to make the future better.
Stephen Bittel
Building Better Communities
/in Trending topicsJune 29, 2018 — TERRANOVA TRENDS — BY SALLY BOYNTON BROWN Real estate developers have long prided ourselves on meeting the demand of consumers in the marketplace. However, the ongoing acceleration of technology and capacity to deliver consumers a faster, more convenient product directly to their doorsteps is driving our industry to evolve. More store closings are announced every day and we know that investment capital is favoring industrial and data space over retail. Our traditional, reactive model of simply supplying what the market demands, would take us to a future where everything is supplied at the click of a button and no one leaves their homes.
Social science tells us humans are social creatives and therefore it would be unhealthy for us to never leave our homes, yet a number of studies in recent years have found that loneliness is becoming one of our biggest public health threats. The need to build community in an era when people are increasingly socially disconnected by a culture of immediate online need fulfillment is more critical now than ever before. Media headlines are filled with unbelievable tragedies and attendance at religious services, block parties, school carnivals and other community events is at an all time low.
“As developers, we have to make it worth it for people to get off their couches, leave their residences to go experience something in the physical world. We need to create authentic experiences for personal interaction,” said the Chairman of Terranova Stephen Bittel. “Millennials have more spending power than other generation and those millennials are willing to leave their homes for one thing, a unique experience they can tell their friends about on social media. They are our future and we must ensure they have rich, resilient opportunities to build the community connections that they will need to meet the challenges of their time.”
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Inside the Inner Workings of Commercial Real Estate – A Spotlight on Retail Property Managers
/in Trending topics, TrendsJune 25, 2018 — TERRANOVA TRENDS — BY ANDREA SPEEDY After the deal is done and the lease is signed, the heavy lifting in the commercial real estate business truly begins. The Property Manager becomes the key point of contact for multiple stakeholders in a particular space, including the tenant, contractors, city and municipal inspectors, business improvement district (BID) directors, marketing teams, and the property owner or landlord itself. It is a fast-paced, non-stop, always-on career that is as challenging as it is rewarding.
“To say we’re jacks of all trades would be an understatement,” says Ozzie Dominguez, a 30-year veteran of property management, and a valued member of the team at Terranova. “Sure, we collect rents – as most people know. But we also coordinate hundreds of different tasks in a given day and oversee dozens of relationships. Those relationships are essential to how anything gets accomplished.”
Dominguez, who has served as a real estate Vice President, and held other leadership roles in the industry explains that his experience is not one-of-a-kind. Successful Property Managers who stay in the field as long as he has have all learned a number of essential truths to doing business. He then goes on to explain that what the general public believes a property manager does is only the tip of the iceberg. “We’ll often hear that we work for the landlord, and that’s technically correct. But we’re truly resources for our tenants. We’re absolutely working on our retailers’ behalf to help them stay in business and stay profitable. A successful tenant means a property that’s producing income.”
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