Macks Launch New Venture Following AREA Sale

NEW YORK CITY-Having wound down their involvement with AREA Property Partners, which they sold to Ares Management earlier this summer, the Mack family has launched Mack Real Estate Group as its new vehicle for investment and development. The company will be headquartered in New York, as AREA was, with plans to launch satellite offices in Los Angeles, Seattle and London within the next six months.

William Mack and Richard Mack, cofounders of AREA, will serve as chairman and CEO, respectively, of MREG, which they have founded with Stephen Mack. Richard Mack, formerly North America CEO at AREA, will also serve as a consultant to Ares through year's end. William Mack, who served as chairman of AREA, is also board chairman at East Coast office REIT Mack-Cali Realty Corp.

Already the new company directly owns and manages about six million square feet of properties and developments. A spokesman for MREG tells GlobeSt.com these assets are separate from the investments that AREA had made since its founding in 1993 as Apollo Real Estate Advisors.

MREG also has partnership interests in entities that control more than 60 million square feet. Further, MREG is majority owner of Winthrop Property Management, which provides third-party property and construction management services to approximately 11,000 multifamily units and 10 million square feet of commercial buildings.

The company's spokesman confirms a Wall Street Journal report that MREG has about 4,500 apartment units under development in New York City, Seattle and Southern California.  Much of the West Coast development will occur under the aegis of MREG's new alliance with Urban Partners and Harbor Urban, reported separately on GlobeSt.com this afternoon.

“We will often be direct investors, and as we build Mack Real Estate Group, we will also seek partnerships with emerging and established investment managers and developers who share our vision for successful real estate investment, and seek to provide them advice, counsel, and expertise as well as access to institutional investors,” says Richard Mack. “Our goal is to generate excellent returns for our partners and ourselves through long-term real estate ownership.  We seek to achieve that goal through careful oversight of what we own, bold but analytical thinking about new opportunities and quick, careful execution.”