Long before Steve Schnur’s career developing properties such as logistics hubs and data centers, he helped Northwestern University lay the foundation for modern sports facilities.
Schnur, chief operating officer at Chicago-based developer CRG, is national homecoming and reunion chair for the Big Ten university’s alumni festivities the weekend of Oct. 9-11 in Evanston, Illinois. He's come full circle, because he got his career start with a meeting after a football game.
The honor of serving as chair comes three decades after Schnur quarterbacked the Wildcats to back-to-back conference football titles and the program’s first Rose Bowl appearance in 47 years. Those teams gained national attention following decades of football mediocrity.
“It doesn’t feel like 30 years to me,” Schnur said in an interview. “It was a really special time for everyone who was around the Northwestern community at the time.”
In the homecoming role, Schnur will help unveil the new Ryan Field, a shiny new stadium on the site of a previous venue with the same name. The game against Ball State will be just the second played in the new stadium, meaning many alumni will be seeing it for the first time.
Schnur is proud of the role his teams played in bringing Northwestern sports to greater prominence, leading the program toward facilities upgrades such as a football practice property along Lake Michigan.
The scene differs from when Northwestern made the Rose Bowl, Schnur said. With no modern practice facilities to overcome harsh winters, then-coach Gary Barnett had the Wildcats take daily rides on school buses to the Chicago Bears’ north suburban campus.
While Schnur got his first job in real estate after that chance after-game encounter with an alum who turned out to be a real estate developer, decades later he is involved in a program to mentor Northwestern players. Chicago real estate professionals who have been mentored by or interned under Schnur include former Northwestern quarterbacks Clayton Thorson, Andrew Marty and Dan Persa.
Schnur spent two decades at Indianapolis-based industrial developer Duke Realty, last serving as chief operating officer before the company was acquired by Prologis in 2022.
Schnur took on the same title at CRG, the development arm of construction behemoth Clayco, in 2023.
CRG has a large pipeline of developments throughout the country, primarily focused on warehouses, data centers and student housing. Ongoing projects include a massive quantum computing campus on Chicago’s south lakeshore in partnership with Related Midwest.
Like other developers, CRG has faced challenges such as rising construction and borrowing costs and geopolitical turmoil. But strategies learned in football can help.
“Our business is kind of like playing a game,” Schnur said. “You go back and forth and momentum changes. In times like this, you lean into what your core strengths are, and for us that’s industrial/logistics, student housing and data centers. It is challenging, but sometimes when things get challenging that’s where you start to separate from your competition.”