Articles by Peter E Smirniotopoulos
LinkedIn Pulse, 2017
Historic preservation, and the cultural importance of preserving our ever-dwindling stock of icon... more Historic preservation, and the cultural importance of preserving our ever-dwindling stock of iconic, landmark buildings in the United States (rather than treating them as disposable place-holders for the next building fashion of the day), should be a civic priority. As a native of Washington, D.C., perhaps I am overly sensitized to the cultural and historic importance of our rich fabric of iconic, older buildings.
Not the least of the many good reasons for favoring historic preservation is that, like fine art, music, and literature, architectural styles convey important information regarding centuries of human beings contributing to the creation of the current built environment. These buildings are snapshots, if you will, about what was going on in the world at the time these architectural styles were first being expressed, now memorialized in the remaining buildings emblematic of their respective styles.
This reverence for historic buildings and their preservation must be extended to examples of Brutalist architecture. Even if you don't personally care for it.
LinkedIn Pulse, 2017
Architecturally Significant and Culturally Important Manhattan Buildings,
Exemplary of the Intern... more Architecturally Significant and Culturally Important Manhattan Buildings,
Exemplary of the International Style of Architecture, May Be Imperilled By the Proliferation of SuperTalls in New York City.
In addition to the context of the 1915 Equitable Building, and the threats its massing and lack of setbacks posed to New Yorkers' perceived rights to light, air, and views, a new controversy surrounding supertalls may be quietly brewing in the Big Apple: Development pressure from seemingly successful supertalls.
While it may be far too early to make an objective assessment of their financial success at this nascent stage, the pressures "hyper-scrapers" are placing on land values may already be threatening some of Manhattan's most-iconic and beloved historic buildings. Specifically, the two buildings that now appear to be in greatest jeopardy of being displaced, due to their lack of financial viability when compared with the exponentially greater FAR's of super-talls, are the landmarked Lever House, located at 390 Madison Avenue, and Seagram Building, located at 375 Park Avenue, respectively.
LinkedIn Pulse, 2016
Much like the uproar over the proposed Equitable Building at 120 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, com... more Much like the uproar over the proposed Equitable Building at 120 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, completed in 1915--publication of the plans for which so troubled and outraged New Yorkers that it eventually let to the passage of the city's 1916 Zoning Resolution (the first formal codification of zoning in the United States)--will the emergence of New York City's latest crop of supertalls (aka "hyper-scrapers") lead to new land use battles over light, air, and views--and against foreboding building shadows cast over Central Park--or will the city's appetite for an ever-greater tax base drown out the ghosts of the 1915 Equitable Building?
Beware the Bright, Shiny Object: Why Investors, and Others, Should Be VERY Wary of Adam Neumann's Newest CRE Venture, Flow., 2023
Adam Neumann, the co-founder of failed coworking company WeWork, recently unveiled his latest res... more Adam Neumann, the co-founder of failed coworking company WeWork, recently unveiled his latest residential real estate start-up, Flow. As covered in a Fast Company article published on February 8th, Neumann's recent revelations about this new CRE start-up are not revelatory at all. Substantially underwritten by A16Z, a venture capital firm founded by Andreessen Horowitz in 2009 in Silicon Valley, at present Neumann's latest venture, at least as he's presented it, is aspirational, at best, with very few, if any details, about what it will be doing or how investors will be compensated.
LinkedIn Pulse, 2017
As humbling as it is to admit publicly, even in my own classroom Albert Einstein’s words seem to ... more As humbling as it is to admit publicly, even in my own classroom Albert Einstein’s words seem to carry more weight with students than my own. So, imagine my chagrin in learning that one of my favorite quotes, which I had attributed to the father of modern physics and creator of the Theory of Relativity, was never actually uttered by him. Understand, I invoked the below, supposedly Einsteinian quote with great frequency and fervor with my students, to convey the depth of understanding of complex issues--
think the "synthetic collateralized debt obligations" or, simply "synthetic CDO's" that ultimately cratered U.S. financial markets in the Fall of 2008--to which they should, and must, aspire in my courses:
"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."
DAVID vs. GOLIATH: How the Replacement of a Commercial Real Estate Agent’s Common Law Duty of Undivided Loyalty with Washington State’s More-Limited, Statutory Obligations Advantages Landlords to the Detriment of Commercial Tenants, 2019
This article examines the common law duties an agent owes its principal; the legislative history,... more This article examines the common law duties an agent owes its principal; the legislative history, and subsequent interpretation by the courts of Wash. Rev. Code §18.86 (which, in 1996, replaced Washington's common law duties agents owe to their principals, with a statutory licensing and regulatory framework for real estate brokers and agents); and argues that the best—and only adequate—way to fully and properly protect commercial tenants from unfair advantages enjoyed by landlords and their brokers is to prohibit altogether the practice of dual agency in commercial real estate transactions.
