senior director, Opus North Corp.
Company: Opus North Corp.
Title: Senior director
Education: Bachelor’s degree and MBA from the University of Kansas
Family: Son, Garrett, 6, and daughter, Halle, 4
City of residence: Shorewood
Hobbies: Golf, ski, cycling, sailing, scuba diving
What are you working on? "We have a number of industrial, office and retail developments currently under construction or in planning. Opus recently broke ground on a 400,000-square-foot office building in Franklin for Northwestern Mutual. Opus also has under construction a 300,000-square-foot industrial building in Oak Creek, and we will be announcing a retail development later this year."
How does the market look to you? "The industrial and retail markets are the healthiest and continue to grow. Ultimately, job growth drives our business and will be the key indicator of the future health of the commercial real estate markets."
What was the best deal you’ve ever been involved in? "One of the best recent deals was a data center here in the Milwaukee area for Thomson Financial. Shortly after I moved to Wisconsin and started with Opus in November of 2003, we were presented with the opportunity to develop and construct a data center for a client that had an extremely aggressive delivery date. We completed lease negotiations in March of 2004, and the data center was commissioned in August the same year."
What was the funniest moment of your career? "The funniest moment has to be my first time on skis. During a late night celebration after a big presentation to our CEO when I was at JMB Realty Corp., a group of us decided at 3 a.m. on a Friday morning in Denver that we would drive up to Winter Park to ski that day … my first time skiing. Everything about that day was funny."
