Thursday, June 14, 2012

Real Estate Conference in the Dark


NNN Lease Market News


The lights went out during the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts annual REIT Week conference at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. New York City police said that a transformer in the basement of the hotel experienced problems Wednesday afternoon, leading to partial power loss at the building. An electrician suffered a minor burn to his finger, police said.

Although there wasn’t an evacuation, many guests and workers crowded in the lobby and in front of the hotel where fire trucks and police vehicles were parked. But these  real-estate executives and experts didn’t let a building problem disrupt their discussions about, well, how to make buildings more profitable.

The afternoon presentations continued on the second floor with auxiliary lighting. The outage even provided fodder for some of the speakers. “This is a memorable moment,” joked Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff who was giving the keynote speech at the conference’s luncheon in the Grand Ballroom when the outage occurred.

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