Sign Illinois Banking Moving Checklist Secure

Industry sign banking illinois moving checklist secure

good i guess it's afternoon now good afternoon everyone uh my name is uh jeff johnson i'm a ceo of uh re journals and it's a uh thank you for uh to all of you for joining us uh this afternoon for our session uh breakout session number two this is our property management session i am gonna turn uh it over to uh over to uh michael uh mulkrone uh did i pronounce that correctly michael okay michael and you are gonna be moderating the panel so i'm gonna turn it over to you and i'm gonna be in the background here making sure everybody's getting on and everybody can see everything but people are starting to pile on right now so i'm going to turn my camera off and mute my screen but before i do that real quick i do want to just share my screen so if anybody wants to connect up with anyone at all on this panel once again in our virtual lobby you can go to our virtual lobby you can see michael's uh bio and his linkedin profile by clicking here and then you can connect connect with him or anyone else on the panel so uh please uh do so after the fact if you want to connect up with any of these speakers but michael go ahead it's all yours take it away we got about 45-50 minutes so we can go a little bit past maybe like ten after one o'clock or so thank you can you there you go so good afternoon everybody thank you for joining us it's been a long day but um i have found it extremely interesting i am not a real estate person um i actually started my career as a police officer and then i got into association management so i've been in association management for about 15 years now and i am currently the executive director of bulma suburban chicago i've been with oma for five years and to um to jump into this real estate uh market this real estate industry has been fascinating so thank you for joining us um we have the benefit of having gone through all of the other uh speakers and all the other programs a lot of the stuff has been that we're gonna we were going to talk about has been touched on what we talked about as a panel was that we want to bring some practical solutions um some practical ideas to the area of property uh management and for that we've we've assembled a very distinguished panel um and so if we could go around the room and uh introduce ourselves just talk a little bit about who you are in your company and then we'll get into some of the questions so we'll do it alphabetical so austin if you want to jump in there yeah sure thanks michael uh happy to be here thanks for having me uh my name is austin rabine i'm ceo of the rabine group um so we've been around for about 40 years in all kinds of different facility maintenance and management so we do pavements asphalt and concrete roofing doors and docks hbac snow removal and then we also have a company called site that does uh facility assessments kind of remotely using uh drones and artificial intelligence and different technology to create condition reports um and budgets for property owners and managers so i'm happy to be here and uh can represent the contractor uh vendor side thank you and um uh bradley you're up next thank you my name is bradley borowick i'm a vice president with zeller realty and i have the pleasure and honor of overseeing the wrigley building a boutique office and retail community on one of the great avenues of the world and we will be celebrating our centennial this year in september great thank you bridgette hello everyone my name is bridget battle i work with lj sheridan and company and i'm the general manager of the garland building and i've been in commercial real estate for over 20 years in different aspects of the business thank you bridget uh carrie hi everyone my name is carrie zarzinski i am the director of management services at nai hiffman we oversee about 90 million square feet of real estate in the super urban market and i am um same i've been in the industry for a little over 25 years actually and happy to be here thanks carrie dan how about you sure hi um i'm don stewart senior vice president of property management and operations with inland commercial um inland is a well-known chicago uh real estate company been around for i think we're in our 50 second year now um and i'm proud to say that i've been with inland for the last 15 years or so i oversee our property management for our retail property program as well as some single tenant office assets and a small portfolio of medical office buildings as well so in total uh my team oversees about 19 million square feet in 46 states we're about 30 people on my team and we do all the property management interfacing with the tenants and all of our capex and tenant build-offs and stuff like that and i'm very happy to be here today on another panel with you guys and finally uh ken i think it's let me just point out it's fascinating that don had to go fifth with the letter d so i'll bring up the rest of the alphabet my name is ken vernon with bridge development i oversee the asset management division for our chicago and seattle offices right now um currently we have over nine million feet of property industrial property and cold storage throughout chicago and rapidly growing in our seattle office we're pushing a million square feet already so excited to be here and happy to be a part of this thank you everybody so um if you've been paying attention to the webinar at all you've noticed a certain theme the theme has been uh the pandemic and we do want to address that but we also want to touch on some other subjects but the pandemic is is is critical at this point matter of fact uh dr uh dot zorr um the very first thing he talked about was covet hangover and so we want to get into that we want to start talking about the pandemic and uh bradley you have uh you had started um in our uh in our pre-meeting uh yesterday you had talked about an acronym that you had created um that talks about covenant do you want to want to talk about that a little bit sure i just i think out of all the uncertainty i took prove it and i needed to make something pull something positive out of it and that was creation of value and distress because we were in distress and i think that the value part of that was what could we bring to our tenant base that they would come back and rely on us when everybody was sent home for a stay at home we were going into work we were building sort of game plans re-entry plans for tenants to to teach them how to come back to the building so it was just a way to have our tenants have a way to connect with us that they could depend on us when they were forced to stay at home and that was really the whole key of that and just building from that making sure that we were open 100 and we're here for them yeah and so for example give us an example of uh some of the tenant reentry plans or strategies that you have employed well every safety covet measure recommended by cdc world health organization we made videos we did 90 pieces of tenant communication newsletters we built an app with hqo we updated our amenities while we could to allow more people to come in when they were coming back to space out and this is also adding more issue until everything that we're going through with the pandemic is that there was so much social unrest and my building was at the