1900 Lawrence St. in Denver

A prominent downtown Denver office building has landed a new tenant.

National architecture firm Cooper Carry will move its Colorado office from Boulder to Denver’s 1900 Lawerence office tower later this year, the company confirmed with Bisnow on Monday.

Cooper Carry signed a lease for approximately 5,700 SF at 1900 Lawrence St., a 30-story office building that opened in 2024. 

The firm’s new office space on the 18th floor of the downtown Denver building will accommodate up to 45 employees, according to Cooper Carry.

“Downtown Denver is in the midst of a meaningful resurgence,” Cooper Carry CEO Kyle Reis said in a statement. “We see tremendous momentum returning to the urban core, from investment and development activity to the renewed energy across its business and cultural institutions.”

The new office will primarily include open work areas, private offices and business support services, according to a commercial construction permit filed with the city of Denver on June 11. Cooper Carry will be the first business to occupy this space. The space also gives it flexibility to expand, principal Krista Dumkrieger said in a statement.

Cooper Carry established its presence in Colorado after it acquired Boulder-based architecture firm 505Design in 2023. The Boulder office employs 25 people, the firm said in a statement.

Cooper Carry was founded in 1960. It has five offices across the U.S., including locations in Atlanta, New York City, Charlotte and Washington, D.C.

1900 Lawrence is a 720K SF mixed-use building in Denver’s central business district. Other tenants at the property include Monfort Cos., Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Reed Smith and D.A. Davidson. Denver restaurateur Troy Guard is also expected to open an eatery in the office tower next year, as reported by The Denver Post.

In fall 2024, 1900 Lawrence leasing agent Jamie Roupp told the Denver Business Journal that top-floor leasing at the office tower was $45 per SF, triple-net.

Last July, Riverside Investment & Development landed a loan extension and recapitalization for 1900 Lawrence. The $242M loan was extended through mid-2027, according to previous Bisnow reporting.

The city of Charlotte has maintained a strong retail market, with smaller spaces proving to be especially competitive within the sector over the last year.

Charlotte ranked first among the top 43 U.S. retail markets with at least 100M SF of inventory in asking rent growth and overall investment performance, according to a recent CoStar report.

Brandon Svec, national director of retail analytics at CoStar Group, noted that several fundamentals combined in Charlotte’s retail rise.

“After coming in sixth place last year, Charlotte’s rise to the top was predicated on demographic tailwinds, a diversified economy, and a disciplined supply pipeline,” Svec said in a statement.

Retail rent growth in Charlotte averaged 7.4% last year, according to CoStar. Over the past 10 years, the city’s retail rents have increased 57%, compared to just 34% nationwide. 

Retail vacancy in Charlotte was just 2.9% in Q3 2025, marking three consecutive years below 3%, according to an Oct. 2025 Colliers report. 

The rumors of retail’s demise in the city turned out to be greatly exaggerated, said Clay Grubb, CEO of Grubb Properties.

“Retail had 10 brutal years, with everybody saying retail was dead,” Grubb said, speaking at the Bisnow Charlotte Commercial Real Estate Market Kickoff on Jan. 15. “But ever since coming out of Covid, the consumer has been very strong, and so the retail sector has been very strong.”

Smaller spaces were especially competitive for retail tenants, with vacancy in buildings under 10K SF at only 1.77%, Colliers reported. 

Converting the first floors of office buildings into spaces for retail tenants has proven to be a successful strategy in Charlotte, Grubb noted.

“They’re paying real rent and changing the images of office buildings, making the retail sector much healthier than we’ve seen in 15 years,” he said at the Bisnow event last week at the Union at West Station.

Courtesy of Jackson-Shaw

Jackson-Shaw Founder Lewis Shaw II passed away at 82.

Lewis Shaw II, who founded Dallas-based Jackson-Shaw and grew it into a major national player that has completed 63M SF of development, has died. 

Shaw was 82 at the time of his passing on March 5 following a brief illness, D Magazine reported.

Shaw grew up in Ohio and graduated from Wittenburg University in 1966, according to an obituary. After college, he spent seven years in the U.S. Air Force. He moved to Dallas after the Air Force and worked at IBM for a short time.

Shaw met Jim Jackson and joined his small contracting firm, J.C. Jackson Co., in 1974. Jackson died a few years later, and Shaw bought the company and renamed it Jackson-Shaw. He would go on to grow it to a national development firm and complete $3.6B in transactions, according to the firm’s website.

