Mike Platania
Mike Platania reports on commercial real estate and development for Richmond BizSense, with a focus on the deals and adaptive reuse projects reshaping local business districts. His stories track how specific properties, tenants and developers turn individual transactions into larger mixed-use and redevelopment plays, making real estate moves legible to a business audience. He returns to key sites as they evolve, following projects from first anchor tenants through subsequent phases and conversions.
Adaptive reuse and mixed-use projects
Adaptive reuse is a central thread in Platania’s coverage. In his reporting on the $1.2 million sale of a longtime Church Hill auto shop, he shows how a single deal can unlock plans to convert a legacy commercial site into a mixed-use project, detailing both the building’s past life and its future blend of uses. He applies the same lens to plans to convert a warehouse near Rocketts Landing into mixed-use, explaining how underused industrial space is being repositioned within a broader waterfront corridor strategy. Across these stories he consistently links sale prices, proposed uses and neighborhood context, making it clear why a given property is attractive for conversion and how it fits into surrounding retail, residential and office stock.
His reporting on expansions around the Whole Foods- and CarMax-anchored Sauer Center shows how he treats multi-phase mixed-use work as a continuing narrative. He traces the success of early anchor tenants and then follows later phases that add new space and uses, highlighting how each step changes the commercial landscape around the site. In these pieces, Platania balances project details—square footage, uses, new buildings—with practical markers like traffic draws and tenant mix, so readers can see both the physical and business logic of the redevelopment.
Developers, investors and deal structure
Platania’s stories tend to foreground the people and firms driving local real estate activity. When a busy developer makes “a big play” near the Sauer Center, he identifies the buyer, the seller and the strategic significance of the $7.9 million acquisition, not just the headline number. In coverage of deals like the Church Hill auto shop sale, he ties price and timing to the redevelopment plan, showing how investors structure their moves to unlock new mixed-use potential. His work highlights recurring players such as Spy Rock Real Estate Group and Sauer Properties, giving readers a clear sense of who is active, where they are placing bets and how their portfolios connect across projects.
He pays close attention to transaction mechanics—sale amounts, prior ownership, zoning or program changes—while keeping the focus on business impact. By consistently noting what a property has been, what it will become and who is behind the change, Platania provides a practical map of local deal flow. This emphasis on developers and investors makes his coverage useful for anyone tracking competitive dynamics in the commercial real estate market, from landlords and brokers to tenants looking at emerging corridors.
Business reporting across formats
In addition to his print and online work for Richmond BizSense, Platania regularly brings his real estate reporting into audio format through a recurring news segment that highlights top business and development stories. On these segments he distills complex projects—such as the warehouse conversion near Rocketts Landing or major acquisitions around the Sauer Center—into concise updates that still carry key details about players, investment levels and timelines. The cross-format presence reinforces the same beat priorities: commercial projects, mixed-use redevelopment, and significant property transactions.
Across platforms, his style is direct and fact-driven. He leans on concrete figures, named firms and specific sites rather than broad commentary, and he tracks projects over time so listeners and readers can follow how one phase leads to the next. That combination of property-level detail, consistent attention to the main developers involved, and clear explanations of how each move changes a corridor or neighborhood is what distinguishes Platania’s coverage from more generic real estate reporting.
4 more real estate journalists.
Aaron Moselle
Aaron Moselle covers housing and community development for WHYY’s PlanPhilly, filing for radio and the web. He stands out for connecting market data and government action to displacement, affordable homes, and the daily questions facing renters and homeowners. His core beat is housing affordability and market strain, including high mortgage rates, rising prices, tax assessments, and what they mean for buyers, sellers, and renters. He also reports on preserving and creating affordable housing, neighborhood rehab efforts, major real estate deals, and the effect of property sales on residents. His work often uses direct sourcing, plain language, and service journalism to make policy and finance clear.
Abbey Ferguson
Abbey Ferguson stands out for reporting how major commercial moves and redevelopment plans reshape the built environment, especially the real estate deals that reveal what land and retail space are worth. She covers Central Texas commercial real estate and development for KWTX, with recent stories on land valuation, major transactions, retail redevelopment, and infrastructure planning. Her work has tracked an $80 million data center site offer in Hill County, a prospective Trader Joe’s location in Waco, and a planning project using artificial intelligence to predict traffic patterns. She writes as a news reporter, staying close to the numbers, public records, brokers, officials, and landowners. Her stories turn contract prices, appraisal data, and listing history into plain explanations of what buyers are betting on and how those deals affect surrounding property owners and nearby businesses.
Alcynna Lloyd
Alcynna Lloyd reports on how housing markets shape people’s lives, focusing on the real decisions and trade-offs behind buying, renting, and moving home. She is a real estate reporter at Business Insider, where she writes about homebuying behavior, tiny homes, and multi-generational housing as part of the economy team’s coverage of real estate and the rental market. Her core beat is the consumer side of housing, with an emphasis on affordability and how market conditions affect ordinary buyers and renters. She writes analytical service pieces that compare different markets and track moves, migrations, and life changes tied to housing. Her stories combine economic context, market data, and detailed personal narratives, and she also covers startups and rising real estate talent to show how industry decisions affect everyday housing choices.
Aldo Svaldi
Aldo Svaldi treats residential real estate as a window into the Colorado economy, explaining how housing trends reflect jobs, income, business activity and public policy. He is a long-tenured business reporter who covers the Colorado economy, economic development and residential real estate. His beat centers on mortgage costs, construction pipelines, buyer behavior and banking, with a focus on housing pressures and affordability. He reports on segments such as entry-level, move-up and higher-end homes, showing how financing costs, supply constraints and demand shifts affect each. His work is data-forward, using economic indicators, reports and forecasts to track cycles, turning points and structural issues. He scrutinizes research findings and pairs expert analysis with interviews and on-the-ground observations to show how policy, corporate moves and financial decisions shape housing demand, prices and development patterns.