epicenter of all of that so it was even more so showing tennis that we are a safe place to be and to come back to work when you are ready to come back to work we did everything it was it was all of my team and we built a strategy to make sure that whoever was going to be here whether they're riding a bike or if they need an extra conference space we just made it happen yeah yeah and that's one of the things again one of the themes that we've been hearing over and over is communication tenants need that need that communications and so uh bridget you had talked about again in the pre-meeting some of the solutions that you had been working with you're kind of in a unique situation you had said yesterday that you're actually at 100 occupancy wow yes i am very blessed and just as i know where my building is different is i have tenants but quote unquote my tenants are owners in the building so they pretty much own the whole space so it makes it a little difficult in that aspect but communication i think is huge because with that being said they want to feel safer coming into the building and if they come into the building blindsided they won't feel comfortable in it so i think that when you go to the extent of letting them know what you're doing for your cleaning protocols because that's the main thing they want to make sure the hall call buttons are clean or that the door knobs are cleaned and how is that done and we have our cleaning contractor that provides different material that they clean the spaces with to just ensure some safety as well as letting the owners and the tenants know what we do for guests that are coming into the building so be it our covet cdc questionnaires we do tenants or visitor screenings and also just letting them know our best practices for social distancing so when it comes to entering in on the elevators how many people are allowed on the elevators and then also just sharing in our newsletters on our website different information on what other owners and tenants are doing such as rotating schedules for cleaning and things of that nature i'm sorry rotating schedules for their workers so some people come on mondays the other group comes in on tuesdays things like that and so outside of that also keeping communication going with them on the city's restrictions the state's restrictions cdc's restrictions a lot of times just sending them the actual links makes it easier because no one wants to be swimming on the internet trying to find this information so i try to provide that to them to make it easier to help them feel safer and know that we're on their side and we want to try to keep the building safe right and so austin as a as a contractor as a vendor you know what what communications are you having with property managers what's what are you hearing how are you responding uh to the property managers yeah um so from a coven standpoint i mean you know we're kind of communicating out to all of our clients and you know the property managers and property owners uh the steps that we're taking you know out in the field most importantly to them to kind of prevent any uh any transmission of covid or anything like that and obviously we're following cdc guidelines osha has guidelines as well um and then we have a set of our own where you know in trucks people guys are wearing our teams wearing masks out in the field you know as long as they're socially distanced they're not necessarily wearing masks because you know working over uh hot asphalt that might you know cause other issues health issues um but when they have to communicate with a client or anybody from the facility um then they're kind of you know they're putting on a mask they've got wipes in the trucks um also you know at rabine what our main core value is uh is safety um so we take that very serious and it's important to us and every one of our crews has a field safety officer who's a designated uh safety officer for that team and uh and every morning they have a toolbox talk so they go through you know are you showing any symptoms have you been in contact with anybody that's tested positive and kind of just going through those uh set of questions as well just to ensure that you know we're being safe for our team and then also for our clients and their tenants great and uh so carrie uh when we were talking yesterday you were talking about you know how do you help tenants return to their spaces and there there's a lot of moving parts to this thing so what why don't you talk about that and then anybody else feel free to jump in as well but carrie so absolutely i think everything that you know bridgette and bradley said initially the communication piece that we've talked about being consistent and confident in that communication transparent as much as possible making sure that we're on top of that guideline information restrictions have changed i joked today that we had phases now we have tears within the phases you know so there's all these different pieces that we have to be on top of communicating to our tenants so they know what to expect but as we head into 2021 i think what we're really looking at is what are they concerned about now what are they thinking about it's space planning maybe some of the smaller tenants don't have they've worked with having those options to give to them recommendations of vendors we trust that we know that can help them also looking at things like the hvac certifications that are out there now that can help the tenants feel a little bit more comfortable knowing that you've taken these extra proactive steps to look into what you can do to make the building a little bit safer in the situation we're in at the moment obviously the cleaning protocols need to stay the same but then there's the use of the space there's the comfort of coming back and making sure that they know you're going to continue to communicate because this is solving and it's going to continue to evolve as we head into 2021 so we want to make sure that they know that we're going to stay on top of it be proactive and make them aware of any changes and updates we're making right and so specifically so you know some of the things we had talked about was hvac space planning can you talk a little bit about hvac absolutely so you know back when this all started everybody really wanted to talk about cleaning and that was the main priority and as the cdc came out with more information and as people learned how it spread a little bit more the hvc became a big topic and we spent a lot of time talking to mechanical engineers into our engineering firms as well as to our building engineers and to some of our mechanical companies to really investigate there were a lot of people in the beginning who said sorry i just had a little light issue um that said that we you know are going to have um whether it was needlepoint ionization or uv lights or you know increased airflow obviously ashrae came out and said we needed to increase the outside air intake we needed to you know do some things that were very easy to implement at the time check your merv ratings look into what you can do from your filters perspective so what we've learned is that instead of just jumping on each bandwagon bringing in somebody to really look at the building specifically how each building operates what the equipment is like and what recommendations they would