BY STEVE LACKMEYER Oklahoman    23 Comments

Published: May 2, 2010

Almost a half century has passed since architect I.M. Pei arrived in Oklahoma City with plans to remake its downtown. And downtown has been a consistent construction zone ever since.

I.M. Pei model on display

May 2I.M. Pei built a model in 1964 of how he envisioned Oklahoma City…

If you go

A free public unveiling of the Pei model will be held at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the northeast lobby of the Cox Convention Center with introductions by Mayor Mick Cornett and Dr. Bob Blackburn, director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. For more information about the Pei project visit www.impeiokc.com.

Pei’s plan, which included the demolition of more than 500 buildings, was despised by the city’s locals and outdated in the end, and met its demise in the late 1980s.

A major exhibit of the plan, including a model created by Pei and his firm, is being put on display at the Cox Convention Center starting Monday.

Made of wood and plastic, each inch of the 10-foot-by-12-foot model equals 50 feet of land. Without the advancements of modern technology, this model likely took a sizeable team six months or more to construct by hand. Though the model cost $60,000 to create in 1964, Norman-based architectural model builder Wiley White estimates the display would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars today.

The team that reassembled the model for the upcoming display included Hans Butzer, designer of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and professor of architecture and urban design at the University of Oklahoma.

“The Pei model is a window in time to better understand where we were, where we thought we were going and what we used to think,” Butzer said. “It is rare to revisit something so sweeping as the Pei Plan, and the model allows us to see the history of our downtown renovation.”

If the model is a time capsule, it’s one that might have stayed crated up and underground if not for the efforts of Rachel Mosman, associate photographic archivist at the Oklahoma Historical Society and a board member with the Oklahoma City/County Historical Society.

Mosman spent the past three years working with the sizable Barney Hillerman collection, scanning about 40,000 of 750,000 photos of pre-urban renewal era downtown Oklahoma City.

“What I didn’t realize was that I was working with something related to Urban Renewal,” Mosman said. “It was like a puzzle was coming together with each photo I scanned. I saw photos of these beautiful buildings — the Baum, the Biltmore, the Oklahoma Club — and I wondered why they weren’t here anymore.”

Mosman’s next step was to create an online map of where buildings once stood. Mosman went to her boss, research division director Bill Welge, and sought to learn more about the history of downtown Oklahoma City.

Welge referred Mosman to a books about the Pei Plan and downtown — “Vanished Splendor” and “OKC Second Time Around” — and it while reading “OKC Second Time Around” that Mosmon learned saw a photo of the Pei model.

Welge told Mosman the model was crated up and stored in the basement of the Main Street Parking Garage and hadn’t been on public display since it was exhibited at the Smithsonian in 1995.

Mosman assembled a team to reconstruct the model. The team included Butzer and his partner Jeremy Gardner, who designed a new base and framing for the model, and architectural model builder Dub Brunsteter, who cleaned the model and did minor repairs.

Oklahoma City Councilman Pete White and City Clerk Frances Kersey helped arrange a work space for the model and the display at the convention center to coincide with the upcoming National Main Streets Conference and U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Logistics, displays and other support for the display was provided by the Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City/County Historical Society, the City of Oklahoma City and RetroMetro OKC.

Mosman noted the project’s website was assembled by Justin Tyler Moore, who at 27 is one of the team’s younger members. The youngest project partner, however, is only 17. Bunee Tomlinson, a past winner at the DeadCENTER Film Festival, produced a film about the project that will be presented at the model’s unveiling on Monday.

The multimedia efforts, Mosman said, include the presentation of vintage images, maps, materials and films that she hopes will add to the conversation about the Pei Plan and its legacy.

“It’s an ongoing telling of the story,” Mosman said. “Everyone is stepping forward to tell their own experience, and it gives us another dimension to the story we’re trying to tell.”

Mosman cautions against anyone assuming the exhibit is intended to celebrate or condone the Pei Plan.

“It expresses a point in Oklahoma City history when there was a big transition,” Mosman said. “It promotes a community conversation and helps us tell a story of our history between generations. … People who see it are curious. We see these images, and we want to know what happened.”

(CNN) — In the front offices of the trend-spotting network and online magazine TrendHunter.com, there are 15 workers wrangling 35,000 worldwide contributors — but you’d be hard-pressed to find one filing cabinet.

Trend Hunter is a paperless office.

