Counselors of Real Estate to convene in Boston Oct. 25-28

The Boston skyline includes a dozen cranes bobbing over buildings rising from many neighborhoods around the city. The Counselors of Real Estate convene in Boston October 25-28 and will be experiencing the action up close with some Fenway Park thrown in. Mayor Walsh will welcome the attendees with his evolving vision for Boston. Healthcare and homelessness and 3D printing are on the agenda. Aggressive listening to the briefings, dialogue, sidebars, workshops and discussions is always paramount. With Boston under the glass, answering questions from the attendees will be a predictable expectation. Micro and macroeconomic reflections and forecasting are always featured in the Counselors' national meetings. Boston has some homegrown celebrities who are Counselors and many are participating. Among them, Ray Torto, Ph.D. CRE and Doug Poutasse, CRE are in a Point/Counterpoint session on the market outlook which will provide current economic context. Both are nationally renowned for well-resourced data and thoughtful and insightful prognostication of commercial real estate market performance. 2014 CRE president Hugh Kelly, Ph.D. from New York City also enjoys a national reputation and will preside at the annual meeting. All three have been globe trotters for a while, and they will certainly include the global economic context and capital flows. Emerging Trends, a popular commercial real estate survey of investors, will be a featured general session. Anecdotal support for global conclusions has historically been a hallmark for these speakers and the Counselors. The local spotlights are on healthcare and homelessness and Fenway Park. The Counselors have featured healthcare panels for over 15 years in the national meetings. The Counselors' Consulting Corps has completed local project assignments on homelessness. Fenway Park is our newest yet well-established residential neighborhood. All are prominent features of the Boston landscape. The Changing Healthcare Industry will take granular look at the evolving trends in business resulting from universal healthcare, including a variety of new services and related uses. Heading Home, a local nonprofit serving the homeless, will be the client in an open workshop demonstrating the counseling dynamic of the Consulting Corps. The opening reception with ballpark tours will be at Fenway Park; Boston Red Sox COO/executive vice president Sam Kennedy will be luncheon speaker; the Samuels Legacy in the Fenway neighborhood will feature the transformational mixed-use development. The agenda also includes offerings on fiduciary services, 3-D printing, the capital flood and a variety business issues forums. The Counselors are aggressive listeners and highly communicative. The Boston meeting will be a showcase. The Boston meeting will also be a peer review as our colleagues from outside the region wonder out loud about our what if's in the local commercial real estate markets. At the recent meeting of the European Chapter of the Counselors in Istanbul, I listened aggressively and asked a lot of questions of my European colleagues. The New England Chapter of The Counselors is preparing for the hosting challenge October 25-28. David Kirk is principal and founder of Kirk & Company, Real Estate Counselors, Boston.