make for that building because you don't want to go in and increase the filter rating and then do damage to that equipment that is going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars so it's really making sure you're educating your tenants on what you're doing and why you're doing it and why it makes sense for your building and your bill building equipment how about don or bradley or can any hvac uh recommendations the industrial sector is a very different approach only because it's all individualized you know warehouses tenants are in control of their own hvac maintenance and you're just working in a totally different environment so that element of the impact has been very different for us it's very rare we even have two tenants crossing paths in the exact same space so we're fortunate from that standpoint that it hasn't become a major focus for us where it has been for the office or retail users and i think i would echo that as well for the retail side of that as well for shopping centers we have very few shopping centers um that have high touch points like you know common area restrooms and stuff like that we're mostly open air shopping centers so um we're a little bit on the outside of that as well um you know but certainly understanding what our tenants are doing uh is is uh interesting process throughout all this as well i agree with kerry a thousand percent on making sure that you get that continuity of information to the tenants so they understand exactly what it is that they think that they're hearing versus what actually is going to work in a building and we've been flushing on our b ilding i think i think the recommendation is five full cycles a day so that's besides all merv everything else we've been doing all along and other panels have already said that we've been doing these things all along just never really sharing with our tenants because it wasn't that important to them it wasn't a touch point right and now of course we're talking about amenities and and how the common areas are going to be uh more important because uh people want uh they don't want to build out a a 60-person conference room they want you as a building owner to provide that for them so kind of an interesting an interesting change one of the things that one of the things that we had talked about too was um communication obviously is is critical in all of this is there anything um that you're doing that's unusual or that really connected with the um with your tenants that you didn't realize i mean we all send out emails we also you know is there anything unusual that you're doing to connect with your tenants i'll jump in and say we had a lot of personal phone calls so when tenants were coming to us and you know coming to us and saying we need this checklist filled out or we need you to answer these questions we found that it was better to have a conversation so we were setting up a lot of conference calls making sure someone on a senior level was on those calls as well to provide some guidance and some direction to answer questions to ease their mind i had some tenants who have national presence who had not talked to any other managers on that level to ask their questions we found that that really made them feel comfortable really appreciative and then they felt more educated to go back to their companies right because these are hr people sometimes they're not facility people they're not even sure what they're asking so taking the time to discuss it with them to really educate them really gave them the tools to go back and educate their own firm and i think that um having direct conversations versus going through emails makes it a little more personal to where it doesn't seem as overwhelming when you're giving them all of this information and when they're listening to you it's like another human on the phone with you right and kind of feel like okay they're going through what i'm going through so now it makes it where they're calming down they're listening and then they know how to move forward to make things better for their staff we did several town like sort of like town hall zoom meetings that would have a hundred people that we never would have before otherwise but we did several of those we walked through everybody with every step we literally took videos that showed how you enter the building how do you take an elevator what to expect so those things are like we literally grab their hand and walk them through baby step by baby step because we had to realize that even though we've been going to work every day they had been out of the office for now at this point you know it was three months or it was supposed to be a month and then it was a two months and three months so we walked them through every single step everything from ppe i mean for ppp but all of that we incorporated in making sure that we were there we were very transparent and everybody could hear the same conversation and their bosses bosses bosses could all be on the same call yeah we actually had a bulma suburban member who uh made a cpa available to the tenants in their building when they had questions about ppp and um and they found that just that little thing just that that connection that touch point with their member or with their tenants was such a big deal and and then that's gonna that's gonna work over that these are gonna be tenants for a lifetime then you know um so one of the one of the other issues that came up during the uh during the earlier programs and something that i know ken is is pretty passionate about are taxes so t ken why don't you talk a little bit about taxes well as you heard i'm sir many panels today that the impact of taxes in particular cook county and trying to drive you know occupancy to our buildings and keep the tenants in place the cook county tax conversation has gotten very convoluted and it's become a challenge for everybody because if you read the headlines you'll see an article that talks about that the homeowners are the ones that are burying this burden and you know the reality is is it's wasn't the homeowners are burying this burden yes there is an impact on the homeowners if there's a gap in the budget but the proportionate amount that these commercial properties are picking up is substantial and i've had several properties in cook county that the tax bills have doubled and yeah part of our due diligence and our responsibility to our fiduciary responsibility to both the tenants that are occupying the building and the owners of representatives that we are going to appeal them in that you know we're not villains for appealing the taxes and you know i've sat in the appeal meetings where the school board has a representative there who's saying how dare you take money from school and it's it's not we're taking money from schools we're trying to find an equitable way to share these responsibilities so that no one side is overburdened but the reality is if the taxes on these county properties keep going up the value of these buildings are gonna diminish because tenants aren't gonna be able to they're still gonna only be able to pay a certain amount of total dollars and the larger chunk that taxes pick up decreases the value of the building which then subsequently motivates them to slide out of cook county because go down the street and save a dollar fifty in taxes that adds up