The company has expanded in several markets including Austin; Charlotte, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and Las Vegas. Its recent projects include the 535K SF Greensport Logistics Park in Houston and a 1.7M SF Lakeview Business District project in Rowlett, Texas.

Shaw also co-founded American General Hospitality Inc. in 1980, a company that merged with Meristar Hotels & Resorts 18 years later.

He was inducted into the North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors Hall of Fame in 2003 and was part of the Wittenberg University Board of Directors, the Dallas Business Journal reported. 

Marcus & Millichap closed the sale of BJ’s Wholesale Club, a 91,828-square-foot retail property located at 110 Longview Dr. in Bangor, ME, for $12,460,350. 

“We received serious interest in this deal from several institutional buyers,” said Adam Cohen, first VP investments. “In the end, we selected a buyer who owns multiple BJs locations nationwide and whom we knew would operate quickly and efficiently in closing this deal, which is exactly what they did.”  

Cohen and Brett Kilar, investment specialists in Marcus & Millichap’s Boston office, marketed the property on behalf of the seller and procured the buyer, a large nationally recognized REIT. Thomas Shihadeh is the firm’s broker of record in Maine. 

BJ’s Wholesale Club in Bangor sits on a 13-acre lot in the city’s primary retail corridor, near a 60-acre shopping center and national retailers such as Target, Lowe’s and Walmart. The property operates under a corporate-backed, long-term NN lease with rent escalations every five years.

First National Realty Partners (FNRP) has acquired Waretown Town Center, an 87,735-square-foot grocery-anchored shopping center located in Waretown, within New Jersey’s Ocean County. This acquisition for an undisclosed sum marks Red Bank, NJ-based FNRP’s seventh shopping center in New Jersey.

Waretown Town Center is anchored by a 60,800-square-foot ShopRite, a market-leading grocer with more than 15 years of operating history at the shopping center. ShopRite is joined by a diverse mix of tenants, including Meridian Health, Shore Smiles Dentistry, Saladworks and Great Clips.

“This market-dominant asset highlights our strategic approach to acquiring high-quality shopping centers in strong retail corridors,” said Mike Hazinski, CIO at FNRP. “Grocery-anchored retail continues to be a preferred asset class due to a phenomenal operating environment with robust tenant demand coupled with limited new supply.”

Colin Behr and Chris Munley at CBRE represented the undisclosed seller. 

JBG SMITH, an owner and developer of mixed-use properties in the Washington, DC, market, announced that animal hospital provider GoodVets will join the mix of retailers at The Grace and Reva in National Landing.

GoodVets, which provides comprehensive veterinary care, will occupy a 2,035-square-foot space on the ground floor of The Grace. The previously announced neighboring tenant, Colada Shop, is set to open in September. This follows the recent grand openings of the community’s first retail tenants: Van Leeuwen Ice Cream and Tatte Bakery & Café.

The Grace and Reva include 808 multifamily apartments and approximately 40,000 square feet of street-level retail. “We are strategically enhancing and growing the retail at The Grace and Reva, providing the neighborhood’s animal owners with best-in-class care,” said Amy Rice, SVP of Retail Leasing at JBG SMITH.

“This aligns perfectly with our vision for National Landing, where we are continuing to curate premium retail and service offerings that serve as new neighborhood amenities catering to the everyday needs of those that call the area home.”

Newmark Group, Inc. has hired the team formerly with Affordable Housing Advisors (AHA), a leading brokerage team and platform previously housed out of Marcus & Millichap.

The Michigan-based team, which will operate as Newmark Affordable Housing Advisors (NAHA), is led by Vice Chairmen and Co-Heads of Affordable Housing, Andrew Daitch, Steven Miscavish, Seth Barnett and Matthew Kurzmann.

Daitch has over 25 years of experience, consistently ranking among the nation’s top multifamily advisors. Miscavish has over 22 years of industry expertise and leads the underwriting team that reviews more than 1,500 affordable housing properties annually. Barnett will continue to be responsible for sales in the Midwest, Mountain and Sunbelt regions, and Kurzmann will continue to lead New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South-Atlantic regions.

The team also includes Mason Campau, Ryan Moore, Ryan Warren, Neil Rosenthal, Jackson Ross, and Gerson Askenazy, based in Detroit; Nick Affronti and Jeremiah Jarmin, based in Phoenix; and Tyler Martin, based in San Diego.