This article updates, and applies to the Greater Seattle marketplace, a November 2014 research study report that made a number of key observations about the existence of adverse legal and transactional consequences from conflicts of interest in the representation of commercial tenants by full-service brokerage firms engaged in the commercial real estate services (CRES) sector actively engaged in the practice of "dual-agency." That report, published by the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis (CREUA) at The George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C., also offered a series of key recommendations for mitigating or eliminating entirely these adverse consequences.
The necessity for the article's update of the 2014 research study is that further industry consolidation on a national, regional, and Greater Seattle area basis, combined with a fevered Seattle marketplace for commercial real estate development and leasing, have further exacerbated the negative consequences for tenants seeking independent, objective, and professional representation in commercial real estate transactions. These forces have greatly increased the prospect that, in a dual agency scenario, the "tenant representative" may be acting in the best interests of the landlord, as well as in their own self-interest as an undisclosed principal. Even in cases where the tenant representative discloses the existence of a conflict where their firm is a principal in the transaction, the tenant may not be adequately equipped with the knowledge necessary to understand the significance and consequence of the self-dealing present in these transactions.
This article is also needed because, in the intervening years since the report's November 2014 publication, the CRES sector has not taken any substantive steps, in the form of industry self-regulation or otherwise, to address, much less ameliorate, these legal issues and the attendant, adverse, transactional consequences they portend for commercial tenants. Moreover, over the same period: (i) there has been increasing consolidation among the five (5) largest CRES full-service brokerage firms (i.e., collectively they represent a larger share of the market for leasing commercial property than was the case in 2014, when the research study was conducted) and (ii) those firms have gained traction in numerous domestic commercial property markets by taking equity positions in a substantial amount of commercial space available for lease in major markets, transforming these firms from mere landlord brokers to landlords themselves.
One might conclude that I simply enjoy torturing my students in this way. And while I admit that ... more One might conclude that I simply enjoy torturing my students in this way. And while I admit that pushing my students outside their respective comfort zones is, in this way, intentional (and admit further I enjoy watching them squirm uncomfortably, desperately trying to find their inner da Vinci, as this is an in class exercise), the primary goal is neither to humiliate nor demean my students: It is to get their brains to work in ways they normally do not.
"The General Services Administration (GSA), which handles all real property matters for the feder... more "The General Services Administration (GSA), which handles all real property matters for the federal government, has demonstrated two very different approaches to the redevelopment of two of Washington, D.C.'s most-iconic, historic buildings: The Old Post Office Pavilion and The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, located within a few blocks of each other on "America's Main Street," Pennsylvania Avenue. Although, on its face, the GSA's approach to each building may appear to be the same--engage the private sector in an open competition to propose redevelopment solutions--in reality they have been diametrically opposed, with one requiring the preservation of the existing building (the Old Post Office Pavilion of "OPOP") and one inviting the demolition of the existing building (the Brutalist FBI HQ building)."
On August 25, 2016, John (Jay) Ellison, PhD, Dean of Students
at The College of the University of... more On August 25, 2016, John (Jay) Ellison, PhD, Dean of Students
at The College of the University of Chicago, sent out a letter to the incoming Class of 2020 regarding the critical importance of free speech and academic freedom on campus.Those who are easily satisfied getting their information about what's going on in the United States and the world through sound-bites from the mainstream media have been largely unaware that Dean Ellison's letter enclosed Academic Freedom and the Modern University: The Experience of the University of Chicago, a 54-page monograph by John W. Boyer, Chicago's Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in History and Dean of The College. Dean Ellison's letter also provided a link to some of the sources upon which Professor Boyer relied in writing his monograph: https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/.
Urban Land, 2001
It seems a fool's errand for designers and developers to endeavor to imbue a place with "authenti... more It seems a fool's errand for designers and developers to endeavor to imbue a place with "authenticity." A place is either authentic or it's not. Yet perhaps no other phrase best-characterizing new development projects than "place-making."
This essay for Urban Land (Mach 2001) explores the concept of "place-making," and whether places that grow organically are the only ones that may lay claim to "authenticity." This article received ULI's inaugural Apgar Award (May 2002) as being most-representative expression of ULI's mission in the year it was published in Urban Land magazine.
Feature boxes in this article were authored by Prof. Richard Florida (Carnegie Mellon), Prof. Michael Pyatok (U. of Washington), and Henry Beer, at the request of Prof. Smirniotopoulos
In a knowledge-based economy, colleges and universities will be the factories of the 21st century... more In a knowledge-based economy, colleges and universities will be the factories of the 21st century. They are the primary source of "knowledge workers"-the smart, creative, and skilled people forming the foundation of successful companies. Given the increasing importance of colleges and universities to the fiscal health of the United States and to its future role in the global economy, it is time for academic institutions to consider ending their reliance on campus designs derived from medieval times. Colleges and universities also should be better integrated into the cities and towns where they are located, rather than remain largely isolated and aloof.
