Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

National Landing - Wikipedia

Even before the Amazon HQ2 announcement, development in the National Landing area had been in the works. In June 2013, The Blackstone Group acquired industrial properties from First Potomac Realty Trust. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_…

It sold most of its assets to Trizec Properties in 1997 for $560 million.

The first investment fund closed in 2002, and its first institutional investor was the financial endowment of Yale University.

In 1994, it was acquired by Peter Munk and in October 2006, it was acquired

by Brookfield Properties and The Blackstone Group. Trizec was founded in 1960 by William Zeckendorf with British associates recapitalize the Place Ville Marie development in Montreal.[2]
In the 1970s, the Toronto branch of the Bronfman family acquired a 50.1% controlling interest

in Trizec through its holding company, Edper Investments. The Bronfmans were also owners of Carena Properties, successor to the Canadian Arena Company. In the 1980s, Trizec acquired The Hahn Company. When it was Canada-based, the headquarters in the early 1970s were in Place

Ville Marie in Montreal, Quebec. After a first move to Calgary, Alberta in 1976 by then company President Harold Milavsky, the headquarters were moved again to Toronto, Ontario in 1995, where the headquarters were in the BCE Place. In 2004, the company was

headquartered at Suite 4600 of the Willis Tower in the Chicago Loop.[19] It later moved to the Near West Side.

He developed two of I. M. Pei's early skyscrapers — the Mile High Center (now part of Wells Fargo Center) in downtown Denver, and Place Ville Marie in downtown

Montreal.[1]
Zeckendorf also partnered with Chicago real estate titan Arthur Rubloff to develop a stretch of Michigan Avenue into what Rubloff dubbed the Magnificent Mile. The Rubloff Company was eventually acquired by Prudential and subsequently has become a division of

Berkshire Hathaway.
The real estate tycoon and his company, Webb & Knapp, also were involved in theme park investment following the successful debut of Disneyland. Zeckendorf came to know C.V. Wood. Wood was employed by the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International)

during the early 1950's when he first met Walt Disney. Wood’s employment background began during 1941 and included nine years at Convair (formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft), an American aircraft manufacturing company that later expanded

into rockets and spacecraft. He became a chief industrial engineer and contributed to innovations for the manufacture of aircraft (despite having no degree in engineering). His first supervisor was Fred V. Schumacher, who would reunite with Wood on later projects. Convair,

previously Consolidated Vultee, was an American aircraft manufacturing company that later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. The company was formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. In 1953, it was purchased by General Dynamics, and operated

as their Convair Division for most of its corporate history. The Fort Worth, Texas factory, constructed to build the B-24 Liberator bomber, and its associated engineering locations and laboratories — all previously used to make hundreds of Consolidated B-24 bombers,

General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark fighter-bombers and General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters, along with dozens of smaller projects — were sold, along with all intellectual property and the legal rights to the products designed and built within, to the Lockheed Corporation.

[7] In 1996, General Dynamics deactivated all of the remaining legal entities of the Convair Division. The Lindbergh Field plant that produced B-24s during World War II was also demolished and the consolidated rental car facility now occupies this space.

Willow Run, also known as Air Force Plant 31, was a manufacturing complex in Michigan, located between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville, constructed by the Ford Motor Company for the mass production of aircraft, especially the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. Part of the airport

complex operated at various times as a research facility affiliated with the University of Michigan, and as a secondary United States Air Force Installation. By autumn 1943, the top leadership role at Willow Run had passed from Charles Sorensen to Mead L. Bricker. For this

reason, a series of Air Technical Service Command modification centers were established for the incorporation of these required theater changes into new Liberators following their manufacture and assignments. There were seven known modification centers: the Birmingham Air Depot

in Alabama; Consolidated's Fort Worth plant, the Oklahoma City Air Materiel Center at Tinker Field, the Tucson Modification Center at Tucson International Airport;[31] the Northwest Airlines Depot in Minneapolis; the, Martin-Omaha manufacturing plant, and the Hawaiian Air Depot

at Hickam Field.[3][4] The Birmingham Air Depot's primary mission was modifying Liberators from Willow Run. On the other side of the airport from the assembly plant were a group of World War II hangars, which were sold to the University of Michigan in 1946. The university

operated the Michigan Aeronautical Research Center (MARC), later known as Willow Run Laboratories (WRL), from 1946 to 1972 at Willow Run. MARC and WRL produced many innovations, including the first ruby laser and operation of the ruby maser, as well as early research into

antiballistic missile defense and advanced remote sensing. In 1972, the University spun off WRL into the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, which eventually left Willow Run for offices in Ann Arbor.

