[MUSIC] This is the CRE Weekly Digest by Lightbox, a firm transforming the commercial real estate landscape by connecting every step of the CRE process with comprehensive tools and data. I'm Diane Crocker, here with Manus Clancy. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. And to our loyal listeners, we appreciate you tuning in each week. Welcome to this week's episode. Well, when we left you last week, there was clashes optimism around a U.S. Iran breakthrough. That optimism is now a fragile 60-day negotiating window, a temporary agreement in place. Oil is back to pre-war prices. They went down to $69 overnight and $72 a barrel as of today. So that's encouraging. The tenure is down to 4.37. So more good news. And the stock sell-off earlier in this week reversed, and they're a big as of this morning. A couple more things here. On the data front, U.S. manufacturing hit a 49-month high. And input costs are showing signs of cooling. Yet inflation reads are high. CPI is up there. PPI posted its biggest 12-month jump last week since November 2022 with oil and energy, obviously, as the main accelerants. And then just out, right before we hit record today, PCE came in at 3.4. That was roughly in line with estimates and its highest read since late 2023. So Manus, what is your take on all of these headlines? It was very interesting week. I think the things that you teed up reflect real strength over the last 24 hours. But we didn't get there in a straight line. The markets were very, very volatile over the last couple of days. Part of that is coming with the oscillation over optimism, whether peace will hold in the Middle East. When there's confidence that peace will hold, and the straight-of-our-moods will remain open, the markets tend to feel good. And we rally. And when that confidence feels fragile, we tend to sell off. But there was something bigger this week beyond the war in Iran. And what we saw was an enormous sell-off in both the recent tech high flyers and some of the MAG7. We saw some of the traditional names really get hammered this week. Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Google, the real royalty, if you will, of tech. And then the Johnny Cum Laithlies that have really seen run-ups in the last couple of years, Micron, were not even the last couple of years, the last couple of months. Micron, AMD, and others saw sharp retreats late last week and early this week. And now we've seen a complete reversal of fortune over the last-- let's call it 36 hours. Micron came out with just extraordinary earnings last night. They're up 20% today. That is driving the NASDAQ up 2% this morning. Risk is back on. All the angst we had a couple of days ago seems to be dissipating. The yield on the 10 year, as you pointed out, 4.37% this morning, just a couple of days ago, that was 455. After some hot prints in CPI and PPI, a better than expected jobs number, there was concern that the market was overheating. And that drove interest rates higher. Today, 18 basis points lower than where we were about 4 or 5 days ago. That's another tailwind emerging. And lastly, you pointed this out as well. Last night, when I was watching Haslinda Amin, on Bloomberg, she pointed out that oil had tipped below $70 a barrel. It was in the high '60s last night. So there's, at least for today, a tremendous amount of momentum for the markets. And it feels good as we enter the home stretch into the July 4th weekend. Yeah, definitely, Manus. It's up claschously, I think a little bit nervously. It's almost like the market's waiting for permission to feel good again. I want to tell our listeners, especially the new ones, that if you do not follow Manus Clancy on LinkedIn, I suggest you do. And the reason I say that today is that he posts a weekly commentary. I get to read an advanced copy and Manus in yours that is, I believe, going to go live today or tomorrow. You wrote about how 2026 has been a paradox parade. Between the things we already talked about here today, oil surging, stubbornly high 10 year, although it did come down in the past day or so. Rising inflation, confidence tanking, pretty much every indicator that's pointing to a pullback. And we still see equities hitting all-time highs, a surge in bank lending, which I want to talk about in a second. Our light box theory activity index hiter for your high. And in your latest post, you close by telling your readers to take their vacations now. Why do you think that? - When I talked about the parade of paradoxes, I said, if you had given this litany of headwinds in January and asked Wall Street analysts and CRE investors and market watchers what the impact would be, I think you would have heard whaling in the background that if you said in January, I promise you there'll be war in the Middle East. I promise you that oil will hit almost $130 a barrel. I promise you that home builder confidence and consumer confidence will be in the dungeon. I completely know that inflation will hit multi-year highs that the Fed will start talking about hiking rates, not cutting rates. Given that as the background in January, please Mr. Wall Street analyst or please Mr. or Mrs. CRE analyst, tell me what you think is gonna happen. And I think people would have lined up with expectations that A, we would see a 20 or 25% sell off in equities and that we would