To be sustainable and to continue to be relevant, academic institutions need to evolve and adapt-as they already have in a number of aspects. Yet, the ivory tower mystique of higher education for the most part has preserved the isolationist underpinnings of campus planning and design. As a consequence, many colleges and Universities—and their students and faculty—continue to be disconnected from the outside world. The traditional tensions between a college or university and the jurisdiction where it is located have intensified as real estate development outside the campus walls and the costs associated with growth have continued almost unabated. However, rather than view their respective interests as being intertwined—as they, indeed, often are—most academic institutions and their municipal hosts continue to compete with one another, often constraining each other's potential.
Papers by Peter E Smirniotopoulos
Routledge eBooks, Nov 18, 2016
Innovating the Built Environment for a Post-COVID-19 World It would seem an act of academic malpr... more Innovating the Built Environment for a Post-COVID-19 World It would seem an act of academic malpractice to teach a course titled Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change, and host an all-day symposium as an integral part of that course, and not endeavor to address the most-disruptive thing to happen to the built environment in more than 100 years: The coronavirus pandemic. This "disruption" to real estate is the proverbial elephant in the room. Hopefully, it will maintain a minimum six-foot distance from others as we address how it impacts the four Special Topics addressed above. What should/will our built environment look like in a post-COVID-19 world? This Session 6 discussion begins with two special guests as Featured Speakers, and then brings back a few of the panelists from earlier sessions, to discuss how today's Special Topics may be fundamentally altered to prepare for a post-COVID-19 world.
Searching for the majority of marketed publication or reading resource worldwide? We provide them... more Searching for the majority of marketed publication or reading resource worldwide? We provide them done in format type as word, txt, kindle, pdf, zip, rar and also ppt. among them is this professional real estate law fundamentals for the development process that has actually been composed by Still confused ways to get it? Well, simply check out online or download by signing up in our site right here. Click them. GO TO THE TECHNICAL WRITING FOR AN EXPANDED TYPE OF THIS REAL ESTATE LAW FUNDAMENTALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS, ALONG WITH A CORRECTLY FORMATTED VERSION OF THE INSTANCE MANUAL PAGE ABOVE.
Seattle University Law Review, 2019
As the fastest-growing urban area in the United States-and due to its emerging national influence... more As the fastest-growing urban area in the United States-and due to its emerging national influence in commercial real estate development and leasing through transformational transactions such as Amazon's recently completed national HQ2 search-the City of Seattle and related Washington State laws addressing the use of dual agency in commercial transactions present a unique backdrop for examining the findings and recommendations from a 2014 commercial real estate conflicts of interest research study and attendant report, described below, more than four years after its publication. In November 2014, a published research study report made a number of key observations about the existence of adverse legal and transactional consequences from conflicts of interest in the representation of commercial tenants by full-service brokerage firms engaged in the commercial real estate services (CRES) sector actively engaged in the practice of "dual agency." That report, published by the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis (CREUA) at The George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C., also offered a series * Professor Smirniotopoulos would like to acknowledge the contribution of Hughes Marino, LLC, which provided funding for some of the legal research and analysis undertaken in support of this Article. 2019] David v. Goliath 171 Accountability to the principal. However, in Washington State, the legislature in 1996 replaced the common law duties agents owe to principals under state common lawsuch as the duty of undivided loyalty-with a statutory scheme that, at best, causes confusion about the duties an agent owes its principal, 4 particularly in the context of a dual agency representation of the tenant and the landlord in the same transaction.
Co-working pioneer WeWork, a wholly owned subsidiary of The We Company, grew meteorically through... more Co-working pioneer WeWork, a wholly owned subsidiary of The We Company, grew meteorically through an extremely aggressive building and master-lease acquisition strategy over the past several years. Substantial, early stage funding from SoftBank, a Japan-based high-tech venture capital investment bank, reinforced WeWork's unicorn status. But was WeWork's business model truly unique, bringing with it the promise of a very profitable real estate operating company in the future? Or was it the company's early stage, venture capital-fueled meteoric growth-without a solid business plan for how that growth and market dominance might translate to a financially stable and profitable operating entity over the long run-that made it the shiny red firetruck in the toy store window that attracted investor attention?
TALES OF NEW YORK: What the Empire State Building, 1 Wall Street, and the Flatiron Building Say About the Future of Cities, 2023
What is the future of cities in a post-pandemic world? This paper seeks to address that question ... more What is the future of cities in a post-pandemic world? This paper seeks to address that question through an examination of developments impacting three of New York City's most-iconic commercial buildings--with related discussions about two others--before, during, and after the March 11, 2020, WHO declaration of a worldwide pandemic.
