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NEW YORK — BGC Partners is rapidly integrating Newmark Knight Frank, one of the largest commercial real estate brokerage firms in the U.S. that it acquired in October 2011, with Grubb & Ellis. The new entity, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, will offer a full-service commercial real estate platform. On Friday, BGC Partners (Nasdaq: BGCP) announced that it had closed on its acquisition of the assets of Grubb & Ellis Co., following the recent approval of the transaction by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. In addition to Grubb & Ellis professionals now joining the combined firm, Newmark Knight Frank has added more than 50 top-producing brokers in offices across the country in the last several months. “With more than 100 offices in North America, 250 million square feet in property and facilities management, and an outstanding national appraisal business, the creation of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank is a game-changing moment in the real estate industry,” said Michael Lehrman, global head of real estate at BGC Partners, in a prepared statement. “Newmark Knight Frank and Grubb & Ellis each have consistently ranked among the leading companies in the real estate industry, and now these two great …

PARSIPANNY, N.J. — Prudential Real Estate Investors (PREI) has closed on its fourth seniors housing fund — the firm's largest ever — raising $568 million in discretionary capital secured from institutional investors. Parsippany-based PREI is a real estate investment management business with offices across the globe, including Chicago, London and Tokyo. Noah Levy, managing director with PREI and portfolio manager of the fund, says PREI will be a co-investor in the fund, as it has for the previous three. “We like this investment niche ourselves,” he says. “Investors are very cognizant of that today.” The closed-end fund will feature a strategy very similar to PREI’s first three funds. It will target investments in seniors housing, including independent living, assisted living and memory care properties, as well as communities that offer a combination of those services. Additionally, the fund will focus on direct and joint venture acquisitions of existing properties, forward commitments on newly constructed properties, mezzanine loans and development. Levy says PREI is targeting returns in the low teens using 50 percent leverage. He admits that it is not the most aggressive strategy, but it is characterized by a lot of income. “As a whole, during the recession we have …

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Mortgage bankers closed more than $184.3 billion in commercial and multifamily mortgage loans in 2011, up 55 percent from the prior year. The findings from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) also indicate that multifamily loans dominated the market in 2011, with new originations in that category reaching $77.4 billion. The office sector was the next highest property segment, accounting for $34.4 billion in originations. Meanwhile, lending for retail properties saw the largest percentage increase among major property types, followed closely by multifamily and industrial properties. Collectively, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) represented the leading investor group for which loans were originated in 2011, accounting for $57.6 billion of the total. Life insurance companies and pension funds saw the second highest volume, $49.3 billion. The MBA states origination volumes for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA each hit new records in 2011. However, faster growth in multifamily lending by other investors led the Fannie and Freddie market share to decline in 2011. The government-related financing giants accounted for 57 percent of loan volume in 2011, down from 63 percent in 2010 and 85 percent in 2009. “Commercial mortgage lending continues to rebound …

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Greenville-based Michelin North America will break ground next week on a new Earthmover tire manufacturing plant in Anderson County, South Carolina, as part of a $750 million investment that will create approximately 500 new jobs. The investment also includes expanding the existing Earthmover tire facility in Lexington, South Carolina. The new plant in Anderson County will be Michelin’s 19th manufacturing facility in North America and its ninth in South Carolina. More than 8,000 of Michelin North America’s 22,300 employees are based in South Carolina. The new plant will be adjacent to Michelin’s existing rubber processing plant in Starr, South Carolina, and will be Michelin’s third plant in Anderson County. Michelin also operates a 2.5 million-square-foot rubber processing plant in Sandy Springs, South Carolina, the largest in the world. The Earthmover tire brand is a specialty tire for earth-moving equipment, such as bulldozers and dump trucks. The high demand has led to a need for Michelin to increase its Earthmover tire production. “There is unprecedented demand for Michelin Earthmover tires throughout the world,” said Pete Selleck, Michelin North America’s chairman and president. “It’s a tribute to the productivity of our employees and the pro-business environment in South Carolina …

DENVER — The TriZetto Group, a healthcare information technology company, has chosen Opus Development Corp. to develop, design and construct the company’s new $110 million, 165,000-square-foot worldwide headquarters in Denver. “I strongly believe our new worldwide headquarters is a win-win for both Colorado and for TriZetto,” said Trace Devanny, chairman and CEO of The TriZetto Group, in a prepared statement. “For TriZetto, it means continued success fueled in part by Colorado’s welcoming business community and impressive workforce. For Colorado, it means more jobs — professional, high-quality, high-tech jobs in the growing healthcare information technology sector.” The four-story building will be located in the Meridian International Business Center in Douglas County, and the project is expected to generate between 400 and 500 construction jobs. Additionally, the new facility will allow TriZetto to add 550 to 750 new jobs during the next 5 years. “We are extremely pleased to be selected as a partner to work with TriZetto, a company that shows a commitment to Colorado and job growth, to design and construct a headquarters facility that suits the company culture and projected growth,” said Marshall Burton, senior vice president and general manager for Minnetonka, Minn.-based Opus Development Corp., in a prepared …