see the CRE market go through a 20, 23 like slowdown. When you add in the fact that borrowing costs went up 75 basis points in short order, if you threw that into the mix, people would have said, oh my goodness, I might lose my job. And yet what we saw in April and May in the light box activity index and in the equity markets were in reverse order, all time high after all time high for equities. And in the index side, multi-year highs, we saw the light box activity index hit an all time high in April and almost hit an all time high in May, it retreated only slightly. So that's paradoxical. Now what we're seeing, and this is what makes me so optimistic, is if that can happen when we're facing category five hurricane winds, what will happen when those headwinds become tailwinds? If the 10 year treasury goes down to 410, if oil stays in the high or mid 60s per barrel, what happens then? And I think at least for the CRE markets, they go on hyper drive that these markets take off. And that's why I'm saying take your vacations now because if these come true, I think we're gonna see a terrific second half. - Hopefully true, with a list of caveats and with oil prices coming down, they could take their vacations without having to pay so much money to fill their gas tanks for those summer drives. - So we should talk about a few other data points that come into this. One was CNBC this week was saying that airlines are going to get a $40 billion windfall from oil prices falling over the summer and into the fall. That's just a huge number that is indicative of the kind of tailwind this market will be seeing. When you turn that into CRE operations, you're saying big dips in operating costs, utility costs, especially for landlords that bear the cost on behalf of their tenants. We also saw a headline that manufacturing hit a multi-year high as well. 55 was above expectations. 55 is firmly in expansion territory. That particular index R is 50. If you're under 50 year in contraction territory, if you're above 50, you're in expansion territory. And the sub headline there was that manufacturers are feeling the benefit of prices coming down very rapidly. I think we're going to see great CPI prints in September and October. And I think that will lead to lower rates and greater activity. - I love it. The other big data print that came out this week that I don't think we've touched on yet is about Q1 numbers on bank landing. So the Mortgage Bankers Association came out with their report on Q1 that banks originated 455 billion in CRE loans in Q1. That was up 80% from a year earlier. And the real deal had a headline about this that was banks our back baby. And they went into detail and banks, it's big and small, are back in the game after really years of being pencils down. As they worked through loan books that were weighed down with challenging office retail and multi-family loans. Some as we've talked about here, it took their loans on impaired debt. In some cases, they even foreclosed. Lisa Pendergast, who was a guest on this pod last summer, she's the president of the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council. And she sat in the article, for a while, their banks were pretty stayed and concerned, maybe a little overly conservative. But now, ReFi conditions have improved. Banks are more willing to meet borrowers on their terms. And landers like Flagstar, like PNC, like Dime Community, are all coming back and saying that they see an inflection point and they're looking to originate more loans, but they're being really selective about where and how they land. So more encouraging newsmanus from the MBA in terms of lending this year. So let me start with a congratulations. Lisa is retiring this year. And after a long tenure at CREF-C, she oversaw some really difficult times at CREF-C, including the painful COVID stretch early on when everybody had to go remote. So kudos to her for a successful tenure at CREF-C. And I will throw out there that having dealt with CREF-C soon.
the late 90s. I think it's the goal standard, if you will, for data standards in commercial real estate. The templates they've put out that people abide by is really the goal standard for data reporting. And it really gives people a terrific view into how real estate is performing. It's it's the best of the industry at that point. But to your point, there are a couple of thoughts on the banking side. The MBA itself said year over year lending was up 52% Q1 2026 over Q1 2025. That's just a tremendous validation that people feel good about commercial real estate that the market is confident. And I'll ask a question of you that I don't know the answer to. Banks are back in and I love that headline, by the way, banks are back, baby. I wonder if they've found their footing in terms of competing with private equity firms and or have they benefited from some of this concern that private equity lenders are becoming a little bit too risky or a little bit too loose with their underwriting. I don't really know that I'd love to hear your thoughts and maybe some of our listeners can weigh in as well. But for a long time, the story had been that PE firms were taking market share handover fists from banks. And now it feels like banks are finding their footing and coming back in a big way. Yeah, I think it's probably a little of