New Hires Focus on Office, Retail, Hotel

At Windsor Capital, new senior vice president Craig Stechman will head sales and marketing for the real estate acquisition, development and management firm, which is the parent of Windsor Hospitality Group and its portfolio of 31 hotels. Stechman's focus will be on centralizing and expanding WCG's sales and marketing operations, according to company founder and chairman Patrick Nesbitt Sr.

Lee has joined Watt Realty Advisors to focus primarily on office acquisition opportunities in multiple target markets including the West Coast, Arizona, Texas, Florida and Georgia. He will focusing on value-added office opportunities as well as core-plus commercial real estate investments in the range of $50 million to $100 million.

[IMGCAP(2)]Watt is "in acquisition mode," according to Jim Maginn, president and CEO of the Watt Cos. New VP Lee says that he expects to see "an amazing amount of buying opportunities in the next few years for companies with strong balance sheet positions."

Before joining Watt, Lee served as SVP and West Coast acquisitions officer at Los Angeles-based Lowe Enterprises. He also held an executive position with Houston-based Hines, where he was the project manager for two large Dallas office properties and also spearheaded acquisitions in Eastern and Southern Europe. He also served as a vice president at Crescent Real Estate Equities in Fort Worth, TX.

[IMGCAP(3)]Hira, who will focus on retail development opportunities at Watt Commercial, sees the greatest retail acquisition opportunity in smaller urban shopping centers anchored by grocers and drug stores. He cites "real opportunity in strong performing urban markets throughout the Western US," including California and the Pacific Northwest. The acquisitions Hira is targeting will combine opportunistic development possibilities with potential redevelopment and leasing upside, "not necessarily in the short term," he says.

Hira's nearly 20 years of real estate experience ranges from acquisitions, value-added redevelopment and entitlements to mixed-use development and retail tenant strategies. Before joining Watt Cos. he served as an EVP for the Irvine-based mixed-use developer Pacific Century Group, operating the commercial division of the company and managing a $100 million retail portfolio of retail land and development projects. He has also served as a managing director of acquisitions for Los Angeles-based and San Francisco-based Westrust and the vice president of Development for Upland, CA-based Lewis Retail Centers.

At Windsor, Nesbitt points out that the Santa Monica-based company has geared itself in the past several years toward centralizing its sales and marketing activities to include managing yield and aggressive e-commerce and has been seeking someone to lead those efforts. Stechman is a 25-year hospitality industry veteran who joins Windsor after seven and a half years as vice president of sales and marketing at Philadelphia-based Hersha Hospitality Management, five years with Silver Spring, MD-based Choice Hotels International as national sales director and director of regional sales and seven years at Hershey Entertainment & Resort Co. in Hershey, PA.

Stechman says his top priorities include developing a headquarters team to pursue a number of goals. Those include increasing synergy between corporate sales and management in the field, with a view to increasing WCG's top-line revenue as well as its return on investment.