Connect Industrial Midwest 2024 will take place on March 5, 2024, at Joe’s Live in Rosemont, Illinois. Click here for more information and to register.

Two big players in life sciences investing and development, Charlotte-based Trinity Capital Advisors and California-based Foundation Capital Ventures, are seeking to expand nationally and work together on projects.

Courtesy of Hanbury Architecture

A rendering of Spark LS, a $1B life sciences campus planned for the Research Triangle.

The partnership, known as Foundation, will be led by Trinity Managing Partners Denis Sullivan, Scott Altick, Walker Collier and Jeff Sheehan. Significant focus will be placed on recapitalizing existing assets, Sullivan said. Trinity was a significant buyer of defaulted loans during the Global Financial Crisis.

The two firms first collaborated on Park Point LP in Durham, North Carolina, and Spark LS, a $1B, 109-acre mixed-use life sciences campus in the Research Triangle Park region. Trinity had seen success in the RTP market, Sheehan said, and began looking for a partner to make a move to go national. 

Trinity boasts a 3M SF portfolio in the Research Triangle, including the 911K SF Southport Innovation Center in Morrisville, North Carolina, and the 265K SF Venable Center in downtown Durham.

Sheehan said he sees opportunity in utilizing the firms’ combined relationships with tenants. It would be an obvious move to help those doing research and development in the three biggest life sciences markets find space to commercialize and expand in North Carolina, taking advantage of the region’s biomanufacturing strength. 

“We’re also really excited about the amount of early stage research that is coming to North Carolina, acknowledging the skilled workforce that’s available,” said Sullivan, a former BioMed Realty chief investment officer.

But while there are opportunities in this environment, it is important to be selective.

“We think that going forward, you’re really going to have to be a stock picker, in terms of which projects you select,” Sullivan said. “And we really see a value in having a proven track record as an operator from both a tenant and a lender perspective.”

The National Association of Realtors headquarters at 430 North Michigan Ave. in Chicago.

Redfin instructed its brokers and agents to resign from the National Association of Realtors in places where that is possible, according to a statement by the company Monday.

As a company, Redfin resigned its seat on the NAR board early this summer.

NAR President Kenny Parcell resigned in August after allegations of sexual harassment against him surfaced, and his accusers said that the organization failed to act on their complaints and in some instances retaliated against them. Parcell has denied the allegations.

Redfin, a Seattle-based online brokerage, cited the allegations along with a reported culture of intimidation and retribution as the reason for its action.

Not all of Redfin’s roughly 1,800 brokers and agents will be able to cut ties with NAR.

“In about half the U.S., including in cities like Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Long Island, Minneapolis, Nashville, Phoenix and Salt Lake City, we can’t quit NAR individually or en masse, because NAR membership is required for agents to access listing databases, lockboxes and industry-standard contracts,” the company said in its statement.

In other markets, such as Seattle, Boston and New York City, Redfin agents will no longer pay NAR dues, which will cost the organization about $1M annually, The New York Times reports.

Redfin also objects to NAR blocking sellers from listing homes that don’t pay a commission to the buyer’s agent and blocking Redfin.com and other websites from showing for sale by owner listings as well as agent-listed homes.

NAR didn’t immediately respond to Bisnow‘s request for comment about Redfin’s decision.

Foulger-Pratt has been building apartments and commercial projects for more than half a century, and now the Maryland-based developer is expanding into a new business line: build-to-rent. 

Courtesy of Foulger-Pratt

An aerial rendering of Foulger-Pratt’s build-to-rent community in Brandywine, Maryland.

The firm has been quietly working on establishing a BTR pipeline in the Carolinas and the D.C. suburbs for around two years, and its executives leading the effort told Bisnow Friday that Fougler-Pratt is officially launching the new platform as its first series of projects have closed and are approaching their lease-up periods.  

The five projects total 700 units of for-rent townhouses and single-family homes, and their combined project cost is $250M, Foulger-Pratt Managing Director Joe Clauser said. The projects are all scheduled to begin leasing within the next nine months. 

The developer is partnering with a pair of institutional investors, which Clauser declined to name. He said the firm aims to add around 1,000 more units to its portfolio over the next two years and continue to grow from there. 

“Our ultimate long-term goal here is to have a multibillion-dollar platform in this space,” Clauser said. 

The firm is expanding into the BTR space in part because of how challenging it has become to develop multifamily buildings, with rising interest rates and construction costs making deals difficult to pencil, Foulger-Pratt Vice President Nick Beeson said. 

