Martinis at the Office

NeoCon, the world's largest interior design show, is just around the corner, so Steelcase dealer Office Concepts kicked off the week early by hosting a martini party, complete with mashed potato bar, at their office. Steelcase dealer Deb Machalinski  invited her clients, Sargent and Lundy's Celestine Foster, Evelyn Sanchez, Nichole Martin  and Nicole Pratts to join in the fun. Deb's excited for the new media:scape and c:scape lines the company will be presenting to plan office space at NeoCon next week.

 
Pepper Construction's Joe Schak, Office Concepts'Anna Heine  and independent project manager Joel Jaffe met working on the new CBS Studio on Block 37. They said the project was challenging due to limited access on the infamous Block, as well as the fact that the adjacent retail building was going up at the same time. But now that the studio has been up and running for almost nine months, they can sit back and enjoy some cocktails.
 
Misery loves company, says the McShane Companies'Dan Fogarty, on the right with Duke Realty's Steve Schnur  and  Scott Marshall. That's why people are going to conferences like Chicago Industrial Properties' Summit at the Fountain Blue in Des Plaines yesterday morning. Steve was on the first panel, in which he said he didn't think the recession would end until 2010 or 2011. Even larger companies are going to have to take what they can get to plug holes in their vacancies, he said.
 
The second panel included Darwin Realty's George Cibula,  AMB Property Corp.'s Mark Saturno and Podolsky Northstar CORFAC International's Steven Podolsky.  Paine/Wetzel-ONCOR International's Elise Couston moderated. George emphasized that renegotiating tenant leases is a must, because it's better to have a tenant paying something than a vacancy, but he also pointed out that you shouldn't keep tenants who won't be able to pay month after month. Steven anticipates that the current recession will be longer, but not deeper, than its predecessors. And between notorious storytellers George and Steven, Mark had a hard time getting a word in edgewise.

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