Welcome, NAIOP Readers!

Photo of Wintergreen Plaza in Rockville, Md.,
by Mark Wright, courtesy of NAIOP.

Thanks to NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, for the opportunity to spotlight the vehicle-into-building crash problem in the spring issue of Development Magazine.

The article by Rob Reiter and me went live online March 20, plus will be in the print edition sent to NAIOP members: How Safe Is Your Parking Lot?

As risk control expert David Natalizia said in the article, “This is an important issue that may have been beneath the radar because of the difficulty in understanding its magnitude and scope.”

And parking design consultant Warren Vander Helm observed, “There is no reason why a design for an average parking area has to include nose-in parking,” which is one of the primary contributing factors in storefront crashes.

Convenience Store News Spotlights Crash Problem

"Thanks" to Convenience Store News for publishing "Is Your Store Prepared for Pedal Error?" this evening on its website. According to the publisher, Convenience Store News is the c-store industry's #1 print & online publication and the "highest-trafficked website in the industry," with 81,700 unique visitors (Aug. 2012).

The article was co-authored by Rob Reiter and me to help generate c-store industry awareness and engagement. The piece uses some of the stats generated by Texas A&M University from its research into the issue this summer. Let us know what you think.

Not Designed by Steve Jobs

Photo by Mark Wright

After watching this guy play this guy in the movie Jobs the other night, I walked home with "what if" questions bouncing around in my head.

What if Steve Jobs and his team had designed a bollard? What would it look like? How would it function? Would it be called the iBollard and have such coolness that every store and strip mall on the planet would want a row of them out front?

What if iBollards beamed wireless signals to our mobile devices as we drove by to beckon us inside, or synced briefly with our vehicle's onboard computer to generate the aroma of coffee or pizza (using an 'iScent' chip embedded in the car's HVAC system)?

What if retail developments could be re-imagined and re-invented to be both inviting and safe, attracting people while protecting them from moving vehicles?

What if we were able to create a scholarship or fellowship program in which young men and women full of fresh perspective, unique vision, and a hunger to challenge the status quo could spend some time doing that re-thinking?

OK, so it was a really long walk home from the theater, and maybe I was getting a little wacky, but...maybe that's what we're supposed to do after watching a movie like Jobs: think.

What do you think?