Economist Conway expands on need to reuse abandoned properties
Renowned economist KC Conway recently presented his talk on the adaptive reuse of buildings and commercial spaces during the 15th anniversary convention held by the Puerto Rico Chapter of the Certified Commercial Investment Member Institute, the entity announced.
At the conference, Conway spoke about trends in the economy regarding commercial real estate in both Puerto Rico and the continental United States.
Specifically, he discussed the need to reuse obsolete properties as a key instrument to move the commercial real estate sector and help out of the economic crisis the island is experiencing.
“Adaptive reuse, in addition to giving new uses to abandoned properties, creates new jobs by creating new educational and community use facilities, innovative housing projects as well as spaces for new businesses,” he said.
The heads of the island’s commercial real estate industry — including developers and investors, bankers, appraisers, brokers, property managers and companies that own office buildings, shopping centers and industrial properties — attended the event.
The CCIM Puerto Rico Chapter was founded with the mission of educating and empowering its members with the knowledge and tools necessary to achieve success in the commercial real estate profession in all fields.
The CCIM designation is conferred on experts in the commercial real estate industry who have successfully completed a designation process that ensures they are qualified not only in theory, but also in practice.
The designation is granted by the CCIM Institute headquartered in Chicago. Puerto Rico currently has 19 designated CCIMs and 15 candidates completing the courses and other requirements to obtain the prestigious designation.
Mr. Conway’s suggestion concerning re-use of abandoned properties has been suggested a number of times in Puerto Rico. The State Housing Plan of 2011 called for changes to the public nuisance legislation to make it easier to designate such properties as a public nuuisance, expropriate them and make them available to private developers. A number of local economists and planners have made the same recommendation a number of times to those groups that were represented at his presentation. The idea of turning a problem into an asset has been around for a while. Do we really need someone to come to PR to tell us that?