February 2020 BOMA Luncheon Recap
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
by: Pearl Lai, Innovative Industrial Properties, Inc.

Section: News




The February BOMA San Diego luncheon marked my first luncheon as a BOMA member. Coming to my first meeting, I was nervous, excited, and ready to immerse myself with the members of BOMA San Diego. Huge shoutout to Michele Ignacio, who took me under her wing that day and introduced me to BOMA committee chairs, board members, and members alike. 
Moderated by Doug Sherwin of The San Diego Daily Transcript, we listened to Norm Miller of University of San Diego, Bess Wakeman of JLL and Gary London of London Moeder Advisors as they gave their economic forecast for 2020. 

From the current state of the economy to future economic expectations and the state of the commercial real estate market, we received valuable insights from experts. With this, there were three main takeaways from the speaker panel. 

 
The first takeaway is that parking is costly to create. One of the speakers quoted underground parking in downtown San Diego was $70,000 for one parking spot. The next takeaway was that the footprints of newly developed buildings would have multiple uses, such as converting parking spaces into residential housing or residential housing into office space. 

The third takeaway was to look toward future changes instead of looking at trends of the past. For example, people are moving towards self-driving cars and can have those cars self-driving around the building when going to work rather than paying for parking that is too expensive. The changes expected in the future will disrupt our everyday life and will thus change how we act and do business.  


As someone who is new to both the industry and the group, this conversation was insightful and left me with an understanding of what the coming years have in store for commercial real estate. I came away from my first BOMA luncheon feeling welcomed, educated, and excited for what’s in store.