both. And I remember several years ago, maybe five, six years ago, there was that same concern race about private equity stealing market share from banks and are they being too fast and loose with their debt capital? And then it's the pendulum swung back. So I feel like there's this cycle of PE firms going aggressively forward and then pulling back a little bit and banks looking a little bit more relatively more competitive relative to PE. But yeah, I don't know the right answer. I thought any of our listeners want to weigh in? Love to hear your comments. Thanks. Have to feel a lot better right now, at least deploying money when you're getting a six handle on your loans. Then you were back in 2022 when you were getting a three handle. You know, when you were getting that three handle, you knew the other shoe was going to drop and that rates were going to eventually have to go up and you were going to be stuck with these three and a half percent multi-family loans that you made during the Zerp phase, zero interest rate policy phase. I have to feel a lot better making a six and a half percent loan today when you feel like perhaps the next move in treasuries after this big uptick over the last three months might be down. So we have a lot of banking clients, 1200 of our 1200 US banks, which is a significant market share, use our various procurement tools. So we root for them hard. Right. And I mean, the other thing I'll point to that's different now than it was two or three years ago is that prices are more stable than they were before. So there's more data on, you know, how would you price an office loan in a particular market where you didn't really have any comps to look at two or three years ago. Now, you know, there are some numbers that they can point to. And certainly there's paint still to be felt with distressed office loans as well as loans in other sectors that were originated when rates were a lot lower. But there's more certainty, I think, on the pricing side and that I think helps a little bit too. I think banks have to feel somewhat confident at this point. There's that old Barry Manelos song. I've been through the rain or I've come through the rain or something like that. CRE has taken some hard hits over the last couple of years. Some people were thinking these were going to become systemic risks for banks. The collapse of office values, the negative equity that came up that distressed me saw there was certainly real. And multi-family took a chair of lumps with excessive valuations and anemic rent growth over the last couple of years. So this whole industry has made it through the rain so to speak. I wish I could come up with some more of the lyrics. Maybe I would crune a little bit, but I'm not going to crune. But I think that has to give banks confidence that they've been thrown a lot of curveballs over the last couple of years and they have avoided catastrophe. Yeah, exactly. And the other thing that came to mind when you mentioned that 52 percent, that's overall lending not just banks and the MBAs forecast, which they announced, I believe, in early February was for a 27 percent increase for the whole year. And now the first quarters up by 52 percent. So I think they typically come out with their late year 2026 forecast would come out like in the August September timeframe. So I'm curious to see how they rejigger that 27 percent. It was a very interesting day yesterday. We had our quarterly town hole for Lightbox. Diane was there. The 500 or so employees that Lightbox has participated in some cases in person in some cases remotely. And if you think I am bullish right now, you should have heard me yesterday. I was probably more euphoric about what I think the second half can bring for the Siri markets if peace holds. I have to think that some people out there thought maybe I had three or four red bulls before I went on the air yesterday. I'm not a red bull guy. I'm never even had one. But a few people remark that I was quite euphoric yesterday. You were on fire for sure. One thing that came to mind as I was listening to the market update that you gave yesterday and the other segments of the town hall is I'm seeing a lot more stories now about how it's not okay to say rates are higher for longer. They're just high and that's where we're going to be for a long time. And so if you're an investor, you're thinking, look, I'm not going to get a lot of help on the cap rate side. We're at this stage of the market where rates aren't going to help me and I can't sit around waiting for them to come down. So what do you do? You start looking for assets where you can focus on real income growth. You know, on what deals will the math work if financing stays the way it is or even gets more expensive. You know, and you have to look at each asset individually because as we've talked about here, generalizations don't hold. You know, one office building can be very different than the one next to it, but we're at this place where there's more data on commercial properties than ever before and ways to analyze it that you just couldn't even do, you know, by yourself before. So, you know, you've got as an investor like better, stronger, faster ways to explore like which listings are going to stand on math that works and which don't. I totally agree. I think selectivity, data analysis, and