The Ford Nuclear Reactor was a facility at the University of

Michigan in Ann Arbor dedicated to investigating the peaceful uses of nuclear power. It was a part of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, a living memorial created to honor the casualties of World War II. The reactor operated from September 1957 until July 3, 2003.

It was constructed by Babcock & Wilcox under a subcontract with Leeds & Northrup. B&W was the main builder of naval boilers for American forces during World War II, and were a supplier to the Manhattan Project. After the war they entered the nuclear reactor business, and became a

major supplier for commercial nuclear power plants. They also built naval nuclear reactors, including for the first commercial nuclear ship. Sadler arrived on campus in 1900, ready to make UM’s educational program “second to none in the United States.” Soon thereafter he and

Cooley established the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME), with Sadler as the departments’ first Chair. Armed with findings from his newly commissioned model basin, Sadler soon became a world leader in scientific naval architecture. Both Cooley and

Sadler would eventually serve as Deans of the UM College of Engineering, with Cooley being the founding dean in 1915. In 1946 the Navy transferred the Reserve Officers Naval Architecture Group (RONAG) from Annapolis to Ann Arbor. In due time that activity trained 227 officers for

Construction Corps duty.
After the war, many students in NAME were veterans receiving support under the “GI Bill.” NAME produced its first female graduate, Audrey Muller, who graduated in 1949 and went on to work for Bethlehem Steel Company’s Fore River shipyard in Massachusetts.

In 1940, as the United States faced the prospect of its entry into World War II, the War Department authorized four new aircraft assembly plants, including the bomber plant built at Fort Crook (Offutt Airfield) near Bellevue, Nebraska. Built by Glenn L. Martin Company, the

Aircraft Manufacturing and Assembly Building (commonly known as Building "D" or Facility 301) is the largest and most significant building within the Glenn L. Martin-Nebraska Bomber Plant, which included seventeen structures and two main runways. The Glenn L. Martin Company,

renamed Lockheed Martin in 1995 after its merger with Lockheed Aircraft Company, designed the first mechanized conveyor system used to assemble the B-29. Noted modern industrialist architect Albert Kahn designed the enormous utilitarian structure, which measured 900' long and

600' wide when completed in 1941. Building "D" is one of the most important works of engineering and architecture in Nebraska and one of the most historically significant World War II era buildings in the United States. At one minute past midnight, on 9 November 1948, Offutt

gained international prominence when it became the host base for Headquarters Strategic Air Command, which was moved from Andrews AFB, Maryland. Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington chose to locate the Air Force's crucial long-range atomic strike force at Offutt primarily

because the base was centrally located on the North American continent, placing it well beyond the existing range of long-range, nuclear-armed bombers to (then) stay safely out of range of hostile missiles or bomber aircraft. During the late 1950s, Offutt housed a Royal Air Force

facility for servicing Avro Vulcans, which visited the air base frequently while on exercise with SAC. Air Force One left Barksdale AFB for Offutt AFB around 1:30 pm.[13] Air Force One entourage was pared down to a few essential staffers such as Ari Fleischer, Andrew Card,

Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett, Brian Montgomery, and Gordon Johndroe, plus about five reporters.[14] During the flight, Bush remained in "continuous contact" with both the White House Situation Room and Vice-President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.[1

There, he held a teleconference call with Vice-President Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, CIA Director George Tenet, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, and others.[15] The

meeting lasted about an hour. Rice recalled that during the meeting, Tenet told Bush, "Sir, I believe it's al-Qaeda. We're doing the assessment but it looks like, it feels like, it smells like al-Qaeda."