so it has become a very sensitive topic for for our properties you know it's the in the movement's coming you know i'm fortunate that i'm through the the big tidal wave because the suburb portions have all already been reassessed and at least we know what we're facing but you know for the chicago representatives on here it's you know you're next and it's a it is a sensitive topic that you know we're optimistic that we are going to get some level relief and know the expectation is that we go back to you know super low taxes but just competitive taxes so that we've got an opportunity to you know continue to operate our building and we're not cutting from the maintenance services that austin and his team are trying to provide because you know well we still only have a single pot of money to work with and if taxes chew up more of it then there's less of our ability to to maintain these buildings and to put flower enhancements or you know christmas decorations up so it's a it's a definite sensitive topic that we're you know actively working on on a daily basis to educate our tenants individually with one-on-one phone calls and you know likewise work with our tax representatives so what about the rest of you have you been affected by the tax uh especially in cook county have you been affected by that i can absolutely yeah i can uh really quick just comment on it so you know we're not obviously not uh a large property owner we do own our building in schaumburg and uh and we saw the same thing our taxes more than doubled uh this year and you know because of that the the value goes down and and uh and as ken said you know we see that as a contractor also you know through covet and you know these tax issues um you know that has to come from somewhere that that money it has to come from somewhere and covet they start to tighten budgets and you know we see that paving sometimes is easy to push off because it's not necessarily a giant pothole that needs to be taken care of right away it might be some maintenance that it's like all right we can push this off to next year roofing is a little bit different where it's more sometimes more of an emergency and if there's a leak that's got to be fixed but we're seeing it in a lot of our different businesses um you know some some are are doing better than others some are have gone down in sales this year um so it all you know it all trickles down to the contractors as well and from my end it gets really sticky because again i'm an office condominium so all of the 150 owners that i have they all have 150 bills real estate tax bills and they're smaller companies so when they get hit with the super high county taxes it is devastating for them so that's why again with the communication letting them know about the ppp loans and things like that we've done that just to find ways to assist them in order for them to stay afloat because when they're here i'm here so and can you mention yesterday that you know some of us live in good county we don't know so it's a double-edged sword for us [Music] for sure come out to kane county we love it out there but i think it's definitely the hardest for the suburban county properties right now because if you're in the suburbs it's not difficult to go five miles and be in a different county and get that benefit and so trying to keep those buildings occupied trying to help leasing get them leased up when you're fighting that battle of a seven or tax rate versus alert in some areas it can be really tough um and it's something that you know some people are willing to pay particularly in the city i think you have people who want the city and so they're willing to pay that higher tax a little bit tougher in some of these suburbs and as ken said too it's it's a balancing act so the higher your taxes go it drives your rent down so it's it's that uh that value issue again yeah and don you had talked uh yesterday in the pre-meeting we were talking about retail and specifically shopping centers um talk talk to us about that segment sure um you know i think like with most people you know back in march when we kind of went into the shutdown uh we all kind of thought we'll be shut down for a few weeks and we'll get back to normal um you know be great working at home for a few weeks but as time went by i think we realized that the impact was you know fairly serious and there were a lot of disruptions to our world and commercial real estate industry was pretty much packed it impacted immediately um you know we as we moved into april um we started to see the real impacts you know i think kerry had mentioned just the the personal contact with phone calls we really didn't have a choice in that there's so many phone calls coming in from tenants with uh concerns about being able to pay rent pay their employees and of course they're they're panicked as well because they're shut down and they don't know what necessarily is gonna happen in the future so um you know it really was uh an effort to start kind of figuring out how to manage all this you know we took a moment and stopped um and said how do we manage this how do we track all this and uh you know we use a few tools here and there we use microsoft teams has been a phenomenal help to us throughout all this we've had big collaborative efforts uh tracking all kinds of information about tenants whether they're open whether they're closed if they're doing just curbside type of services if they've applied for ppp or sba type funding and assistance and what type of rent relief they're looking at so it's a fully transparent documentation of all that information so that anybody in the company who needs that is able to get to it so we really kind of had to get our hands around it at first and then start you know diving in so um obviously we started tackling you know the rent relief uh requests that were coming in from tenants and that was a lot of uh personal phone calls you know followed up with emails um we developed sort of a structure as to how we handled those and we had a form that we a letter that we sent back to tenants and asked them to please give us the additional information that we're looking for like your sales any additional different type of marketing efforts you're putting forth right now to sort of accommodate the the restrictions and the guidelines um then we kind of walked tenants through that process um uh to try and come to some sort of an agreement uh we also did a lot of communication with tenants um you know we put out several publications to tenants with links uh to the cdc websites and guidelines on how to operate your business even though we're not integrally involved with those but just trying to put the information out there and make sure that tenants had the information at their fingertips because i'm sure they were all overwhelmed as we all were and also putting out information on the the ppp and the sba funding uh as well just to make sure our tenants were in the know we kind of took that one step further we actually used surveymonkey a couple times and um very brief surveys so that we knew we would have their attention and get tenants to respond and we had a really great response uh uh to those but we put we we wanted to make sure that our tenants understood you know what is out there for them so we ask them do you have an understanding of what is available to you do