Raleigh, North Carolina.  Kane Realty Snares Another Major Facility.  The booming North Hills Shopping Center area will grow by another quality name and facility.  A six story 140 room Hyatt Hotel will be added to all the other features in that area.  Beside the much needed hotel room inventory in the area the hotel will also have 40,000 square feet of street level shops.  Construction is to start later this year.  Kane Realty is developing this project along with Concord Hospitality Enterprises.  This is the same pairing doing the Renaissance Hotel on North Hills shopping center’s  west side.  The financial “juice” in this combination is Concord.  Concord generated $440 million through the sale of 20 hotels toward the end of last year.  It has enabled them to start construction on nine new hotels and continue with plans to start four more within the next two months.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Triangle, North Carolina.  GSK Layoffs Coming - Siemens To Add Jobs.  

Zebulon - The Glaxo-SmithKline Zebulon production and packaging facility will lose about 70 jobs during the next 60 days.  Although the number has not been disclosed, their Research Triangle Park faciliity has been seeing some cutbacks since October.  It has also let go temporary workers and contractors at the Zebulon plant.  Regulatory delays in several new products and competition from generic drugs my result in further cuts.

Cary - Siemens Medical Solutions will create approximately 300 jobs - - over the next five years.  It manufactures patient-monitoring systems and medical gear.  The new jobs will be in the service and training areas.  Siemens reports that the jobs will pay an average of about $73,000 per year.  Siemens will start adding the new jobs in 2009.

Raleigh - Wake Crossings Plaza vote coming up.  The Raleigh City Council will vote on whether or not to approve the Wake Crossings Plaza.  The 53,000 square feet of office and retail space was first proposed five years ago.  The Comprehensive Planning committee has approved it so the City Council will probably follow suit.  The center is on four acres off of Mitchell Mill Road east of Forestville Road. 

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: wwwJohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  Indiana Group Buys Shopping Center.  Equity Investment Group Buys Creekside Crossing Shopping Center.  The Fort Wayne investors paid $10.3 million for the center which is located at Wake Forest and Six Forks roads.  The per square foot price for the 60,440 square foot center is $171.  That’s 4.2% more than Jefferson Pilot Life Insurance, the seller, paid for it in 1999.

ATLANTA PARTNERSHIP BUYS TWO APARMENT COMPLEXES.  Julian LeCraw & Co. paid $30.3 million for northwest Raleigh’s Waterford Point apartments and $30.8 million for the Cornerstone Apartments at 200 Terrastone Place, between N.C. 55 and Davis Drive.  The seller of the Cornerstone Apartments, Fairfield Cornerstone LLC, receive 12% more than the paid for it.  Fairfield was also the seller of the Waterford Point apartments. The increase they enjoyed on those units was 17%. 

In 1919 Americans were buying more than 25 million 78 rpm records per year.  Like Topsy, from then on it “just growed.”

John Fish (919) 696-3474    Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  North Raleigh Shopping Center Sold.  Regency Centers of Jacksonville, Florida sold Greystone Village to DLC Management of Tarrytown, N.Y.  The 85,665 square foot center was purchased by Regency in 2004 for $11.7 million.  Greystone was one of a portfolio of seven centers Regency sold to DLC.  The sale price for the total package was $104 million.

HOMEWOOD NURSERY REVISITED.  I intend to add a number of features to my blog (I say with crossed fingers and grit teeth) not only to try and make it more interesting and informative but so that I can learn and stay up with the times as well.  With regard to yesterday’s post regarding Homewood Nursery and along the lines of “better late than never” I am going to include four photos I took at last year’s Christmas display.  Enjoy.  Click on each photos to see it full size. To view the next one click on Back.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Raleigh, North Carolina.  Lat Purser & Associates purchased Holly Park.  Holly Park Shopping Center was sold to Charlotte developer Lat Purser & Associates for $17 million.  The 148,000 square foot center will be renovated. 

PARADE OF HOMES BOOKS - As per usual this time of year I get a raft of calls asking for Parade of Homes books.  The Home Builders Association Advises me that they won’t receive them until Wednesday of this week.  They do their frantic last minute pre-Parade delivery to the Brokers just as the builders do their Keystone Cops rountine of getting their Parade entries ready to show right up to very last minute.  If you want to be certain you get a Parade book call your broker and line up a copy NOW!

A McDONALDS DISAPPEARS! - In the for what it’s worth department, Sherlock Holmes would be very disappointed in me.  Every day, going to work and going home I pass by a McDonalds restaurant on Creedmoor Road.  On Sunday as I drove by - it was gone!  I know that they didn’t mash up and throw away the kitchen and other equipment so they must have been closed and moving things out to get ready for the tear down for some time.  Also, this means that there would have been no cars in their parking lot for some time.  How observant of me not to have noticed.  I have seen a lot of restaurant chains come and go and some individual units of the the “biggies” get replaced.  Certainly even some McDonalds units must, from time to time, bite the dust.  It’s just that I have not seen it happen.  Whether it will be replaced with a bigger and better McDonalds or something totally different I don’t know.

John Fish (919) 696-3474    Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com 

Raleigh, North Carolina.  Towne North Plaza shopping center at Creedmoor and Strickland Roads was sold to AEW Capital Management of Boston.  They paid $21.4 million for the 103,500 square foot center.  The sellers, Craig Davis Properties of Cary and their partners Hawthorne Capital of Charlotte, recently renovated the center.  The price they received was 2 1/2 times what they paid for it in 2005.  It would be nice if all face lifts (of whatever kind) did as well.

John Fish (919) 696-3474  Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com