Between February 28 and March 6, 2023, three seemingly unrelated articles appeared in the trade press—two in The Real Deal; the third on Globe St.—that may portend the state of the commercial real estate market, not just for New York City but for the United States as a whole, as well as the future of cities more-broadly. Those articles offer a microcosm of the forces begun during and following the onset of COVID-19—declared a “global pandemic” by the World Health Organization more than three years ago—that have called into question the very nature and value of cities in contemporary society.
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Articles by Peter E Smirniotopoulos
Not the least of the many good reasons for favoring historic preservation is that, like fine art, music, and literature, architectural styles convey important information regarding centuries of human beings contributing to the creation of the current built environment. These buildings are snapshots, if you will, about what was going on in the world at the time these architectural styles were first being expressed, now memorialized in the remaining buildings emblematic of their respective styles.
This reverence for historic buildings and their preservation must be extended to examples of Brutalist architecture. Even if you don't personally care for it.
Exemplary of the International Style of Architecture, May Be Imperilled By the Proliferation of SuperTalls in New York City.
In addition to the context of the 1915 Equitable Building, and the threats its massing and lack of setbacks posed to New Yorkers' perceived rights to light, air, and views, a new controversy surrounding supertalls may be quietly brewing in the Big Apple: Development pressure from seemingly successful supertalls.
While it may be far too early to make an objective assessment of their financial success at this nascent stage, the pressures "hyper-scrapers" are placing on land values may already be threatening some of Manhattan's most-iconic and beloved historic buildings. Specifically, the two buildings that now appear to be in greatest jeopardy of being displaced, due to their lack of financial viability when compared with the exponentially greater FAR's of super-talls, are the landmarked Lever House, located at 390 Madison Avenue, and Seagram Building, located at 375 Park Avenue, respectively.
think the "synthetic collateralized debt obligations" or, simply "synthetic CDO's" that ultimately cratered U.S. financial markets in the Fall of 2008--to which they should, and must, aspire in my courses:
"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."
This article updates, and applies to the Greater Seattle marketplace, a November 2014 research study report that made a number of key observations about the existence of adverse legal and transactional consequences from conflicts of interest in the representation of commercial tenants by full-service brokerage firms engaged in the commercial real estate services (CRES) sector actively engaged in the practice of "dual-agency." That report, published by the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis (CREUA) at The George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C., also offered a series of key recommendations for mitigating or eliminating entirely these adverse consequences.
The necessity for the article's update of the 2014 research study is that further industry consolidation on a national, regional, and Greater Seattle area basis, combined with a fevered Seattle marketplace for commercial real estate development and leasing, have further exacerbated the negative consequences for tenants seeking independent, objective, and professional representation in commercial real estate transactions. These forces have greatly increased the prospect that, in a dual agency scenario, the "tenant representative" may be acting in the best interests of the landlord, as well as in their own self-interest as an undisclosed principal. Even in cases where the tenant representative discloses the existence of a conflict where their firm is a principal in the transaction, the tenant may not be adequately equipped with the knowledge necessary to understand the significance and consequence of the self-dealing present in these transactions.
This article is also needed because, in the intervening years since the report's November 2014 publication, the CRES sector has not taken any substantive steps, in the form of industry self-regulation or otherwise, to address, much less ameliorate, these legal issues and the attendant, adverse, transactional consequences they portend for commercial tenants. Moreover, over the same period: (i) there has been increasing consolidation among the five (5) largest CRES full-service brokerage firms (i.e., collectively they represent a larger share of the market for leasing commercial property than was the case in 2014, when the research study was conducted) and (ii) those firms have gained traction in numerous domestic commercial property markets by taking equity positions in a substantial amount of commercial space available for lease in major markets, transforming these firms from mere landlord brokers to landlords themselves.
at The College of the University of Chicago, sent out a letter to the incoming Class of 2020 regarding the critical importance of free speech and academic freedom on campus.Those who are easily satisfied getting their information about what's going on in the United States and the world through sound-bites from the mainstream media have been largely unaware that Dean Ellison's letter enclosed Academic Freedom and the Modern University: The Experience of the University of Chicago, a 54-page monograph by John W. Boyer, Chicago's Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in History and Dean of The College. Dean Ellison's letter also provided a link to some of the sources upon which Professor Boyer relied in writing his monograph: https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/.
This essay for Urban Land (Mach 2001) explores the concept of "place-making," and whether places that grow organically are the only ones that may lay claim to "authenticity." This article received ULI's inaugural Apgar Award (May 2002) as being most-representative expression of ULI's mission in the year it was published in Urban Land magazine.
