A real estate investment and development firm plans on growing its more than $5 billion portfolio in the Lone Star state through a new regional outpost in Dallas to find opportunities for speculative development.
St. John Properties Inc., with a headquarters in the Baltimore area, has named Raphael Alterman as the firm's regional partner leading the Dallas office and will lead the search for those would-be deals.
It's the firm's second Texas office after opening an outpost in Austin about two years ago. In all, St. John operates 15 offices spanning 11 states, with plans to grow its portfolio of more than 24 million square feet to 40 million square feet of space.
In each of the last four years, St. John has begun work, on a speculative basis, on nearly 1 million square feet of commercial real estate throughout the United States. The firm specializes in flex and research-and-development space, catering to single-story "part office, part industrial," tenants, the company said on its website. St. John also has investments in office, apartments and retail space.
In Austin, St. John Properties already has three projects underway totaling 600,000 square feet of space. The "rapid success and momentum generated in Austin was a key factor," in the firm's Dallas expansion plans, said President and CEO Lawrence Maykrantz in a statement on the Dallas office opening.
"Although we view Dallas as a completely different submarket with unique characteristics, we believe we can leverage certain operational efficiencies with opening a second Texas regional office," Maykrantz said, adding the company sees "long-term opportunities" to fulfill emerging requirements from high-growth sectors, including defense and security, business and financial services, information technology and health services in the region.
The sustained population growth in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, the nation's fourth largest metropolitan area with more than 8.1 million residents, as well as the diversity of industries and the rich talent pool prompted the area to be targeted by St. John, said Alterman, who joined the company in 2019.
Initially, Alterman said he plans to identify and acquire suitable land holdings for its industrial, office and retail projects while in his new role. He also plans to establish relationships with "key brokerage and business professionals to support our long-term development plans."
Alterman has a Master of Business Administration degree in real estate finance and development from the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School.
"Economic growth starts with a region's ability to attract talent and fill available positions and Dallas has few peers in that regard," he said in a statement. "We see a long runway and new opportunities ahead."