using every tool that your disposal is critical in this market, especially because we don't know how AI is going to change the market as it pertains to office demand, as it pertains to demographics where people live. Are we going to go back to a period of time where there are fewer people in the office because AI has been replacing people. I think there's a lot of what ifs and the winners will be those that use every tool at their disposal between AI, every data source, collect the information and so forth. But I will point out that you and I are somewhat invested in the narrative that the H2 will be better. Me probably a little more than you in one of my musings on LinkedIn recently. I noted that it could be a very good time to deploy capital at the time risk premiums were up and the 10 year treasury was close to 470 for a short period of time. I'd love to be right in this area. I'd love to find out that people that deployed capital in the face of the war, in the face of higher oil prices, but got extra 75 basis points in yield to reward themselves to get rewarded for their votes of confidence. Yeah, hopefully. And I guess that's a nice place to interject a teaser for a special episode that we're doing next week where you and I are going to share our list of things that surprised us about how 2026 has played out thus far at mid-year and what the expectations are for the second half. I'm looking forward to it. I think that the first half through us an abundance of curveballs has did the first half of 2025 with tariffs. And I hope we return to normalcy in age two. And I hope we return to a paradox-free second half because if I told you today that we're going to get to a 4% 10 year, if we're going to stick at $65 oil kind of re-channeling what I was saying a few minutes ago, if I tell you that the piece will hold, I think you or the analyst out there would say it should be a robust second half. But we've been throwing a lot of paradoxes over the last 18 months and who knows? Maybe CRE will continue cutting against the grain and we will find out the hard way. Yeah, we will see. Just don't use higher for longer when you talk about rates. No, I I got to retire that cliche. I want to retire resilience too. I feel like that's the most overused synonym right now. My wife tells me there's a lot of stories that I should retire. We've been married now more than 30 years and she'll look at me. And of course when we go out with friends and so forth, some friends haven't heard the stories I've told, but she's heard them told every time we go out with different sets of friends and sometimes she'll give me the quiet ex with two fingers. I think people heard that story before you can cut it off or reboot yourself. That's fantastic. She's got your back. After that market update for the last seven days, it's time to pivot to or weekly data dive. Diane, what do you have? Yeah, thanks, Manus. So I took a look at the transactions that you send over from your group of news reviewers and specifically in the category of the big ticket, nine digit commercial real estate deals. So these are any deals that sold at a price of 100 million or more. We tracked 34 deals in May, totaling roughly $8.6 billion. And the biggest was a portfolio of 910 million 12 student housing properties bought by Sion Group. And the geographic pattern across the biggest deals was also pretty notable. I saw South Florida showed up repeatedly across multifamily and hospitality deals. But I think in general, Manus, the data gives us more reassurance that capital is still moving and that the biggest deals are focused on assets that have durable income. It's one of the paradoxes, right? The deals that we're seeing announced now were all likely started after the war began and all of the
rate and oil shocks took place. And this market just stiff-armed a lot of bad news, and it's great to see. We mentioned in April that the market seemed a touch soft. We were starting to see a little bit of tail off in those big deals, but that seems to have been a really fleeting week or two. That the big deals are back. They are broad in their buyer pool. They are broad in their asset class, and they are broad in their geographic diversity. So all signs that this market has just really shrugged off everything thrown at it in the first half. Nice. And if your forecast holds, we should see more in the second half. I have to say I'll give a shout out here. We brought in a new person to help us collect some of this data. But an entirely new device was created for this team, built by some of our crack engineering team, Travis and Andrea in particular here. We are collecting this data at just such a rapid pace right now. And very soon, I'll give a shameless plug. We will be releasing this new product called Lightbox Live in which people are going to be able to see these new transactions flowing through our system in real time, minute by minute, in a ticker. I don't think that that's this week, but it'll be sometime in the near future. And I think it's going to be able to allow people, minute by minute, to share the confidence that we get all the time from seeing this data flowing through our pipes. And I look forward to sharing this with our clients and our listeners. It's really cool, man. I just got my feet in that water the other day. And there's really