you know where to look for this do you feel you have a good handle on this do you need assistance with this trying to get a feeling of what they need from us and if there was anything that that we could do to help them procure any type of funding i know some larger you know landlords in the industry um had you know attorneys available to assist walking through that that process as well so it was definitely on the it was definitely the you know rental income was first and foremost for for all of us you know it just impacts everything so um that's initially at least how we started off the process and we're still dealing with you know relief requests and second second rounds of them and um and and those of you that are online if you have questions for the panel uh you can hit the chat button at the bottom and uh send us a question and we'll try to get to those um but don you brought up rent relief rent abatement all those all those nasty all those nasty things and so um talk to me about um what you've been experiencing and um and how you've dealt with these questions that have come up from your tenants um well our property management team who really are not normally involved in negotiating day to day uh stepped up so they were involved along with our entire leasing team and our collections team we basically assigned each person a group of tenants to start working with um and uh you know we we had to gather all the information we presented to our real estate committee we eventually got to a point where we kind of had somewhat of a formula as to what we might accept that maybe didn't need to go through the full process um you know but that was that was that was a pretty big undertaking um as we managed through all of that and you know as i mentioned we're kind of going through round two again um you know some tenants who really were banking on the fact that the restrictions were going to lift a little bit and they were going to be able to open up or start operating in full capacity hasn't really come to fruition um i negotiated directly with a a very large salon owner in the greater memphis market seven thousand square feet for a salon at a shopping center it's a pretty good size um and based on the guidelines um they were not able to operate in their full capacity so they were only able to operate a small percentage of their square footage and socially distance at that so all they could do was you know every other chair for for hair um so they had all the space and they normally offered you know package um salon uh uh events and stuff like that for for groups that came in and too and they just couldn't do it so it was we went through one initial round of working with them on a rent uh uh abatement agreement and it just wasn't getting signed and weeks went by and you know we finally got them back to the table again and they said we just don't know when this is going to open up for us in order for us to do business so you know we had to talk about realistically what the vaccine meant and and all that and sort of readjust you know what we're thinking you know to keep them there and operating so how about the rest of you what what examples do you have of rent abatement uh rent reduction issues you've dealt with you know it's been interesting that i've seen industries that you don't necessarily think about on the regular basis that where the impact has come into play so it's the lighting supply companies that do the concert lighting or it's the um the vendors that are providing all the dishware for events or the expo company that they do the setups at all the conventions that are down the street from the donald stevens convention center right now for my office is that and we moved in here mid pandemic and so never actually to deal with any traffic at all because of that convention center because it's been closed this entire time and so it's all these different vendors that have come forward and said i need help and you can't argue with them you know for a fact that they're you know what they're facing is unique compared to especially in the industrial realm where yeah we have amazon as a tenant so you know i watch amazon pull up to my front door every day so i know for a fact that they're doing okay but these smaller operations and it has been a lot of base rent deferral more often than not it was deferred rent it wasn't abatement but it was you know we still need your help yourself to cover your operating expenses but we can push off the base run portion until at least until this year and now we'll see you know someone with john saying round two what's going to happen are people bouncing back enough or will there be more conversations to be had and i'll just add i think you know obviously we have industrial in office as well and in retail but what we found was in the very beginning it was just a couple of companies that you're talking about you know the the people who are doing events that events couldn't be done that you knew that they were struggling but all of a sudden there was a wave of everybody asking and so it became a you know everybody preventatively i think came forward and said i need help and they weren't quite there yet we had to put a plan in place say let's collect those financials let's look at that information and let's go to our clients with a package that can say here's their circumstances here's and then the clients can make an educated decision whether or not that tenant really needed the help because the reality of the situation is they may not have needed it in april of last year but maybe a year later they're going to depending on how their circumstances played out so we really took each case by case helped our clients make those decisions guided them through them where we could and then worked with the tenants we best we could as well and and again i think the question of what's happening next right we're coming up on a year um i think there are going to be people who have not felt that impact yet that will feel that as we go into 2021 so we'll we'll be going through another round of it i agree it was funny on march 16th that day when everybody was a stay at home it was like literally not even 24 hours we were getting letters and calls saying that they needed three months of abatement and so you're like hold on we don't we're just doing this for two weeks so we took that literally case by case but really what we felt was the most impacted was the restaurants hospitality restaurants especially restaurants with no outdoor dining especially when it went down to 25 capacity than no indoor so those are the those are that's really what we try to reach out to because if you don't help even mom and pop or even big institution owners we're not gonna help them you're gonna have a really hard time re-letting that space in the economy that we're in now so you either work with them or you're going to suffer if you don't but um it is literally a case by case but there's a second wave already starting and then you add in specific states who have had additional mandates where they've shut down again for a couple weeks pennsylvania's shut down i think two or three times so you know you've got restaurants who you know were trying to survive on curbside and take out only finally got to reopen a little bit maybe had some outside tables and bam they got shut down again mid-summer and then