For this particular site, we talked about the building we were touring as well as another that was being developed adjacent, which parts will be office space with tenants, and which will be condos or apartments, and so forth. The University of Texas at Dallas has been certified to teach the CCIM series since 2009ish, all of my certificates were completed in 2001-2003, so I had a discussion with one of the Trammel Crow CBRE guides who asked me about the group, and I told them that this was for UTDallas, that I did not know them that well but that I was coming back into the commercial industry after leaving in 2007 as an agent, now doing some investing of my own, and that I was getting acquainted with Dallas as a market as well as the DFW metroplex and North Texas, and he said that it was a great place to be. I shook his hand before I left and hurried along to my class that was out in Frisco. That day I had been in about 4 cities and was mortified that I had left my pilot log book and notes on top of my car and had broken the binding, so I went to my former book binding instructor to see what could be fixed, fixed what I could. Yes I did pull over and go back through rush hour traffic to get my journals that are now saved road kill.
I brought my Bell Telephone hat because it was a hard hat tour, but they actually had hard hat cowboy hats ready for us, and I initially thought that we were doing a new park tour because I got part of the description when I registered for the event, so I actually registered myself and my dog, because I thought it was an outdoors tour for whatever reason, and then when I realized that it was not going over a land site prep and that it was a building tour, I cancelled my dogs reservation, & was early to the meeting since I knew that I had to leave before they had Happy Hour.
I felt bad asking them to round everyone up so I could make it to class on time, which I was 15 minutes late for after having to pick up things from the side of the road, but we had gone over our time that was allocated for the building tour anyways so they told me not to worry about it.
Building engineering and architecture is definitely a different art in itself. I myself have been doing some aerospace engineering research on the side, but some of my favorite architectural gems are the miniature collections (which is what I call them, it is not what you professionally call them), i.e. when building tours have a city presentation to the development side, there is a smaller scale of the project that is done which is scaled down to be able to have an aerial view at your feet, really not at your feet, more like a centerpiece that gives it a round-table presence where you can view aspects of the structures at ground level. Those are some of my favorite things about having gone to world-class development projects that attract the living, tourism, nightlife, of the city by adding value & gorgeous buildings to look at from another skyscraper or walking by on the streets.