Western Real Estate Business

NOV 2015

Western Real Estate Business magazine covers the multifamily, retail, office, healthcare, industrial and hospitality sectors in the Western United States.

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www.REBusinessOnline.com Western Real Estate Business • November 2015 • 27 THE BALLAD OF BOHEMIAN PROGENY Millennials might be seen as all fun and games, but with the eldest of this demographic reaching 35, children may soon play a key role in downtown developments throughout the West. By David Senden H ere's the story: Hipster moves downtown. He loves living near his job and the nightlife. He hangs out at the corner cofee shop and shops at the boutique down the street. And that's where it happens. Hearts futter and angels sing. First, they share a micro-brew, maybe a lit- tle more, then an apartment, and, after an appropriate amount of time (and a marriage, if they are so inclined), a child. What to do? Downtown is no place to raise a child. But they love this place. Their friends are here. The smells, the sounds, the energy; it fts them. They know an ofspring chang- es their life, but shouldn't you be able to raise a child in the place you love? Is there a way for kids and the city to coexist? What does it take? Could de- sign make a diference? This is uniquely an American prob- lem, a problem forged by the auto- mobile in the boom times of the early 20th century. Those were the days when the inner city meant dirty, pol- luted and industrial. Anybody with the wherewithal to escape packed up the family and headed for the fresh air and open spaces of the shiny new master-planned suburbs. Over the past couple of decades, all that has changed, however. Inner cities have become 24/7 live, work, play environ- ments. They've been scrubbed clean. Millions of dollars in development money have poured in each year. The air is clean(er). Those super fresh sub- urbs are further out these days. The roads are clogged. Gas is expensive. So people are moving back to down- town. Back to the tall buildings and crowded sidewalks. Back to the ex- citement and energy of the city. Developers are helping. Thousands of residential units are under con- struction in downtowns from coast to coast, but most of the downtown developments have ignored fami- lies. The vast majority of units built and in the pipeline are small in size, great for singles and maybe couples. Restaurants, bars and other retail has followed, all aimed at the super hip and unattached, and with good rea- son. This is a huge market. There are 82 million Millennials. However, the leading edge of this generation is 35 years old. These are not the young partiers they once were. While the average age for starting a family con- tinues to increase, especially for well- educated professionals, you can't fght nature and eventually there will be children. In several downtowns there is a growing understanding. Dogs have been accepted and new develop- ments are featuring dog salons, parks and play areas. Cities are hanging up poop bag dispensers all over down- towns. Sure, kids aren't dogs, but they're next. There is a small visionary group of developers eyeing this growing market and looking for ways to dip their toes in. They are shifting unit foor- plans, re-thinking amenities, and hop- ing to make it possible for those hip- sters to stay where they are. The solution isn't simply providing more space. At rents around the $4 per square foot mark in the trendiest of these downtown locales, pushing unit sizes up will price out all but the very top end of renters. So, it comes down to small things: stroller parking in the lobby, more storage within the build- ing, hang-out spaces that are more Barney and less Miley. There are big things, too: a splash park instead of a swimming pool, a craft room instead of a wine bar, or a turf area for play instead of ornamental grasses. Unit plans need to ofer fexibility, storage and emphasize function as much as style. They need to stay small. Kids don't come with a pay raise so the units need to do more. They need to ofer space to play, a place to store the stuf and a way to grow as the family does. Having kids in the city is still pio- neering, and those willing to stay will sacrifce a lot, but do they really have to? As Gen Y grows up, the thumping base of the nightclubs will give way to the laughs of children. Developers and the cities in which Hipsters work need to fnd ways to satisfy them without compromising what makes living downtown great. David Senden, Design Principal, KTGY Architecture + Planning in Irvine, Calif. Flexible rooms that can be turned into a nursery, offce or playroom allow the unit to change as the family changes. Sliding doors open the child's bedroom to the living space to allow for greater fexibility for play. A drop zone for backpacks and coats makes organization easy at the front door. Senden used gathering more contacts, closing more deals, or spending more time with family and friends. Brokers should encourage management decision- makers to research and understand what is new in operations technology. The right software could actually pay for itself with critical lease expiration alerts and management dashboards. It could help a frm grow without hav- ing to add more operations staf. Vibrant, growing frms need their brokers to have a good CRM, a user-friendly operations system and solid accounting software to be as efcient and proftable as possible. Technology can be dis- ruptive in a good way if it adds tools to save time and money. Exactly how much is difcult to quantify. It does take some expense and time to onboard the systems, but the investment is worth it. Phillip Dunn, Sales Consultant, Astro Applications in Salt Lake City Investment in Tech continued from page 26

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