Peter Belisle: 'One of the strongest markets ever'

Peter T. Belisle II is president of Jones Lang LaSalle's project and development services group for the Americas. He and his staff of 700 supervise more than 20,000 projects a year, with an aggregate construction volume of $5 billion. Clients include Sun Micro-systems, Bank of America, Whirlpool, and Procter & Gamble. Belisle holds a BS in civil engineering from UCLA and an MBA in real estate and finance from UCLA's Anderson School.

BD&C: What are you seeing in the U.S./Canada real estate market?

Peter Belisle: It's one of the strongest overall markets I've ever seen. New York, LA, San Francisco, Atlanta, Charlotte—all showing a tremendous amount of velocity. New York is going gangbusters. In Phoenix and Las Vegas, we're seeing a lot of commercial work, so people must be moving there for work, not just for leisure and retirement. Silicon Valley has come back: Cisco, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems have quite a bit of activity. In Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, mid-rise and high-rise residential are very strong. In downtown LA, 15,000 units will be coming on line in the next few years. In Canada, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto are strong markets.

BD&C: What about the rest of the Americas?

PB: In Mexico, we're still seeing a tremendous amount of industrial development. They're having competitive pressures from China as a manufacturing hub, but they're still very successful in distribution and final assembly.

The Baja peninsula has turned into a robust resort and second home/retirement market. We're also seeing a lot of development along the "Mayan Riviera," with a lot of fractional [time share] properties. The resort piece will stay strong due to the baby boomers looking for a vacation place that's a short plane ride away.

BD&C: And elsewhere in Latin America?

PB: In South America, the big influencer is Brazil. The climate for foreign investment there is constantly in flux, but we do see it as strategic to our Latin American business, and we have 400 people there. Argentina will make a comeback, but it's a longer play.

BD&C: What new ideas are exciting to you?

PB: Well, there's this concept of the "third place." It comes from Howard Schultz, the owner of Starbucks. The idea is you have your home and your workplace, and now there's this "third place," like Starbucks, where you see people on computers, moms with kids, they're all hanging out. You see it at Borders. They're not all buying books. They're occupying somebody else's space and using it for another purpose.

We've seen that concept migrating into hotels. Initially, it was boutique hotels, as a way to increase food and beverage revenue. The Mondrian in Los Angeles has an outdoor bar, the Skybar, where the cocktails are $20. Half the people there on any given evening are not staying at the hotel.

Another is The Grove, a lifestyle shopping center by Caruso Affiliated Holdings, in Southern California. It creates a "Main Street" sense of place. In a lot of markets, these developments are a response to the need for people to come together. It's a little sad that we have not done this from a civic perspective, that the private sector has had to do it [create a feeling of community].

BD&C: Are you active in "third place" development?

PB: We're working with a major chain on a 20-hotel rollout across the U.S., both renovation and new construction, with a very significant "living room" concept. We're also working with a major owner of commercial office buildings to launch a café/living room kind of concept in their office projects, similar to new hotel models such as W Hotels. Something beyond just tables and chairs and a food court. More like a kind of decompression zone. This is also happening in libraries, hospitals, and college housing.

BD&C: You were once director of development and program management for Disney. What did you learn from working at "The Mouse"?

PB: The Disney experience teaches you two things: first, the quality of good design, which Disney has always championed. Hire the best architect you can. You cannot put too much emphasis on good design.

Second, the importance of the "guest experience," whether that's a hotel, an office development, whatever. That's something that affected everything we did at Disney.

BD&C: What would you say to AEC firms that want to work with you?

PB: From contractors, we're looking for robust skills around predevelopment and preconstruction services—estimating, developing the master schedule for the project, coming up with a sophisticated, thoughtful approach to cost modeling.

From architects, we're looking for active management of the subconsultants—the structural and MEP engineers, etc. Sometimes those subs are functioning too independently. You want design documents that have been truly vetted by the entire team, and the architect should be the master coordinator of that entire project.

When we're assembling a team, we're looking for an atmosphere of collaboration—an operating model that says we're all in this together, and success is in everyone's best interest.