it happened again just recently so you know even even just trying to gain momentum has been difficult for some of these guys yeah i had similar experiences in the beginning where everyone just asked for abatement just off the top because it just you know they can get it and take advantage of that but we definitely went down the road of financials and things like that and having them prove the need and then we take that and talk about it with the association to see if that's something that we can move forward with yeah and and austin from your perspective so you're dealing with the property managers in a whole different kind of way you know they're getting hit with they got they have abatements they have they have their own issues collecting money and now they're coming to you and they're saying uh we need to push off that that parking lot or we need to push um in the building i'm in in schaumburg they only do they only shovel push snow on half of the parking lot now um and they say well this is where you can park stay out of that area so what's what's from your perspective how's that relationship with the property managers been yeah we've definitely had to to make some of those kind of like strategic moves with them based on their budgets so um you know we've coming into this year we typically have some somewhat of an idea you know what our clients are going to spend on pavements or their roofs and you know what their capital maintenance plans look like and you know that all completely changed as soon as uh as soon as you know lockdown went into place and everybody wanted to cut their their budgets so um you know on one hand it it affected us because some of that revenue wasn't coming in and that you know the sales were less um but i think it also helped us to build a good relationship with some of our clients because now we're coming out we're saying okay well these are the you know these are the absolute needs that you need to do on on your parking lot or your roof um so you know it kind of helped change that relationship a little bit and then you know i think that also the uh the on the site assessment side um this has kind of uh so we've been doing that for about three years where we've been using drones to fly properties and do facility assessments condition reports and budgets um and you know and that it was going really well we were getting a lot of traction and then you know when this happened i think that we got even more traction just because now property managers and owners are wanting to get good visibility on their facility without going out to it so you know you can't travel out to a facility very easily if it's not local um so now we're getting kind of imagery and data on a facility that we're uh delivering to the property manager that now they can have you know real conversations with the tenant be looking at the the imagery and saying yep okay i see what you're talking about on the exterior building or um parking lot etc so um you know it's been a challenge but it's definitely opened up a lot of uh different opportunities for us as well and so for you property managers what has your relation has your relationship changed at all with your vendors with your contractors and how how have you been handling more of a that go ahead i'm sorry i was going to say the same thing it's more of a partnership uh we've always tried to develop our our vendors to be our eyes and ears on the ground uh we have a lot of uh you know properties sprinkled from coast to coast so we don't have you know remote offices you know in areas where we have density so we're doing this from chicago and we've always tried to use their vendors to be our eyes and ears on the ground and it really has been much more of a uh a need this year to have them be that that that presence for us um so and unfortunately we've had to pull back on some other services um you know if we had a grocery shopping center perhaps we pulled back on you know sweeping and portering to a certain degree in parts of the shopping center that weren't open and then ramped that back up as you know tenants started reopening and you know restrictions started lifting a little bit here and there um but i'm sure it's taken a toll on them but we tried to you know include them in the process as much as possible but yes unfortunately austin we've we've pulled some uh some capex projects this year yeah we get it and i would i would echo the same i think it's a lot of you know partnerships a lot of transparency i know we keep using that word but i think it's important one right being honest and saying what do you think janitorial companies for example they were super helpful in the very beginning of here i go with my light again um but making sure that we understood what the state requirement was what the cdc was recommending what reductions we could make and still meet those requirements of hitting those touch points every two hours that the state required you know so those partnerships really have been really critical in helping us be successful on this transition yeah great oh i was going to say i'll join in on the partnership side of it because working with your vendors especially through these tough times when we're working so closely together we come up with different ideas that we didn't think of because now we're thinking outside of the box because they want to keep us as their client and we want to keep the building well maintained and efficient so you come up with different ideas and ways to do things that you didn't think of before and it's actually cost savings to help us during this time well and i think it goes both ways too it goes from you to your tenant but you to your owner absolutely absolutely bradley are we gonna say something it's just it's just that you have to be physically responsible when you're looking at what you're doing you have to be real about what's actually happening and some of the decisions that you have to make are are hard and some of them are hurtful they affect people's lives when you're furloughing people it's been a really really challenging time but when you think about it just it's something that you have to do with the hope that you'll come back and you'll be able to reinstate those people and we have um and we've got to again go through another uh sort of like another stage of where you know we're planning hopefully second quarter will be back to a little bit more normalcy we'll be able to bring more people back but you have to do those things there's just when you when you have 10 of your building coming into the office every single day when you have 1200 people the work isn't there it just isn't there yeah yeah no nobody planned on us becoming social workers um but we have to hold people's hands now and we have to help them work through this thing so one of the last questions because we're going to have to probably be wrapping this up quickly one of the last questions is what do you feel will be important to property managers in 2021 that wasn't a concern in 2020 so what do you feel will be important to property managers in 2021 [Music] i mean i i was just going to say from my perspective some of the things that we've been hearing a lot of is just having a better understanding of uh conditions of facilities i mean i think that it's always something that's been important for property managers but