Feature boxes in this article were authored by Prof. Richard Florida (Carnegie Mellon), Prof. Michael Pyatok (U. of Washington), and Henry Beer, at the request of Prof. Smirniotopoulos
To be sustainable and to continue to be relevant, academic institutions need to evolve and adapt-as they already have in a number of aspects. Yet, the ivory tower mystique of higher education for the most part has preserved the isolationist underpinnings of campus planning and design. As a consequence, many colleges and Universities—and their students and faculty—continue to be disconnected from the outside world. The traditional tensions between a college or university and the jurisdiction where it is located have intensified as real estate development outside the campus walls and the costs associated with growth have continued almost unabated. However, rather than view their respective interests as being intertwined—as they, indeed, often are—most academic institutions and their municipal hosts continue to compete with one another, often constraining each other's potential.
Papers by Peter E Smirniotopoulos
Between February 28 and March 6, 2023, three seemingly unrelated articles appeared in the trade press—two in The Real Deal; the third on Globe St.—that may portend the state of the commercial real estate market, not just for New York City but for the United States as a whole, as well as the future of cities more-broadly. Those articles offer a microcosm of the forces begun during and following the onset of COVID-19—declared a “global pandemic” by the World Health Organization more than three years ago—that have called into question the very nature and value of cities in contemporary society.
Not the least of the many good reasons for favoring historic preservation is that, like fine art, music, and literature, architectural styles convey important information regarding centuries of human beings contributing to the creation of the current built environment. These buildings are snapshots, if you will, about what was going on in the world at the time these architectural styles were first being expressed, now memorialized in the remaining buildings emblematic of their respective styles.
This reverence for historic buildings and their preservation must be extended to examples of Brutalist architecture. Even if you don't personally care for it.
Exemplary of the International Style of Architecture, May Be Imperilled By the Proliferation of SuperTalls in New York City.
In addition to the context of the 1915 Equitable Building, and the threats its massing and lack of setbacks posed to New Yorkers' perceived rights to light, air, and views, a new controversy surrounding supertalls may be quietly brewing in the Big Apple: Development pressure from seemingly successful supertalls.
While it may be far too early to make an objective assessment of their financial success at this nascent stage, the pressures "hyper-scrapers" are placing on land values may already be threatening some of Manhattan's most-iconic and beloved historic buildings. Specifically, the two buildings that now appear to be in greatest jeopardy of being displaced, due to their lack of financial viability when compared with the exponentially greater FAR's of super-talls, are the landmarked Lever House, located at 390 Madison Avenue, and Seagram Building, located at 375 Park Avenue, respectively.
think the "synthetic collateralized debt obligations" or, simply "synthetic CDO's" that ultimately cratered U.S. financial markets in the Fall of 2008--to which they should, and must, aspire in my courses:
"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."
This article updates, and applies to the Greater Seattle marketplace, a November 2014 research study report that made a number of key observations about the existence of adverse legal and transactional consequences from conflicts of interest in the representation of commercial tenants by full-service brokerage firms engaged in the commercial real estate services (CRES) sector actively engaged in the practice of "dual-agency." That report, published by the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis (CREUA) at The George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C., also offered a series of key recommendations for mitigating or eliminating entirely these adverse consequences.
The necessity for the article's update of the 2014 research study is that further industry consolidation on a national, regional, and Greater Seattle area basis, combined with a fevered Seattle marketplace for commercial real estate development and leasing, have further exacerbated the negative consequences for tenants seeking independent, objective, and professional representation in commercial real estate transactions. These forces have greatly increased the prospect that, in a dual agency scenario, the "tenant representative" may be acting in the best interests of the landlord, as well as in their own self-interest as an undisclosed principal. Even in cases where the tenant representative discloses the existence of a conflict where their firm is a principal in the transaction, the tenant may not be adequately equipped with the knowledge necessary to understand the significance and consequence of the self-dealing present in these transactions.
This article is also needed because, in the intervening years since the report's November 2014 publication, the CRES sector has not taken any substantive steps, in the form of industry self-regulation or otherwise, to address, much less ameliorate, these legal issues and the attendant, adverse, transactional consequences they portend for commercial tenants. Moreover, over the same period: (i) there has been increasing consolidation among the five (5) largest CRES full-service brokerage firms (i.e., collectively they represent a larger share of the market for leasing commercial property than was the case in 2014, when the research study was conducted) and (ii) those firms have gained traction in numerous domestic commercial property markets by taking equity positions in a substantial amount of commercial space available for lease in major markets, transforming these firms from mere landlord brokers to landlords themselves.
at The College of the University of Chicago, sent out a letter to the incoming Class of 2020 regarding the critical importance of free speech and academic freedom on campus.Those who are easily satisfied getting their information about what's going on in the United States and the world through sound-bites from the mainstream media have been largely unaware that Dean Ellison's letter enclosed Academic Freedom and the Modern University: The Experience of the University of Chicago, a 54-page monograph by John W. Boyer, Chicago's Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in History and Dean of The College. Dean Ellison's letter also provided a link to some of the sources upon which Professor Boyer relied in writing his monograph: https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/.
