Is commercial real estate next in terms of taking a hit?
It’s already happening. There’s a huge flux in the commercial-industrial real estate market. In particular, there are transitioning industries. While the entertainment industry, production and post-production, changes in a digital age, facilities requirements are changing. Add to it extraordinary personnel downsizing, you find that most of the production and post-production houses that service the major players — Disney, DreamWorks, NBC, ABC, CBS — what we see is many of the post-production houses have had as high as a 60% personnel shift. And because the personnel are shifting, and because their income sources are so dramatically changed, many of them are downsizing their facilities or consolidating their facilities. Q: What about retail space? A: Retail has suffered tremendously. Sales volumes for the small shops along Magnolia Boulevard, Burbank Boulevard, Olive Avenue, Hollywood Way, Victory Boulevard and Buena Vista Street are probably seeing an average revenue drop of 25% to 30%.