The positive vibe in the U.S. economy stemming from robust job gains in January and February has quickly given way to a more subdued tone — at least temporarily. Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 120,000 in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, falling well short of the 200,000 figure expected by most economists and raising questions about the strength of the recovery. For starters, is this a case of déjà vu or an aberration? “The current situation unfortunately harkens back to last year when the job market was gaining momentum, but thanks to a confluence of idiosyncratic factors that imperiled the economy, the labor market weakened beginning in May,” says Ryan Severino, senior economist with Reis, a New York-based commercial real estate research firm. “The situation in 2012 is similar, and because of this we should remain guarded about the outlook for 2012.” The sovereign debt crisis in Europe coupled with a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor’s last summer led to a heightened level of anxiety and uncertainty in 2011, which ultimately blunted the economic momentum. The concern is that rising gas prices resulting in part from escalating tensions in the Middle …

NEW YORK CITY — Construction is under way on the world's tallest Holiday Inn — a 50-story hotel at 99 Washington St. in New York City. Designed by Gene Kaufman Architects (GKA), the 400-room hotel is situated just three blocks south of the World Trade Center site and is slated to play a role in the ongoing recovery of Lower Manhattan. McSam Hotel Group is developing the property. “Ten years after 9/11, with the Memorial recently opened and forecast to be the number one tourist attraction in the entire nation, breaking ground in Lower Manhattan on the tallest Holiday Inn in the world is clear evidence that this is a renaissance of the newest, biggest and best,” said Gene Kaufman, founder of GKA, in a prepared statement. Holiday Inn will join the growing hotel landscape in Lower Manhattan, said Elizabeth Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, in a statement. According to a 2011 report by the alliance, the number of hotels in Lower Manhattan has tripled since 2001, going from six to 18. The number of hotel rooms rose to 4,029 from 2,300. Tourism continues to thrive in the district. With about 10 million visitors last year, …

AUSTIN, TEXAS — American Campus Communities' Bill Bayless and EdR's Randy Churchey, CEOs of the two largest companies in the student housing sphere, weighed in Wednesday on emerging industry trends during the fourth annual InterFace Student Housing Conference in Austin that has attracted more than 700 attendees. The two publicly traded REITs have been growing by leaps and bounds, but most public attention has been on EdR, which secured an agreement with the University of Kentucky (UK) to develop and manage all of the university's on-campus housing. It is the first such deal to be struck where a large, land-grant public university chose to outsource its entire stock of on-campus housing. The 50-year ground lease was signed in February, and ground has been broken for a brand-new, 600-bed honors college. Eventually, EdR will add 3,000 beds to the campus and drive the on-campus bed total to 9,000. This agreement has the industry wondering what this deal could mean going forward. Moderator Dorothy Jackman, managing director of the National Student Housing Group for Colliers International, asked the CEOs if more colleges like UK will soon make similar deals. “Those types of major initiatives take longer to transact,” Bayless told the attendees …

NEW YORK CITY — JCJ Architecture, a Hartford, Conn.-based commercial design firm, has completed Phase I of the 1 million-square-foot Resorts World Casino New York City, the city’s first casino, located within the Aqueduct Racetrack complex in Queens. The construction costs are estimated at $510 million. JCJ served as the architect and interior design firm for the project. Malaysian-based Genting Group developed the casino and will handle operations. Genting and JCJ repositioned an existing building and added approximately 736,000 square feet of space for the new casino. The project added about 1,200 new construction jobs. Sylmar, Calif.-based Tutor Perini served as construction manager. The complex will contribute $350 million annually to the State of New York to support education, and will also feature gaming, dining and entertainment options. “Resorts World is an extraordinary example of creative repositioning and adaptive reuse. Working with Genting, we have transformed an aging landmark into a vibrant and energetic entertainment destination,” said Peter Stevens, president of JCJ Architecture, in a prepared statement. “Not only will Resorts World donate one percent of pre-tax profits to the local community, it has also created more than 1,350 permanent jobs for the city’s residents.” JCJ has designed each floor …

HARTFORD, CONN. — CityPlace LLC has sold the 884,669-square-foot UnitedHealthcare Center in downtown Hartford at the intersection of Asylum and Trumbull streets for $99 million, or approximately $112 per square foot. The 39-story office tower, which is formerly known as CityPlace I, is the tallest building in the state of Connecticut. “The sale of UnitedHealthcare Center marks the largest in Hartford in more than 2 years,” said Michael Smith, managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Boston office, in a prepared statement. “The high-quality, investment grade tenants, including anchor tenant UnitedHealth Group, along with its excellent location, high-quality construction and consistently high historical occupancy made this property extremely compelling and we received numerous offers for the property,” Smith said. According to the Hartford Courant, Smith, along with Scott Jamieson of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Boston office and Chris Ostop of the firm’s Hartford office, represented the seller in the transaction and procured the buyer, Newton, Massachusetts-based CommonWealth REIT. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the Class A property, which was built by Urban Investment and Development. The tower has undergone significant renovations during the past 5 years. UnitedHealthcare Center is currently 98 percent leased to a variety of tenants, which include Bank of …