RealShare EXCLUSIVE: Top Players Chart a Sector in Transition

Sean Ryan is associate editor of Real Estate New JerseySECAUCUS, NJ-The industrial market will get the first of two RealShare conferences with Real Share Industrial East, June 1 and 2 at the Crowne Plaza here. More than 250 industry leaders are expected to attend, representing the industrial real estate market up and down the East Coast. The Industrial West Show will be held Sept. 13 and 14 in Long Beach, CA.

“This is going to be a unique event, with a wide and varied agenda and a range of networking opportunities,” predicts Jonathan A. Schein, president & CEO of Real Estate Media. “We’ve gotten tremendous feedback from all quarters of the industrial real estate community and look forward to hosting the leaders in the market next week.”"We intend to bring in all of the top players in industrial real estate,” adds Richard Kelley, director of the RealShare Conference series for Real Estate Media, parent company of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com, “plus the logistics and supply chain management professionals, port and rail development officials and major end users.”

The conference kicks off Wed., June 1 with a series of Peer Group Roundtables on topics such as new trends in property and liability insurance, construction costs, redevelopment and foreign trade zones. That will be followed by a Night at the Races welcoming reception at the Meadowlands Racetrack.

The next day starts with a breakfast and opening remarks from Schein. A Town Hall Meeting on the state of the market will be moderated by James L. Dieter of CB Richard Ellis. Featured panelists will include Jim Lee, president & COO, Opus East; Peter Quinn, senior managing director, Cushman & Wakefield; Paul Rubacha, principal & CEO, Ashley Capital; Emanuel Stern, president & COO, Hartz Mountain Industries; andDann Thomasson, chief investment officer, CalEast Industrial Investors LLC. The keynote speaker for the conference is Lawrence Shemesh, president of OPSdesign. He will discuss the 350,000-sf RFID distribution center his company designed for Conair Corp.

Sessions run from morning through the afternoon, often concurrently. Pam Zoellner, formerly of Cushman & Wakefield, will moderate a panel on logistics and supply-chain operation, and colleague Stan Danzig will moderate one dealing with brownfield redevelopment.

Just after lunch, Michael G. Desiato, editor-in-chief of Real Estate Media, will go Inside the Retail Mind of Jeff Kelter, chairman and CEO of KTR Partners. Gretchen Wilcox of G.S. Wilcox will moderate a discussion on industrial debt and financing. Greg Paul of Omni Brokerage will lead the seminar on tenant-in-common deals.

The afternoon will be filled with seminars on topics including buying and selling industrial property, the local marketplace, technological innovations and transportation. For more on Real Share Industrial East, click here.