This essay for Urban Land (Mach 2001) explores the concept of "place-making," and whether places that grow organically are the only ones that may lay claim to "authenticity." This article received ULI's inaugural Apgar Award (May 2002) as being most-representative expression of ULI's mission in the year it was published in Urban Land magazine.
Feature boxes in this article were authored by Prof. Richard Florida (Carnegie Mellon), Prof. Michael Pyatok (U. of Washington), and Henry Beer, at the request of Prof. Smirniotopoulos
To be sustainable and to continue to be relevant, academic institutions need to evolve and adapt-as they already have in a number of aspects. Yet, the ivory tower mystique of higher education for the most part has preserved the isolationist underpinnings of campus planning and design. As a consequence, many colleges and Universities—and their students and faculty—continue to be disconnected from the outside world. The traditional tensions between a college or university and the jurisdiction where it is located have intensified as real estate development outside the campus walls and the costs associated with growth have continued almost unabated. However, rather than view their respective interests as being intertwined—as they, indeed, often are—most academic institutions and their municipal hosts continue to compete with one another, often constraining each other's potential.
Between February 28 and March 6, 2023, three seemingly unrelated articles appeared in the trade press—two in The Real Deal; the third on Globe St.—that may portend the state of the commercial real estate market, not just for New York City but for the United States as a whole, as well as the future of cities more-broadly. Those articles offer a microcosm of the forces begun during and following the onset of COVID-19—declared a “global pandemic” by the World Health Organization more than three years ago—that have called into question the very nature and value of cities in contemporary society.
• What are the differences between “defensible space” and “eyes on the street?”
• Do these concepts generally complement or conflict with one another?
• Is Jacobs’ “eyes on the street” applicable only to free-market neighborhoods and public spaces, such as the streets and front stoops of Jacobs’ beloved Greenwich Village, or could the concept be of equal relevance to the successful redevelopment of public housing projects into viable, mixed-income communities?
• Similarly, could the concept of “defensible space” have equal applicability to the transformation of struggling urban areas not directly impacted by the presence of large public housing projects, sometimes referred to as “transitional neighborhoods”?
Who Represents the Tenant?"
Viewing corporate operations from an asset management and financial analysis perspective, the acquisition of new facilities—including the location or relocation of headquarters, regional, and district offices, and warehouse and production facilities—are now commonly viewed strategically. A particular office location may have a substantial, positive impact on a company’s brand. For example, it may be imperative for a federal lobbying firm to locate its headquarters in the District of Columbia, the home of the federal government, versus the surrounding Maryland or Virginia suburbs. However, for a high-tech company the cost and other differentials, as well as greater proximity to universities with relevant graduate programs and research centers may make the suburbs of D.C. a much more strategic decision.
The research study was undertaken by the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis (CREUA), at The George Washington University School of Business (GWSB), under the direction of two GWSB professors: Project Director Christopher B. Leinberger and Research Director, Principal Author, and Project Manager Peter E. Smirniotopoulos. The research study sought to identify the potential conflicts of interest inherent in real estate transactions between a commercial tenant and a prospective landlord; evaluate the legal, regulatory, and industry mechanisms in place to protect the interests of commercial tenants through professional representation in these transactions; and where necessary, make recommendations for how such tenant protections might be strengthened to assure an arm’s length transaction between the parties, thereby optimizing the functioning of the commercial real estate marketplace.
In order to expose his ITBE students to as broad a range as possible of subject matter experts and ideas, Professor Smirniotopoulos has organized, with the kind assistance of SeattleU Law's Associate Dean of Planning and Strategic Initiatives, Steven Bender, the SITIE Symposium to focus on the subject matter of his "Innovating the Built Environment" course, by opening four, seminal topics up for discussion among his students, all SITIE students and faculty, the larger Seattle U Law community, and aligned professionals and interested stakeholders throughout Greater Seattle.
The Agenda, Schedule, and Speakers document offers a detailed look at how the SITIE Symposium has been organized, the topics to be discussed, and the SME's who've been gathered to undertake a public dialogue on these important issues.
As part of a Development Team working on Micro Project innovations for the built environment on GMU’s Fairfax Campus, a group students in Prof. Smirniotopoulos' Real Estate Development course (FNAN-454-001) are developing a Nap Room Prototype to be installed in as many as three (3) locations on the Fairfax Campus. The Nap Room Prototypes are intended to test the viability and potential benefits of giving sleep-deprived GMU students, approximately 70% of whom do not occupy student housing on campus (and, consequently, are relegated to napping in their cars, study areas, and during class), the opportunity to take 20-40 minute naps between classes, to help them make it through what are often twelve and fifteen-hour days.
In order to fully test this concept, a longitudinal test of performance improvements among Nap Room users needs to be developed and administered.