a lot to navigate. And it's cool if you're in downtown Atlanta or you're in Charlotte, you can drill right down. And like you said, seed deals crossing the ticker in real time. It's exciting. Diane, time for our second regular segment of the week, which you do 100% of the heavy lifting on for those that want to know the inside baseball behind the work that's done for this when it comes to the did you know. And the data dive, it is 100% Diane pulling this data together. So without further ado, Diane, what do we have for the did you know? Thanks, manness. But I couldn't do it without the help of the data team internally. And for this week's did you know I kept the needle on the record with May's transactions, because I always like to see each month's transaction how they kind of shake out by sector. So these are just the big ticker items for May. But industrial had the clearest lead. And we've been talking about a lot of industrial deals here just in the past couple weeks. But in May alone, there were 800 million plus trades totaling about 2 million just in industrial logistics, warehouse portfolio trades. And then retail was second, surprisingly active with six deals totaling more than 1.2 million led by malls and open our retail portfolios. So, manness, I think that's a good place to start with the retail headlines that caught your eye this week. What do you have for us? Yes, thank you, Diane. We have a couple as we start going through some of this week's deals. The first one, kite realty group, really moving their portfolio around quite a bit over the last couple days. I'm sure a lot of these deals were in the works for a long time, but they were only recently announced kite realty acquiring two shopping centers for 136 million and at the same time selling six others for 255 million. So I think this kind of is adjacent to the point you made a few minutes ago that the winners here in real estate will be those that are nimble. Those that are nimble with their data that are willing to not be stuck in the mud when it comes to sizing up new markets, sizing up new geographies, new asset classes, and maybe taking chips off the market and putting chips on the table in other markets. Richard Hill, when he was here a couple months ago, talked about how Chicago and the Upper Midwest was showing signs of life and there were buying opportunities there, particularly in multi-family. And what happened next? We saw a huge surge in both transaction velocity and in pricing in Chicago and the suburbs there. And I do think kite represents the mindset of somebody who is actively managing their portfolio, taking some chips off the table in one area and putting them on in several others with these purchases. Yeah, that was an interesting one because we don't often see stories where an investor divests on one hand and then jumps right into the other. And here's kite, they sold six retail assets, they bought two. And to your point, I thought it was interesting where they leaned in. They bought in Sandy Springs, Georgia, and Naples, Florida. I've never been to Sandy Springs, but Naples is a very strong, very high-end retail market. So it looks to me like a deliberate bet to reach the panel their resources into affluent high growth, sunbelt, submarkets. So I think it's great, smart. Our second story comes from the Washington Business Journal, Daniel Cernivitz. Daniel has been around for a long time. He's one of many terrific reporters for the Business Journal franchises. He and I have met a couple of times at CREFSE conferences and so forth. And these guys are the business journals. They have to say, really keep their fingers on the pulse in the various markets that they cover. In this case, Daniel reporting that Willard retail spent nearly $150 million on the acquisition of two retail centers in Chantilly, Virginia. Bady management was the seller in this particular case. The two properties total 600,000 square feet. Yeah, I know that that's along the root 50 corridor in Chantilly. I used to live in Northern Virginia and that whole area just is getting like built out in a crazy way, west of Washington, DC and planned community. So those retail centers are probably a very wise investment. So Willard in this particular case partnering with Bernstein Management and Declaration partners on that $150 million spend. All right, man. Let's jump tracks to development. I know you have a couple exciting headlines here as well. Well, I always talk about the confidence of the market. And for me, confidence begins and ends with our lenders willing to put money on the table for capital intensive projects. Either shovels in the ground for new development or big checks, often nine-digit checks to allow somebody to do an office to resi conversion. And one of the great things about the last six months is so many developers have been able to tap so many different players for this type of financing that liquidity is plentiful. And the first story takes us there. Yellowstone, nabbed a $480 million construction loan for a conversion at 1740 Broadway. This is an office that will be converted to apartments. And this has a very interesting backstory. I would say this was ground zero for people realizing that offices carried more risks than was really understood. We went through certain times in 2008, for example, when people said, wow, our underwriting as an industry really has lost its way. During that particular time, banks and the CNBS market in particular were giving borrowers full faith and credit for executing transitions for replacing $40 a square foot tenants with $100 a square foot tenants, even though those leases hadn't been signed or converting affordable housing into market rent housing. A lot of those situations, the losses were enormous. 