i think that through going through 2020 it makes it even more important so you know one of the things for example um you know our clients previously if they had to to you know cut budgets they would just kind of like do it a little bit arbitrarily like they would know the general condition of their properties but they if they have hundreds of properties sometimes it's kind of tough to to understand like how those all rank um so you know through getting good data and getting good information and conditions on all of those facilities now it's very clear and we can say okay you have you know a hundred thousand dollars on these properties that are a 90 and above on the on the condition scale let's you know we can push those to next year um so i think just kind of using that data to be able to make better decisions when there's when there are situations like you know with the with the pandemic and that was pretty much what i was going to say about budgeting and being real really mindful about the projects that you have on your list of things to do because we all want to be proactive versus reactive but now i guess the proactive list you have to put that on the scale of importance and really focus on that budget and communicating again with the owners and the tenants as to what you need to do and make it more severe stuff first and the other things will do as things get better danny nikita said something in the first i think and maybe the second seminar so it's like all this positivity all this hope that we're going to be coming back and that there's this we're on the edge of or this this burst of once the pandemic is over or the hangover is over that there's just going to be this excitement and people are going to want to come together there's a synergy there's a co-working aspect that people get out of your colleague that you get to be with and maybe it's not five days a week it could be four days a week but besides elevated dispatch or air quality control upgrades or everything's gonna be touchless at some point electrostatic i mean all of that stuff is already happening and i don't i think those are all gonna be very welcomed on changes i think for me it's going to be continued partnerships with our vendors um you know bridget i think said it very well we have to do uh just as much with a lot less and you know as we have to be vigilant watching rental streams and connect and collections to make sure that you know the money is there to spend um you know we really did a very um uh deep dive on our 2021 budgets um recognizing that we there are things that we need and want to get done but we also have to temper that to some degree so there's you know there's a pile within our budgets that are we're going to budget them but we're going to see how things are going too so and working with our vendors and really kind of keeping up that relationship will help us you know when we all of a sudden have a large lighting expense you know what's the best way to fix this are we converting the leds now um you know what's the best way to get this done if we're doing one property in this market you know with asphalt and maybe you know repaving is it gonna be better if we just try and bundle that with something else in the market as well so really using our valued relationship with vendors to help us try and drive as much efficiency and profit as possible i think the biggest challenge in 2021 outside of everything we've just said which i think is all true is gonna be as people start coming back you know we're gonna have people who don't think they need masks anymore because they've had you know the vaccine we're gonna have people who still want people wearing masks you're gonna have people who don't think they need to social distance anymore and as that evolves and it's going to evolve we're going to have to help our managers navigate that handle it you know with a lot of consideration but a lot of firmness in some situations and really help guide that that's going to be i think a really tricky place to be i think we expected that in 2020 but with the reduced occupancies it wasn't there was some of it but it wasn't quite as much i think as we get back to an increase in occupancy in common areas in enemy spaces we're going to really have to navigate how to manage the different expectations of our tenants and their employees as these restrictions change and people feel differently about them that's how they enforcing etiquette yeah that's one of the one of the questions that came up with bulma was do you have your security officers doing these health checks and how does that work and how do you stop somebody fr m coming in the building that has a temperature of 101 you know that's it's just such a tricky issue and there's liability there so there's there's a lot that needs to be navigated thoughtfully and carefully and each client may have a different opinion on that answer so um i think that's going to be expected but a little tricky as we continue to see how it evolves in the coming months yeah yeah so speaking of liability so bowman suburban chicago is pushing some legislation down in springfield it's called sb uh senate bill 3989 and it has to do with uh liability protection for building owners and so um there is some movement at the federal level but we also want some we want something down in springfield as well so um again a little plug for bulma you know we're we're in springfield we're trying to uh we're trying to get some protections for our buildings uh i don't know if you're aware of this but uh walmart was sued uh about a month or two ago by an employee who said that he contracted covid from work from work and you know that's going to be awfully hard to prove but we want to try to be a little bit proactive in terms of protecting our members and protecting uh this industry that um that employs so many people and creates so many so much economic opportunities for for the community so so as we start to wrap up um what are some lessons learned from uh 2020 what are you thinking about 2021 anybody lessons learned i don't know i guess i'll jump in there i will say one of the lessons i learned is to be patient and be thankful that i'm here right and then for me 2021 is gonna be stay present current and take it one day at a time because if i worry about tomorrow i may never get there because i'm weird now and if i worry about yesterday it's really not going to happen because that day is over so living in the moment and then taking it one day at a time [Music] i would say my team my management team my company the support because we're all in together we're all devising these plans together nobody knew anything and it was literally listening and even though we were all faced with the same exact thing going home to our families we were the ones who were creating these plans to keep people safe so i was really happy and very i couldn't believe that my team always wanted to come in and be around and and be a really solid part of that making process so that that's that's not really lesson one it's just something i really appreciate that i look forward to 21. yeah lessons learned you prepared [Laughter] you know going into this year we had unfortunately still too much paper in our process and uh you know as we were kind of readying things for people to work from home we were shoving processes you know from