Founder Jeremy Gutsche tells a story about how an accountant had finally put together all the numbers on a project and offered to send a paper report on his work. When Gutsche asked for an electronic copy instead, the accountant “just started looking at me, laughing.”

According to Gutsche, the accountant asked, “These are your most important financial performance records — don’t you think you should have a hard copy?” “I said, ‘I really don’t know what I would do with it.’”

“Buy a filing cabinet,” said the accountant.

The exchange goes to the heart of a cultural divide that may explain why businesses continue to print, copy and fax more than a trillion pages of office paper each year, according to the market research firm InfoTrends.

The dream of the paperless office started way back in 1975, when BusinessWeek magazine predicted “a collection of … office terminals linked to each other and to electronic filing cabinets.”

“It will change our daily life,” said one bold technology expert quoted in the article. Said another expert: “By 1990, most record handling will be electronic.”

Twenty years after that unmet deadline, a national survey found that businesses have chosen to use paper printouts to archive 62 percent of important documents.

The survey of 882 companies, released in February by the content management association AIIM, indicates that most businesses believe paper documents are needed for legal reasons.

So what happened? Where is this streamlined office of the future, free of clutter and file cabinets, that was promised back in the ’70s?

By the mid-1990s, the nation was actually moving in the opposite direction.

More and more workstation computers and printers contributed to a big jump in office paper consumption well into the 2000s, according to industry experts.

Before taking a hit from the recession, the estimated number of office pages printed, copied and faxed annually in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at more than 1.019 trillion, according to InfoTrends, a Massachusetts-based market research and consulting firm.

InfoTrends analyst John Shane blamed the nation’s love of office printing and copying on convenience.

Many people can’t bring themselves to let go of the convenience of a printed hard copy, said Shane. For some, printed paper may be more portable, and easier to read in a cramped airliner seat than reading on a laptop. Some people may find paper more comfortable and preferable to read during a meeting, instead of reading a document on a tiny smart-phone display.
Eventually it’s going to get to a point where it’s going to seem awkward when you see someone having something printed.
–Jeremy Gutsche, Trendhunter.com
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“Most of what people print now is for temporary read-and-discard purposes and for transactions,” said Shane. “People like to read paper. Then they throw it away. Then they may want to read it and throw it away again. That behavior needs to change if we’re really going to see a paperless office.”

There are plenty of motivating factors that would push managers to adopt the idea of a paperless office. Cost saving is one. Paperless-office advocates say they save the cost of paper, envelopes, postage, couriers, printers, copiers and, of course, filing cabinets.

The idea of helping the environment also might push a change in behavior, Shane said.

That’s the motivation behind Gutsche’s paperless office, his second such system after going through the shift with his previous employer, Capital One.

Three major factors will drive the paperless office movement, says Gutsche: ecological, technological and generational.

“The world’s getting more obsessed with eco,” said Gutsche, in this case the idea of saving paper and conserving trees. “Eventually it’s going to get to a point where it’s going to seem awkward when you see someone having something printed.”

The paper industry argues that recycling paper and managed tree growth make using paper cheaper and easier on the environment than the cost of recycling computer components.

The technology is available to give even home-based businesses the option of going paperless.

Scanners for electronically storing documents are getting smaller and more affordable. “You get back from a conference — you drop off 15 business cards into a little scanner and it places them all digitally,” said Gutsche.

Portable computer tablets, such as Apple’s upcoming iPad, are also part of the equipment of a paperless office. “As soon as I switched to a tablet PC, that eliminated the need to be walking around with a pad of paper to meetings,” said Gutsche. “I can write things down immediately on the tablet.”

When he’s giving someone feedback on a document — whether it’s on a PowerPoint Deck or in Microsoft Word — it’s much more tedious to mark it up on a keyboard, Gutsche said. “But if you use a tablet, you’re drawing right on it, so there’s no real shift from what you’re doing.”

Next-generation e-readers and tablets have spurred interest in the prospect of a paperless magazine market.

Bold new e-readers grab attention

For home offices, popular tech blogger Chris Pirillo recommends using a Web-based billing and payment system such as Freshbooks to eliminate paper created in the invoice process.

Kevin McNeil, CEO of Ontario-based Gore Mutual Insurance, said acceptance of the company’s paperless office system in 2002 was “a generational thing.”

More than half of his approximately 280 employees are under 35, he said.