50% or 60% on $400 or $500 or $600 million or $1 billion loans. Lenders learned the hard way. 1740 Broadway was one of those moments. 1740 was occupied 40% by L Brands, who is an apparel maker. They had a lease that was ending in 2023. And while expectations were that L Brands would extend their lease, that their corporate headquarters would stay there, a $300 million loan was made on a $600 million valuation there. And the minute L Brands announced that they were not renewing their lease, the value of that property dropped first to $300 million and then later to $200 million. So this was an incredible inflection point for the market. People started saying something, Shalom O'Chop has said to us many times before, you have to know what the plans of your tenants are. You don't have to know what their operating businesses look like. And this was a very painful loss for the CNBS market. It was a $100 million loss investors in that market took their licks. And now we're going 180 degrees in other direction. We have Yellowstone getting a $500 million loan here, construction loan, conversion loan, to turn this from obsolete office into residential. And I can't think of a bigger vote of confidence for the market than somebody taking a $500 million swing at something like this. Yeah, it's true. Two things jumped out at me when I listened to you just now and I did a little research on their project. One is it's not even slated for completion until the third quarter of 2029. So that tells me that's a lender making a long, expensive bet on Midtown Manhattan's residential demand. And it falls right in line with what we talked about before that lending is back. Apparently that includes these capital-intensive conversion projects, which could have been dead on the table just a few years ago. And the second is a funny thing I read about this project man is one of the amenities is a speak easy bar built into the original bank vault. So they could probably think of some fun cocktail names that lean into the lending past. I might get a little claustrophobic in that type of thing. I picture some--
something with no windows and this big three foot door that is sealed from the outside by one of those round things that you turn. I picture the lights going off with me trying to finish my old fashioned and being locked in there overnight stakingly. So I'm a more of an outdoor guy, a roomy guy. I think a panic attack might set in a place like that, but it's interesting. I will take a pivot right now, maybe a public service message in part and a kudos in the second part. When it comes to betting, when it comes to gambling, I put before the metaphor putting chips on the table, when it comes to betting, I am all out. When it comes to sports betting, betting on your phone, all these things on television, luring people in, young people. If you're a young person listening, I'll tell you what I tell all of my children. Don't do it. I can't say in our society, it only brings heartache and losses and regret. On that side, that's my public service message. On the other side, I can't express enough admiration for people that embark on these resi conversions. It takes an enormous vote of confidence. When it comes on betting on places like New York, San Francisco and other places where these conversions have been slated, you have nothing but my admiration. That goes for the lenders as well. No fantasy football for you, man. Well, I draw the lot. I do play fantasy football, but it's a perpetual reminder in my home over the dinner table or when we're watching the miserable mets or the miserable giants or the miserable rangers or the wonderful nicks will remind our kids constantly, no betting. They're better not be any betting. It's an addiction, right? We should have learned our lesson from what the smoking problems this country has gone through years ago, right? That people became addicted and took us decades to wean people off that. I think it's going to take decades for us to wean people off this and shame on our legislators and our major league teams for not trying to reduce this and make it less accessible and pollute the minds of our children. That's all I have to say about that as far as comp might say. Moving on to a couple of other office stories. A second one, admiration again here. Summer Hill and Cyprus planning a San Jose office to resi development. They're hoping to do an affordable housing conversion. We all know that affordable housing is in short supply. Silicon Valley right now really heating up when it comes to people coming into that market due to the lore of AI powered opportunities there. It's like the 1849 goal rush people flocking to Silicon Valley and San Francisco to take part in this, but it's creating a lot of upward pressure in housing. One last story. Again, a leap of faith here, but not in the conversion segment. Clinical financial partners announcing they will