I haven't always had the luxury of employing these in every course: For a few of my graduate courses I haven't been able to use either exercise, in order to leave room in the syllabus, and time during the course, to focus on more substantive instruction and assessment. While not originally intended for this purpose, in this moment of concern about academic integrity, adherence--or lack thereof--to student honor codes, and dealing with student use and misuse of AI tools like ChatGPT, each of these exercises, if administered properly, may prove to be very reliable and resilient assessment tools. The lessons to be learned in that regard may be transferable to more-substantive assessments.
"Five Easy Points":
Learning can come from many places, many sources, and many things.
Opening students' minds to the possibility that there are many valuable lessons to be learned from seemingly unlikely places is arguably the first step toward genuine intellectual curiosity. This assignment challenges students to think broadly, flexibly, and creatively. For this approach to learning to be effective, however, students must be willing to challenge themselves.
I named this assignment “Five Easy Points” because this should be the five easiest points my students will ever earn in one of my courses. This assignment is intended as my opportunity to assess each student's critical thinking skills, as well as their facility with expressing themselves in writing, without the added stress of having their substantive knowledge from the course content being tested so early in the semester or term. This is one of only two assignments in any of my courses where students get to express, in writing, something that’s completely self-referential; I won't ever tell a student, in response to this assignment, that their personal opinion or interpretation is “wrong” or require any independent substantiation for that opinion. I simply want to know what they think.
Having said that, earning five out of the five available points for the "Five Easy Points" assignment does require that student work product reflect some level of independent thought and intellectual rigour. As students are advised in the assignment, “Five Easy Points” is NOT an invitation to submit three pages of “whatever.” It is, nonetheless, intended as an "icebreaker" of sorts, to help each student feel a little more comfortable and confident about expressing themselves, and their thought processes, in written form. It also allows for some critical, follow-up dialogue with each student about what each submitted.
This Project Proposal grew out of a midterm paper submitted in URP 596 by John Daniels, initially proposing this redevelopment project. Mr. Daniels' work was one of five papers in the course selected by his peers for a Project Team project, and then became the basis for his Project Team's specific work in developing this Final Report.
This Final Report presents a comprehensive proposal for the redevelopment of a ~ 3-acre site with ~31,000 sq. ft. of existing improvements formerly housing a grocery store (Lucky's Market, a subsidiary of Kroger), located due south of the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, MI, with an integrated mix of new, community serving uses including residential, food service, and food retail/community gathering space.
Dealing with the multifaceted impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly on teaching, urban planning and design, and the Future of Cities, as well as the social, economic, and political turmoil in the run-up to the 2020 General Election in the United States, and its aftermath, has very much impacted my Research Statement for 2021. A number of new topics have been added as a consequence, making the prioritization among the totality of research topics presented below that much more challenging. Consequently, this Research Statement for 2021 has been developed as an Addendum of sorts to prior Research Statements, in that the new topics have been added in a stand-alone section, followed by the running list of research topics, with some modifications made to the extent my thinking about those carry over subjects has evolved during 2020.
This project will focus on how the Portland metropolitan area dealt with the following issues and constraints: 1) land use constraints, 2) potential takings issues, 3) local and regional governance issues, 4) capital and operating expenditures, 5) maintenance responsibilities, and 6) potential liability issues. From the Case Study of the Portland metropolitan area, this project will examine what lessons from Portland may be applied to the creation of a potential Seattle Greenway.
Ultimately, it is the intention of this project to demonstrate how such a regional system, like the one in the Portland metropolitan area (and like the Atlanta BeltLine Case Study developed for this course), can be applied to Seattle in support of creating a Seattle Greenway connecting neighborhoods with employment centers and recreation amenities, encouraging and increasing non-motorized forms of transit.
The research presented in this Final Report explores the intersection between high-capacity transit and development, that intersection being Transit Oriented Development, or TOD. The Final Report covers the advent of TOD, TOD public policy, and how TODs contribute to regional equity using TOD case studies from Sound Transit, the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority operating in Snohomish, King and Pierce Counties. The Final Report concludes with a discussion about metrics that can be used for equitable TOD.
- Modular buildings are constructed 50% quicker than stick-framed buildings and save as much as 20% from the total budget.
- Modular construction uses sustainable materials, is safer, and is more accessible to younger workers. How can municipalities incentivize this innovative way to build?
NB: This is the Final Report submitted by Devin Pearsall in "Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change," in the Seattle University School of Law's June 2020 Summer Institute for Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (SITIE2020). Because academia.edu will not allow me to upload student papers to my page without showing me as an author, I appear as such. While I employ a very collaborative approach in working with all of my students, and provided guidance and input to Devin throughout this course, from project conception through to the Final Report, this document reflects her intellectual property exclusively.
NB: This is the Final Report submitted by Jessica Kros in "Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change," in the Seattle University School of Law's June 2020 Summer Institute for Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (SITIE2020). Because academia.edu will not allow me to upload student papers to my page without showing me as an author, I appear as such. While I employ a very collaborative approach in working with all of my students, and provided guidance and input to Jessica throughout this course, from project conception through to the Final Report, this document reflects her intellectual property exclusively.