Younger people — especially those young enough to have grown up with home computers — have adapted very quickly, McNeil said. Older workers took longer, but everybody was on board within six months.

“Everyone saw the benefits of being able to take care of their work faster, but young people don’t want to deal with old technology. They paid more attention.”

As a result, the workflow has gone from sometimes waiting days to retrieve records that were archived off site, to accessing the same files in two or three seconds — saving time, creating efficiency and improving customer service, McNeil said.

An initial outlay of hundreds of thousands of dollars was well worth it, he said. “For every dollar that we spent on it, we saved that dollar plus another 85 cents.”

Gutsche said the shift to reject all paper has already started, but Shane is more cautious in his predictions.

Although Shane does see offices in the near future reducing their printing and copying, he says, “I wouldn’t call it the paperless office — that’s not going to happen for ages. But the less-paper office is coming.”

By the way, that filing cabinet TrendHunter.com’s accountant suggested? According to Gutsche, “it’s still empty.”

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Chief Economist Bob Bach: ‘Freefall is over, confidence to make decisions returns’

SANTA ANA, Calif., Jan. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Grubb & Ellis Company (NYSE: GBE), a leading real estate services and investment firm, today released its 2010 Real Estate Forecast, which indicates that 2010 commercial real estate fundamentals will decline more slowly than in 2009, with most property types reaching bottom near the end of the year and beginning a slow recovery starting in 2011.

“The national economy has begun a slow and cautious recovery, but the labor market, which often lags the broader economy, will turn around only gradually with sustained improvement unlikely before the second half of 2010. Because commercial real estate lags the labor market, it still has a ways to go before reaching its own low point,” said Bob Bach, senior vice president, chief economist of Grubb & Ellis. “The good news is that the freefall we saw in 2009 is over and the future is more certain, giving owners and users of real estate the confidence to begin making decisions again.”

Commercial Real Estate Investment Transaction Volume to Grow in 2010

The investment market, which saw transaction volume maintain artificially low levels in 2009 as banks, CMBS servicers and other lenders delayed working through distressed assets, will start to see some of these assets finally come to market in 2010, prompting an increase in sales volume of 20 to 30 percent over 2009 levels. Prices, already down 40 percent from their peak in October 2007, may decline another 10 to 20 percent in order to meet buyers’ expectations.

“Many have called commercial real estate ‘the next shoe to drop,’ but that’s really an exaggeration,” said Bach. “It implies that commercial real estate could wreak damage on the financial system equivalent to the subprime residential mortgage losses, which is highly unlikely because the value of outstanding commercial mortgages is a fraction of the value of outstanding residential mortgages. Nevertheless, losses will mount over the next several years. If banks aren’t lending because they’re coping with losses in their real estate portfolios, this could impede the economic recovery.”

Overall, the fact that banks likely will begin writing off their losses on distressed assets in 2010 means that the capital accumulating on the sidelines will start being deployed, and highly leveraged buildings, many without the capital necessary to attract tenants, will transfer to new ownership, removing what was a major impediment to recovery in the investment market.

Office Vacancy Rates Will Reach Modern-Day Record

Nationally, the office market begins 2010 approaching record-high vacancy rates and the most sublease space available since the “dot-bomb” era. According to Grubb & Ellis, a rebound in the office sector is heavily dependent upon employment, and the slow job growth inherent in a sluggish recovery will delay improvement in the office market.

“Early 2010 may see a few isolated months of hiring, but sustained growth in employment is unlikely before the second half of the year,” said Bach. “The fact that the recession has come and gone, however, should provide the certainty necessary for tenants to start making decisions. We may see leasing volume increase in 2010 as a result.”

The national office market’s vacancy rate is expected to reach 18.5 to 19 percent by the end of 2010, the highest on record since Grubb & Ellis began tracking the national market in 1986. Other leasing fundamentals are also expected to continue to deteriorate, albeit at a slower pace before reaching a growth point in 2011. The company expects the market to register an additional 25 million square feet of negative net absorption and rental rates to decline 2 percent in 2010, compared to 62 million square feet of negative net absorption and a 5-percent reduction in rental rates in 2009.