establish a corporate headquarters in Midtown, Atlanta. The story coming from real estate business online. Pinnacle will occupy more than 160,000 square feet and they'll have signage at a property known as 10 20 Spring Street. This is a 500,000 square foot office in Midtown. Why do I bring this one up? I love hearing stories about companies reestablishing footprints in central business districts in major cities. This is took tons of body blows over the last five years or so. I love when companies think fresh and bring employees back to central business districts in every city. Wherever it happens, I'm a big fan. Yeah, that story is a really big one for Atlanta. We had talked a few weeks ago about Charlotte emerging as the second biggest lending hub behind New York City when a big Japanese bank, SMBC, established their headquarters in Charlotte. Now, you know, you've got Pinnacle jumping into Atlanta and there was another headline just a few days ago. Morgan Stanley has a proposal on the table for a $1.3 billion office building deal to construct an enormous operational hub in Dallas and they wouldn't even move in until 2031. So that's another to be watched because if it goes through, they join big names like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, all of which have big Texas headquarters. This might be a bit a mixed bag one. We have to say this may mean that New York or Jersey City may be losing Morgan Stanley to some degree. Some of their footprint may be shrinking. That's always the concern when you're seeing these stories. But when they talk about the location here, McKinney Street in Texas, downtown Dallas has really been hit hard. I think people focus on the Dallas success stories and they have been plentiful places like Irving and Plano and other places Richardson that have attracted companies from other states. Those have been phenomenal success stories throughout that region. But downtown Dallas has seen many six figure reductions in space or complete moves out of downtown Dallas over the last couple of years. There was an awful lot of shadow vacancy and then vacancy in that market. Morgan Stanley is talking about taking, if I'm not mistaken, 700,000 square feet on McKinney Street. And that would be a tremendous win for downtown Dallas. Yeah, I don't know if you remember me on this, but when we were there for the light box prism event a couple years ago, there was a lot of office vacancy on the high rises around our venue. I do remember sadly, this is a painful memory for me that both the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas stars were in the semifinals of their respective playoffs. And every other night, one of those two teams was playing at home in Dallas, but when you and I were so busy during that time, we never left the hotel. I had images going through my head of seeing Stanley Cup playoff hockey or NBA championship basketball night after night in my sojourn to Dallas. I had just started a light box, but little did I know that I would be housed up in the hotel for all three days I was there, but it was a great conference. Yeah, yeah, it was a good memory. All right, so let's end with our customary slice of life. Man, what is your summer go to spot? Complete the sentence. It wouldn't be summer without a trip to well, I'll pick two. My first one will be the ballpark. I always said the ballpark was my beach that when people went to spread out their blankets at the Jersey Shore and perfect their tan and swimming the surf, I do love the shore. Don't get me wrong, but for me, the beach was always she stadium back on the day. Even though it was kind of dumpy as a stadium, it was our dump and going out there and getting a cold beer and a sweaty wax cup sitting out in the sun for day game, a Saturday or Sunday afternoon was always terrific. And when I could do it with my kids, that was even better. Even better than that for me and I got to enjoy this venue just this week, the Jones Beach Theater where they have concerts every summer right on the water in Jones Beach. The sun will be setting, you'll smell the salty air coming off the ocean and the other night it was James Taylor for me one more time seeing James Taylor at Jones Beach in the open air with the sunsetting and we even got a rainbow during the concert. So two of my favorite New York places during the summer. That's fantastic. Nothing like a good baseball game in the summer. For me, it's Cape Cod. It wouldn't be a summer without it. You sit and absolute bumper to bumper traffic. There's never a good time to get over the bridge, but the worse, the traffic, the better you feel when you make it over and great sunsets, great seafood, the best ice cream in the world. Just wouldn't be summer without it. Jersey Shore might want to have a word with you, but I'll take your word for it that Cape Cod has the best ice cream in the world. It does. All right, let's close there. Thank you to our producers at Brooding Media. Be sure to join us next week as Manus and I take our mid-year look at the market and share our predictions for the second half. You can listen on all your favorite podcast platforms and we'd love to hear your comments or questions. So send them to
[email protected]. As always, thank you for listening and have a great weekend.
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