CHICAGO-After the Great Recession, the lenders, developers and owners that survived should be well-positioned to start a climb back to growth in 2011, says Breck Hanson. The former LaSalle Bank real estate group leader, who had retired from the lending game, was recently appointed EVP and head of commercial real estate for the $25 billion Associated Banc-Corp.

After the Bank of America buy-out of LaSalle, Hanson says he stayed on to run the firm’s real estate lending in the Midwest. He retired last year, and had settled comfortably in to open his own consulting firm until he was called by New York City-based Korn/Ferry International about the Associated position.

Hanson tells GlobeSt.com that he took the job because there are a few lenders, Associated being one of them, that have been firmly selling off non-performing assets, getting the balance sheet in order and are now poised for action as the real estate market returns from its downswing. “I clearly feel an energy level that was non-existent six to 12 months ago, I’ve heard it described that we see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we don’t know how long the tunnel is. We’re starting to see transactions, with more than a few banks showing that they are getting issues under control by year-end, so they can start 2011 back to driving earnings, and not asset management as they have for the past 18 months.”

He says that Associated will likely do about $75 million to $100 million in commercial real estate lending this year, after selling off close to $700 million of troubled situations. “The trouble comes in that not all banks have done this,” Hanson says. For this reason, the recovery will be slow and methodical. “We’re starting to see loan requests, not at the pace in the early 2000 timeframe, but well above the past two years. We’re also starting to see properties less leveraged, margins are better, appraisal rates are low, and this better reflects risk and identifies borrowers who are really credit-worthy. It should soon be a good time to lend money.”