Each year, Grubb & Ellis ranks the Top 10 local markets in terms of long-term investment potential in the office, industrial, retail and multi housing sectors (a complete listing follows the release). In the office sector, Austin, Texas, took the top spot on Grubb & Ellis’ Investment Opportunity Monitor, a proprietary market ranking in which Grubb & Ellis annually measures 59 office, 54 industrial, 53 retail and 56 apartment markets against 13 to 17 criteria important to the performance of real estate investments. Austin, Raleigh-Durham, N.C. (No. 5), and Denver (No. 10) are all anchored by top-notch universities and state governments, and the cities offer advanced business bases and the ability to attract young, educated workers.

Four of the top 10 markets for long-term office investment – Los Angeles (No. 3), Orange County (No. 7), San Diego (No. and San Francisco (No. 9) – are in California, which despite tax structure issues and sweeping budget cuts at the state level, also hosts many corporate headquarters and is able to attract young, educated workers.

Bolstered by demand from the federal government, Washington, D.C., takes the No. 2 spot, while Houston’s reputation for excellence in the energy industry places it at No. 6. Portland, Ore., with its urban growth boundary, comes in at No. 4.

Recovery in Sight for Industrial Market

Despite increases in vacancy and negative net absorption, economic indicators that generate demand for industrial space saw upticks in late 2009. These include global trade, freight shipments, manufacturing activity and even retail sales. This, along with the weakness of the dollar, hints that a recovery in the industrial market could be on the horizon.

Leading market indicators for the industrial sector turned earlier than those for the retail and office markets, Grubb & Ellis reports. The company also notes that the industrial sector is less dependent on job growth than the office, retail and multi housing sectors, which means it could recover earlier, with vacancy rates beginning a gradual recovery in late 2010 and rental rates following in the second half of 2011.

Vacancy in the industrial sector is expected to reach 11.4 percent by the end of 2010, 70 basis points higher than year-end 2009. Landlords will have to weather 75 million square feet of negative net absorption, though that figure represents less than half of the 158 million square feet of negative net absorption in 2009. Warehouse rents will decline 5 percent, an improvement over the 6 percent decline in 2009.

As the manufacturing sector and global trade bounce back, look for port-related industrial markets to lead the recovery – those anchored by either sea ports or inland ports. Although many companies continue to divert shipments from West Coast ports to East and Gulf Coast ports, Los Angeles still ranks No. 1 on Grubb & Ellis’ Investment Opportunity Monitor. The Los Angeles market has little land available for new development, limiting supply, while the ports serve a large local population of 21 million in Southern California as well as the fast-growing Southwest. Other West Coast markets offering opportunities for investors are Oakland/East Bay, Calif. (No. 4), Seattle (No. 5), and Portland, Ore. (No. 9). Those markets benefiting from increased traffic to East and Gulf Coast ports include Houston (No. 2), Dallas (No. 6), Miami (No. and Philadelphia (No. 10). Atlanta (No. 3) and Chicago (No. 7), both leading regional logistics hubs, also made the list.

Retail Sector Faces “New Normal”

With a significant recovery in job growth unlikely to get underway until later in 2010, Grubb & Ellis expects the national retail vacancy rate to continue to climb, contributing to additional negative net absorption. Recovery in retail will be weak in 2010, but it will begin to generate demand for retail real estate starting in 2011.

“It’s unlikely the shock of the Great Recession will produce a generation of frugal consumers like the Great Depression did, but on the other hand, retail sales will not bounce back to their debt-fueled levels of 2006 and 2007 anytime soon. Retailers and owners of retail real estate will need to adapt to a ‘new normal’ in consumer attitudes that may last for some time, including more conservatism and attention to value as households rebuild their savings,” Bach noted.

Prospects for employment and population growth, which serve as drivers for the top office markets, also denote the top retail investment markets. Markets from California, Texas and the East Coast dominate, according to Grubb & Ellis’ Investment Opportunity Monitor, with Los Angeles ranked No. 1, followed by Houston (No. 2), Dallas (No. 3) and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. (No. 4). Atlanta (No. 5), Washington, D.C. (No. 6), Austin (No. 7), San Diego (No. 8), Portland, Ore. (No. 9), and San Francisco (No. 10) round out the list.

Multi Housing to Benefit from Boomers’ Babies

Similar to the other sectors of commercial real estate, job growth is key for a robust recovery in the multi housing arena. The apartment market suffered in 2009 as college graduates had trouble finding jobs and the growing wave of residential foreclosures increased the supply of shadow units – unsold condominiums and houses being offered for rent. Longer term, apartments will benefit from the decline of homeownership rates to pre-bubble levels or less, as well as increased volume of 20- to 29-year-old apartment seekers as the boomers’ kids move out on their own.

