Council approves CBRE recommendation
Published 9:45 am Friday, August 22, 2014
The city took another step in the process of developing the lakefront during Wednesday’s regular City Council meeting. The group of city officials tasked with interviewing Ehmpire LLC and CBRE Inc. provided the council with a recommendation for which firm should lead the city in the rest of the development process.
“The committee felt both firms were very highly qualified. We appreciate their proposals. We felt CBRE was in a better position to meet the needs of the city,” said City Administrator John Cardone, a member of the interview committee.
Cardone said the CBRE proposal included a seven-phase process detailing the firm’s handling of the lakefront property. The committee’s recommendation only focused on three of the seven phases — the sight due diligence, vision and planning, and the market analysis.
Cardone said the time frame for the process all the way up to the market analysis is about 90 days. CBRE recently bought out PKF Hotel Consulting, the company that completed the city’s market analysis for a lakefront hotel. Cardone said it was too early for the city to really discuss anything beyond that step in the process.
“Sitting down and talking about what we’re going to do after the market analysis is a little premature,” he said. “Both firms we interviewed said they recommend a market analysis. We think it’s a prudent thing to do. What is the market for the lakefront? What will it support?”
Council President Stuart Weatherford joined the discussion and talked about CBRE’s good reputation. He said the information gathered from the market analysis would be valuable to the city, no matter the outcome.
“If it takes 90 days for the market analysis and the determination is there is no market for what we want to do, then we’ll pay them and it will be good information to have so we can stop barking up the tree we’ve been barking up if it’s not the right thing,” Weatherford said.
“CBRE is the largest real estate consulting and marketing firm in the country, so these are top-notch guys. They’re not going to sit on their hands. They’re going to get it done.”
The council accepted the committee’s recommendation and approved an ordinance authorizing the city to enter into agreements related to the marketing proposal.