This PRELIMINARY DRAFT of the course's four Special Topics provides students and others with a sneak preview of what the ITBE course will cover next June:
• TOPIC #1: “When Worlds Collide: How an 86-Year Old Federal Law (The Securities Act of 1933) Exposed the Flaws in WeWork’s “Innovative Business Model”
• TOPIC #2: “Is there Still a Place in Seattle for the Single-Family Detached Housing Typology, Given the Acute Need for Affordable Housing?”
• TOPIC #3 “Convenience vs. Privacy: Do PropTech Innovations in Multifamily Communities Require Tenants to Give Up Too Much Personal Information?”
• TOPIC #4 “The Proper Role of Government: Does the Ambitious Quayside Smart Cities Experiment Give Alphabet, Google, and Sidewalk Labs Too Much Autonomy in the Community Planning Process?”
SESSION 1: CREW Seattle Presentation on Opportunity Zones
SESSION 2: Pros and Cons of Upzoning
SESSION 3: Data Privacy and Smart Cities: Are the Trade-Offs Worth It?
SESSION 4: Pay-to-Play: Should Government Pay for Economic Development (and, if so, How)?
This intensive, four-week, two-credit course explores the intersection between ongoing and much-needed innovation and entrepreneurship, on the one hand, and the legal regime impacting the built environment and how it operates, on the other hand. During the first two weeks of class, Students will be exposed to both The Development Process™, which forms the basis and learning framework for Professor Smirniotopoulos’ real estate law textbook, as well as to four, specific examples of how the clash of these two forces manifests itself (and, more importantly, how their differences are reconciled, eventually). In this regard, Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change might be viewed as a Special Topics course in real estate law. However, it is much more than that: Through the exploration of these four Special Topics, presented in the context of The Development Process™, students will gain a deeper general understanding of and appreciation for how real estate law generally impacts the creation, financing, operation, and—most importantly—evolution of the built environment in an urban context.
My Research Statement is broken down into two sections: Completed and Pending Research and Research Interests.
o selection,
o acquisition,
o development,
o financing,
o ownership, and
o management of real estate;
• the nature of those legal issues; and
• how they may best be identified and addressed.
Real Estate Law: Fundamentals for The Development Process utilizes The Development Process as the framework for teaching Finance majors about how a broad range of laws impact, directly and indirectly, a variety of urban real estate transactions and issues, while also addressing the use of a variety of legal agreements to govern particular relationships between the various parties involved in real estate development and finance transactions, and the management of operating properties.
This book not only addresses the nature of specific legal issues directly
relating to real estate transactions but also how those issues may best be identified and addressed in advance. This book breaks down the myriad of laws influencing the selection, acquisition, development, financing, ownership, and management of real estate, and presents them in context.
This document, available for download, contains the following sections from Real Estate Law: Fundamentals for The Development Process:
Real Estate Law (textbook introduction)
[Peer Reviews]
[Dedication Page]
Table of Contents
Detailed Table of Contents
[Table of] Figures
[Listing of] Tables
Foreword
Rather than offering in-depth discussions of law school subjects such as “servitudes” and “estates in land” in Real Property Law or “fraud in the inducement” in Contracts, this textbook instead offers a much broader treatment of real estate law as an overarching discipline impacting and driving the development and financing of real estate projects. This is done with considerable intention, to facilitate an understanding of the true breadth of the subject matter by graduate students seeking a master’s degree in real estate development and finance or an MBA with a concentration in real estate (to whom this textbook is specifically targeted), as well as to assist the real estate executive or professional in gaining a more comprehensive understanding of how real estate law impacts their endeavors.
Neither real estate development nor The Development Process is ever about just one thing: Real estate development is always about a thousand different things, big and small, occurring simultaneously; some within the developer’s control but many occurring independently of the developer and its project. Part of the allure, as well as the challenge, of real estate development—as a process and as a profession—is the need to keep a number of balls in the air at the same time, always knowing where each ball is and to where it is heading next. In this respect, real estate development and finance can be one of the most-rewarding—and most-maddening—professional endeavors one may pursue.
This is, arguably, the foundational theme of Real Estate Law: Fundamentals for The Development Process. However, even someone with a law degree but who has not been exposed to real estate law as a professional discipline, will benefit from what's presented in this textbook.
This document reflects the most-recent draft of the Foreword for Real Estate Law: Fundamentals for The Development Process, due out in early November from Routledge.
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Mr. Smirniotopoulos is Adjunct Professor of Real Estate and Urbanism in the Finance Department of the School of Business at George Mason University, and previously served on the faculties of his alma mater, Georgetown University (2011--2013), as well as Johns Hopkins University (1999—2004) and the MBA program at The George Washington University (2013—2018), respectively.