Of the Top 10 apartment markets ranked by Grubb & Ellis’ Investment Opportunity Monitor, six are on the West Coast – five in California alone – with the remaining four markets located on the East Coast. With the exception of Atlanta (No. 7), which has shown an incredibly high level of growth over the past decade, all of the markets offer barriers to entry and high home prices. Los Angeles ranks first, followed by Washington, D.C., Orange County, Calif., San Diego, Oakland/East Bay, Calif., Long Island, N.Y., Atlanta, Portland, Ore., Westchester County, N.Y., and San Francisco.

About Grubb & Ellis

Named to The Global Outsourcing 100(TM) in 2009 by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals(TM), Grubb & Ellis Company (NYSE: GBE) is one of the largest and most respected commercial real estate services and investment companies in the world. Our 6,000 professionals in more than 130 company-owned and affiliate offices draw from a unique platform of real estate services, practice groups and investment products to deliver comprehensive, integrated solutions to real estate owners, tenants and investors. The firm’s transaction, management, consulting and investment services are supported by highly regarded proprietary market research and extensive local expertise. Through its investment subsidiaries, the company is a leading sponsor of real estate investment programs that provide individuals and institutions the opportunity to invest in a broad range of real estate investment vehicles, including public non-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs), tenant-in-common (TIC) investments suitable for tax-deferred 1031 exchanges, mutual funds and other real estate investment funds. For more information, visit www.grubb-ellis.com.

                         GRUBB & ELLIS INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY MONITOR
                         --------------------------------------------

    U.S. OFFICE MARKET STRENGTH FORECAST
    Top 10 Markets 2010-2014

    United States                       Overall Score*                   Rank
    Austin, Texas                                 77.8                      1
    Washington, D.C.                              77.4                      2
    Los Angeles                                   73.6                      3
    Portland, Ore.                                70.9                      4
    Raleigh-Durham, N.C.                          69.6                      5
    Houston                                       69.4                      6
    Orange County, Calif.                         69.0                      7
    San Diego                                     67.4                      8
    San Francisco                                 65.1                      9
    Denver                                        62.8                     10

    *Markets were ranked from 0 to 100 against 13 property, economic and
     demographic variables.

    U.S. INDUSTRIAL MARKET STRENGTH FORECAST
    Top 10 Markets 2010-2014

    United States                       Overall Score*                   Rank
    Los Angeles                                   77.7                      1
    Houston                                       77.4                      2
    Atlanta                                       70.3                      3
    Oakland/East Bay, Calif.                      64.9                      4
    Seattle                                       64.3                      5
    Dallas                                        63.5                      6
    Chicago                                       59.9                      7
    Miami                                         56.6                      8
    Portland, Ore.                                56.4                      9
    Philadelphia                                  53.1                     10

    *Markets were ranked from 0 to 100 against 14 property, economic and
     demographic variables.

    U.S. RETAIL MARKET STRENGTH FORECAST
    Top 10 Markets 2010-2014

    United States                       Overall Score*                   Rank
    Los Angeles                                   75.8                      1
    Houston                                       69.9                      2
    Dallas                                        68.2                      3
    Raleigh-Durham, N.C.                          67.4                      4
    Atlanta                                       66.3                      5
    Washington, D.C.                              62.5                      6
    Austin, Texas                                 60.6                      7
    San Diego                                     56.1                      8
    Portland, Ore.                                55.8                      9
    San Francisco                                 52.6                     10

    *Markets were ranked from 0 to 100 against 17 property, economic and
     demographic variables.

    U.S. MULTI HOUSING MARKET STRENGTH FORECAST
    Top 10 Markets 2010-2014

    United States                       Overall Score*                   Rank
    Los Angeles                                   64.8                      1
    Washington, D.C.                              60.5                      2
    Orange County, Calif.                         60.1                      3
    San Diego                                     58.3                      4
    Oakland/East Bay, Calif.                      58.1                      5
    Long Island, N.Y.                             56.5                      6
    Atlanta                                       55.7                      7
    Portland, Ore.                                55.0                      8
    Westchester County, N.Y.                      54.8                      9
    San Francisco                                 53.5                     10

    *Markets were ranked from 0 to 100 against 15 property, economic and
     demographic variables.

SOURCE Grubb & Ellis Company

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