“This really is a matter of shifting demographics,” Beeson said. “We are very bullish about the demand for this housing solution based on family-forming millennials as well as downsizing boomers, so there’s a lot of demographic tailwinds in this space, but also from a return-on-cost basis, these deals tend to pencil better than a lot of multifamily development right now.”

The move also represents Foulger-Pratt’s expansion into the Carolina markets. The Potomac, Maryland-based developer spent decades building around the D.C. area and has previously expanded to California, Utah and Texas. Its portfolio totals 23 multifamily properties, 15 office properties and 12 retail properties, according to its website. 

Founded in 1963 by Sid Foulger as Foulger & Co., the company today is led by Chairman Bryant Foulger and CEO Cameron Pratt. 

Along with the expansion, Beeson, a North Carolina native, moved from D.C. to Raleigh to lead the execution of the regional expansion while Clauser leads its capital partnerships and strategic direction from Potomac. 

“This is the splash, and it’s a sizable splash,” Beeson said of the expansion. “We’ve been actively pursuing opportunities in North Carolina for two years now. We were disciplined and judicious in what we elected to move forward on down here.”

The firm’s initial wave of BTR projects consists of four under-construction projects it is acquiring from homebuilders as they are completed, three in Charlotte and one in Raleigh, plus one in the D.C. suburb of Brandywine, Maryland, that it is building from the ground up. 

The Brandywine project will be 170 townhouses next to the Brandywine Crossing shopping center and a medical office building that Foulger-Pratt developed. 

The project is a rare example in the D.C. area of a build-to-rent community being constructed from the ground up, a strategy that has boomed in the Sun Belt and other regions. Nationwide BTR development hit an all-time high in 2021 with 6,740 new homes completed, according to RentCafe.

The D.C. metro area didn’t crack the top 20 largest markets for single-family rental homes in the RentCafe report, but it has begun to see some BTR projects moving forward. Another local developer, American Real Estate Partners, expanded into the BTR sector in August with the acquisition of a 200-unit townhouse community that is under construction in McLean, Virginia. 

Clauser said the D.C. area’s high housing prices make it difficult for rental product to compete with new for-sale homes, limiting the growth of the BTR market. 

“It was one of rare sites we’d found in the DMV area where we were able to get the land where we could get zoning for townhomes and deliver a product at a cost basis that worked for a rental product,” he said. 

Courtesy of Foulger-Pratt

One of Foulger-Pratt’s build-to-rent communities in North Carolina

In North Carolina, a market that has seen more BTR development, Foulger-Pratt has four projects: a 172-unit community in the Raleigh suburb of Wendell, a 144-unit project in the Charlotte suburb of Gastonia, a 128-unit community next to the Oak Hills Parkland Reserve in Northwest Charlotte and an 86-unit project near Gaston Country Club in the Charlotte suburbs. 

Those four projects were all initiated by for-sale homebuilders, and Foulger-Pratt reached deals to acquire them as they are completed and operate them as rental properties. The deals allowed Foulger-Pratt to buy homes at a discount to what they’d go for individually on the open market, and it helped the homebuilders reduce their risk in a for-sale market that has faced uncertainty due to rising interest rates over the last year. 

“In late 2022, we wanted to capitalize on the then-softening of the homebuilder market, the home sales market, and we pursued strategic partnerships with homebuilders who had projects underway in some of our target markets, and we found mutually beneficial solutions for them to pivot into the rental execution transaction with us,” Beeson said. 

As it works to grow its pipeline, Foulger-Pratt is looking to do more deals with homebuilders, and it is searching in a range of markets. Clauser said it continues to explore the D.C. area and North Carolina, and it is branching out to other parts of the Southeast, plus the Texas and Salt Lake City markets where it has built multifamily projects. 

“We want this to be a national platform,” Clauser said. “While we have certain target markets where we’ve been more focused, we view this as something that we develop throughout the Southeast where these tend to pencil best in the ‘smile states,’ and that’s where capital momentum is, as well, in higher-growth markets.”

The single-family rental market has faced some criticism as Wall Street giants have scooped up massive portfolios of homes in existing neighborhoods, but Beeson said there is a meaningful difference between that strategy and the BTR strategy of building new communities from the ground up. 

“This is not an asset manager coming in and buying up your grandmother’s neighborhood,” Beeson said. “This is new housing stock. This is bringing more homes to communities that need more residential supply.”