News

The Montgomery County Council unanimously passed legislation requiring the county executive to issue all-electric building standards for new construction by December 31, 2026. The council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee recommended approval with amendments directed at several points important to NAIOP members. The amended version of the bill includes…

On an 80-acre site in Cecil County, the first cars in a planned delivery of 10,000 vehicles have started arriving at a newly created industrial outdoor storage (IOS) facility. Developed by Greenspring Realty Partners, the Insurance Auto Auctions facility demonstrates both the continued high demand for IOS space in Maryland…

Developers, building owners and brokers alike have been nervously awaiting the potential fallout and impact on future leasing activities as employees finally return to traditional and more normalized workplaces in a post-pandemic world, and companies reassess their future space needs. Early reports have been promising as remote-only and hybrid work…

Faced with an ambitious new schedule for reducing Maryland’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, leaders across multiple industries are warning that even aggressive implementation plans – which would dramatically decarbonize transportation, buildings and the electric grid – will fail to meet the state’s 2031 GHG goal. Previously, Maryland was working towards…

Across from a retail center in Columbia, Goodier Properties has found a vibrant new role for a cluster of suburban office buildings. This summer, Goodier purchased a six-building, 250,000-square-foot property with a 35 percent vacancy rate on Old Dobbin Lane and embarked on a plan to transform it into a…

Tracking energy usage, establishing benchmark Energy Star scores and using that data to identify necessary energy equipment changes and retrofits will become an increasingly important activity for real estate owners as Maryland implements the Climate Solutions Now Act. Passed by the General Assembly in 2022, the act requires the state…

The Maryland Department of Environment (MDE) has scheduled a series of stakeholder meetings related to the development of regulations to implement a state-wide building energy performance standard. At this point, MDE interprets the directive in Senate Bill 528 to require that regulations apply to both energy use and direct emissions.

Property technology, generally known as Proptech, has emerged as an often-used tool among commercial real estate developers and property management companies to harness data and intelligence to simplify transactions, assist with marketing and leasing, and optimize asset management functions and operations. Its use ranges from gathering real-time feedback from tenants…

America’s greenest county is raising the bar on its own sustainability goals. On the heels of earning the first LEED Platinum certification in the country under the U.S. Green Building Council’s version 4.1 States and Communities Program, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball launched new initiatives in October to dramatically lower…

The first post-pandemic survey of D.C. area commuters documents the explosion in telework and sharp drop in transit usage since the onset of COVID-19. According to the survey conducted by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, three-quarters of commuters now telework three or more days a week – up from…