By Peter Madrid and Lauren De Young | MadridMedia

Trends Day 2024, the 19^th annual event presented by ULI Arizona, attracted more than 1,100 attendees who enjoyed a day of networking and learning about the latest in local and national real estate trends. Participants at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa make it the third largest ULI event globally.

Economist Peter Ricchiuti assured that “we are not in a recession,” despite what we hear. While it is cyclical, inflation is dropping. Interest rates will continue to go down as inflation decreases, but unemployment will rise by the end of 2024.

He added that sciences are becoming economic drivers, including here in Arizona. This includes energy, tech, and life sciences.

Two of the takeaway phrases came from the panel titled “Reimagining Office Properties.”

When COVID hit, companies sent their office workers home to conduct business over whatever videoconferencing platform they were utilizing. The Trends Day panel sought to reaffirm that the office market isn’t dead.

“There is a perception that office is dead. What really is dead is jobs potentially to fill those offices. Careers. Brand and culture. Retail was disrupted by Amazon. It was sad news to retail a few years ago,” said Yesenia Felix, Vice President, Operations and Designated Broker for Cousins Properties, Inc. “Where is office today? It’s evolving. It’s a new normal that will have to figure itself out the next couple of years.”

Felix concluded with yet another memorable phrase.

“We have great momentum. I’m excited about the capital investment we are making in the office market,” Felix said. “In the short-term office should be a success. Opportunities exist in a market like this. Disruption equals opportunity.”

The parking perspective panel highlighted the explosion of parking reform in the past 5 years. Parking has to be localized. Developers need to understand the nuances about how and when people arrive to work.

Parking structures must also emphasize private driving options for ride sharing such as Waymo. Locking in durable land investments into a very specialized transportation choice may become undesirable or un-leasable in the future because it’s tethered to just one type of technology.

“Addressing the Homelessness and Housing Attainability” addressed a topic that affects all sectors on the industry, that homelessness is a housing problem. People that are being priced out of the market aren’t just those struggling with substance abuse, the audience was told, it’s those with salaries that can’t afford to buy a home priced at more than $300,000. This includes teachers, police officers, and firefighters, to name a few.

It has to be “us together and not us and them.” The economy will slow because essential services will leave for more affordable housing. And it doesn’t help that while rents have increased by 38 percent, wages remain flat.

The annual Trends Day debate brought together representatives from urban and rural interests for “Can Urban and Rural Development Patterns Co-Exist in a Water Competitive Environment?”

The key takeaways were new innovations in the urban space for the reuse of water, reclamation, water conservation being a collaborative effort, and emphasizing that we are not out of water.

Kicking off the afternoon was the keynote speaker who reminded everyone to “go be kind. Do one act of kindness. Touch just one person. It should come from your heart, your soul.”

Afternoon sessions included a discussion of powering Arizona’s future, the industrial market, and a fireside podcast with Francis Najafi, Founder and CEO of the Pivotal Group, Inc.