The 234 Apartment

As you do more banking by smartphone, that bank branch you used to visit may soon turn into a restaurant, a day care center or even a condo tower. After a branch building boom a decade or so ago, banks are closing offices by the thousands as more of their customers bank online . They're leaving behind space ready to be transformed into something else, whether an urban storefront or a free- standing brick building with a drive-thru in the suburbs. "If the real estate is strong, any number of things can happen to the property," says Kim McGuire, senior vice president in the Chicago office of CBRE. It's a problem or an opportunity, depending on your perspective, that will be here for a while. Banks operate about 89,300 branches in the United States today , down 8 percent over the past decade, according to Chicago- based real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle . JLL expects an additional 20 percent drop over the next decade. In the Chicago area, the number of branches d...

The population in Cherry Creek North is set to grow exponentially as development hits a crescendo. Can the area seamlessly transition from a retail destination to a mixed-use neighborhood? Cherry Creek has come a long way from its origins as a farming community established as the town of Harman in 1886. During the early 20th century , it was just a few houses, small farms and greenhouses on 320 acres. It was considered an economical place to live.  Fast forward to today, and the town's founder, Edwin Preston Harman , likely wouldn't recognize the area, which has evolved as Denver's premier shopping and dining district and one of the priciest neighborhoods in the region to call home. Cherry Creek is is undergoing yet another transformation with the development of new apartments, condos, office space, retail projects and a new hotel. The tony shopping district is experiencing the biggest construction boom it's seen in decades, fueled by developers wan...

Along Florida's Turnpike in South Miami -Dade, where potato farms and fields of row crops stretched all the way to the visible horizon at the time when Hurricane Andrew struck , it’s virtually all rows of close-packed houses and townhomes today. Now the unavoidable noise walls are going up to forever block vistas once among the most beguiling in South Florida. Along South Dixie Highway , where scraggly lots, small farm fields and vegetable- and fruit-packing houses once mixed it up with used-car lots and budget motels, the landscape is a cornucopia of strip malls, Publix and Wal-Mart stores and fast- food chain restaurants . And everywhere there is traffic, backed up one way in the morning, when three-quarters of all employed adults in South Miami - Dade head north to downtown Miami , Coral Gables or even Doral to work, and the other way when they drive back home in the evening. Lightning struck as thunderstorms swept through the ruins of Homestead in the days after Hurricane...