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 06.14.2007 Invsco veteran brings residential artistry to Beitler |
Invsco veteran brings residential artistry to Beitler
Crains Chicago Business
By Thomas A. Corfman
June 14, 2007
Rattling off the books he’s recently read, James A. West sheepishly mentions a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, an important figure in feminist art.
“Not that I’m an intellectual,” he says, “I’m really not.”
Mr. West, 55, a former top dealmaker with American Invsco Corp., joined J. Paul Beitler last month as the prominent developer looks to expand his focus beyond office buildings, taking aim at residential projects.
If not an intellectual, Mr. West is known for his level-headed thinking and plain-spoken style in an industry where developers can sometimes turn giddy over a deal.
“You need to have somebody on board who can get you over the giggle test,” says Mr. Beitler, president of Chicago-based Beitler Real Estate Corp.
In his new role, Mr. West will have to provide not only a reality check, but needed residential expertise to Mr. Beitler, who is best known for his office towers.
“Jim brings a tremendous amount of experience on the residential side,” he says. “That wasn’t a problem (for us), but some people did question our ability to do residential.”
During a nine-year stint at Invsco that ended in late 2003, Mr. West concentrated on buying apartment properties to feed the condo conversion machine run by the company’s strong-willed chairman, Nicholas Gouletas.
At Invsco, while Mr. Gouletas and his sister, Evangeline, then Invsco’s co-chairman, conducted a long-running legal dispute over money matters, both respected Mr. West and got along with him.
“He is honest, straightforward,” says Ms. Gouletas, now chairman of Skyline Equities Realty LLC. After leaving Invsco, Mr. West worked briefly for suburban Detroit apartment developer Crosswinds Communities and Miami-based Skyline.
With Beitler Real Estate, Mr. West is an executive vice-president, overseeing several beginning-stage developments that will give him a chance to get back into commercial real estate. Mr. Beitler, for example, is planning a 245-unit apartment project in Waukegan as part of a redevelopment of that city’s downtown.
In the late 1980s, Mr. West was the local head of real estate for Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, playing a key role in the development of NBC Tower, 455 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive.
“If you want somebody for their due diligence, Jim’s the man,” says John Hammerschlag, president of a Chicago parking garage investment firm that bears his name, who has known Mr. West since his Equitable days. “He really looks in all the corners.”
Mr. West, who was raised outside Independence, Mo., began his career in 1973 in the Kansas City, Mo., office of Equitable’s real estate department, which at the time had one of the best training programs in the real estate industry.
During his four-year stint in Chicago, Mr. West met Mr. Beitler when a joint venture led by Equitable bought 200 W. Madison St., the 45-story tower developed by Mr. Beitler and his longtime business partner, Lee Miglin, who was killed in 1997.
Mr. West moved to Atlanta with Equitable in 1990. Wanting to move back to Chicago, he took the job with Invsco in 1994.
A three-sport athlete in high-school, Mr. West, who’s 6’2”, remained an avid basketball player until surgeries to repair two ruptured Achilles tendons, in 1998 and 2004, and a knee surgery in 2000.
At the library, he picked up the “The Life of an American Legend” by Jeffrey Hogrefe, about Ms. O’Keeffe, whose artwork featuring enlarged flowers, animal bones and desert scenes gained popularity in the 1970s thanks to the feminist movement.
“I like some of her paintings,” he says. “The skulls.” |
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