paper to paperless um you know to the last minute and it just worked out phenomenally which i'm grateful for but you know i think um you know being prepared and always reassessing what our processes are and how we're doing our business to see if there's any efficiencies and just try to be prepared um but going into 2021 i really think the the theme for for me and my team is back to business yeah yeah i think along you know some similar lines um just you know never never get complacent i mean you know i think that uh it's you know going it was you know going into this year you would or last year you'd never expected um what we were faced with and uh and you know it was a it was a challenge but we learned a lot as a company um also i think you know i was really surprised by how quickly our team was able to adapt to you know with microsoft teams or uh zoom meetings and stuff like that i mean you know without this we're a construction company so we've got some very you know old-school uh old-school people on our team and they picked it up right away and embraced teams and you know made sure that their camera was on so we could kind of keep the keep the culture and keep everybody seeing each other um so you know it was it was a pleasant surprise for me i would say it's adaptability you know and the lesson learned from my two-year-old who is in daycare and they have to wear a mask the entire day except when they're eating or napping and he does it he does it without question it's the idea that you know what you have to be willing to adapt to what life puts in front of you and the second part is just the value of the personal touch the we all went through it without these one-on-one calls with all of our tenants and the ownership groups and just taking each individual case on a one-by-one basis but it just you have to put in the time pick up the phone don't hide behind email or tax that the value of the personal touch is still there and eventually yes it'd be lovely to hug everybody and anybody but for now it's just finding other ways to stay connected i'm taking your pictures good being proactive um looking forward and trying to think about what might happen and how we can help people um being honest and consistent in our communication which we've talked a lot about here and compassionate right this is not a normal time for anybody and i've said that to our teams you know and to our leaders i think your clients your tenants your own employees are all going through something they've never gone through before and the impact is what you can see so we have compassion for each other because i think that goes a long way yeah yeah that's so true i know for me it was um initially it was like oh this is great i'm going to be able to work from home and come to find out oh my god i'm working more hours than i've ever worked and and there was this there was this term that came up or a a notion that came up recently in one of my meetings where they were talking about this this relentless pressure more so than it's ever been and and you know you think about um the luxury that we have of working from home or working from you know a remote site and yet the relentless pressure is still there and so i think like all of you are talking about teams and and compassion and and building those relationships whether it's with our tenants or whether it's with our vendors or whether it's with our teammates just so critical just just so absolutely critical so um so one of the things uh one of my one of my members said uh bring it on her term for 2021 is bring it on so what's going to be your term for 2021 okay i'll jump in again i'm going to say smile because you got to do that that's going to make you internally deal with what you're facing because at the end of the day trying to find that happiness in you is what's going to make you get to that next level and tons of things can go wrong it's always things going wrong but just smile and try to work on being positive and happy [Music] i agree with her goes a long way or we can just channel our inner dory and just keep swimming one of our uh one of our teammates this morning like was texting back and forth and you know we had a uh some good news from a client and he had uh hashtag 20 20 and then won so 2021 but w-o-n so yeah i like that okay i think the power of hug is really important i had just put my father into an assisted living home and then right that next week and i was so busy moving him that i just left and i'll be right back and i went home and i came back and i could only see him through a window so that that i think for all of us that's affected us immensely yeah i would just say together we're strong whether it's our teams whether it's our community and our industry our vendors our clients you know we're stronger and we we've done a great job getting through to this point and we'll get through so just lean on each other and and you know we'll get through it i like that i know bridget mentioned being present i think that's really an important thing for this year and a lesson that i know i need to learn because you know just in your own life and in in work you want to knee jerk react to things you want to react the way you're used to reacting to certain things and you really just have to you know take a different mindset as we kind of go through this and figure out next steps and how we get back to business you know we're gonna have to be a little bit innovative and i think being present for that and trying to figure out what works and you know bringing your teams in to collaborate on that is probably the the best way to move forward yeah yeah all right any other words of wisdom all right go ahead any other final last words go ahead okay great panel i want to thank all of you because i had a great time and i enjoyed meeting all of you thank you guys this was um i i tell you what so i emceed two sessions and we had a total of six six sessions i'm voting this was the very best uh session and we went extra long we went like 20 minutes over don't tell anybody it will be our secret but it's going to be recorded but uh uh i do want to thank all of you again uh for participating and once again anybody at that is watching this at home uh in their office wherever they might be if they want to connect up with any of these awesome individuals online go to our go back to our lobby click on their linkedin profile and connect with them i'm sure they would all love to connect up with you and then also one final thing before i sign off this event was free to attend today uh we could not have done this without our amazing sponsors so i'm scrolling through here uh if you're hitting our website please please please click on some of the sponsors websites see what they do check them out reach out to them they'd probably all love to hear from you so uh i'm gonna just scroll down here just to so everybody can see all of the sponsors we had once again uh this event was brought to you today by all of these sponsors so please take a moment uh out of your uh busy schedules to do that and with that thank you very much to all of you you guys killed it with in 2021 illinois real estate journal it's hard for me to say 2021 illinois real estate journal commercial real estate forecast summit look forward to seeing everybody in person next year thank you thank you everybody thank you bye-bye