"Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working."

Imagine what it might be like for a real estate executive from 1960, the year that REITs first came into existence, if he could be suddenly whisked into a cutting edge real estate office of today. There would be a great deal that would be totally beyond our time traveler's experience: building projects being planned and tracked with construction contractors through Internet based communications; blueprints from architects and schematics from engineering firms being sent computer to computer; supplies for buildings being ordered from numerous vendors via a single interface, instantly, with all the billing done on a single monthly statement; energy consumption for buildings in multiple cities automatically recorded and tracked for optimal efficiency; and much more. Our time traveler would be amazed and bewildered by the bold steps that technology has wrought in the real estate industry in just four decades.

Our cover story takes a look at one of these new technologies, business-to-business Internet. B2B has already brought some amazing tools to our fingertips, and has the potential to offer a cornucopia of additional possibilities as it links the various functions of our businesses to vendors and clients alike.

Our time traveler might be in for another shock, although an amusing one, if we were to take him for a visit to one of the flagship properties of our profile company in this issue, The Mills Corporation. Their brand of super-regional retail/entertainment malls, that include everything from skateboarding parks to fishing ponds, would likely send our anachronistic friend's head reeling.

If our time traveler found all this a little too overwhelming and decided to go back in time to a less hectic, more graceful age, he might just settle down among the buildings in two of our other features. In "Echoes of Elegance" we examine the benefits and difficulties encountered by developers involved in doing renovations of historic properties. And in "Still Affordable?" we discuss the hurdles that REITs and REOCs have encountered in trying to service the affordable housing market in recent years. One of the properties we look at in that story is an old seminary that has been converted for use as low cost housing for senior citizens.