William Alter, founder of the Alter Group, one of the largest development firms in the nation, died Friday of complications from pneumonia. Alter, who was 78, also suffered from Alzheimer’s for several years before his death. Though in the 1990s he turned over the day to day operations of the Alter Group to his son, Michael Alter, the senior Alter retained the titles of chairman & CEO of the Skokie, Ill.-based firm. Born on the South Side of Chicago in 1929 and educated at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, William Alter (pictured) began his long career in real estate in…

A little more than a year after purchasing Jurys Inns hotel chain, Dublin-based international private equity real estate group Quinlan Private has sold a 50 percent partnership interest in the hotel chain to Oman Investment Fund, an investment arm of the Sultanate of Oman. In July 2007, Quinlan Private acquired Jurys Inn hotel chain from Jurys Doyle for a reported $1.6 billion. Since that acquisition, Quinlan has expanded the chain with three new hotels across Ireland and the United Kingdom. Plans are in the works for 10 new Jurys hotels set to open between 2009 and 2010. Company information indicates…

RockBridge Partners, the equity platform of Columbus, Ohio-based RockBridge Capital, has announced the closure of a deal to acquire Gateway Center, a portfolio with four hotels, office and retail space and five acres of land in Rocky Mount, 60 miles east of Raleigh, N.C. William Hull Jr., the original developer, will continue to be involved in the deal as a minority partner. Hospitality Ventures, headquartered in Atlanta, will be the manager for the hotels. The four hotels are now a Holiday Inn, (which will eventually become a Doubletree Hotel) a Residence Inn, a Courtyard, and a Comfort Inn. The 168-room…

Have your company’s marketing initiatives wandered astray? Is the proverbial tail starting to wag the dog with respect to your current marketing campaigns? How do you know when marketing is out of control? Those of you familiar with my work know that I’m generally a strong advocate for sales- and marketing-driven organizations. However my typical pro-marketing position assumes that certain key fundamentals are in place to ensure that the lunatics don’t somehow become in charge of the asylum. In today’s column I’ll discuss how to keep marketing in check so that brand focus is maintained and your company avoids the…

Tenet Healthcare Corp., an owner of hospitals and other medical facilities nationwide, is planning to move its headquarters to Downtown Dallas. The company, which only moved to the Dallas area from Southern California in 2004, will lease about 165,000 square feet for 10 years at the 1.2 million-square-foot Fountain Place at 1445 Ross Ave. According to Tenet, the site selection process took about two years, and spanned the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area. Currently, Tenet is headquartered at 13727 Noel Road in North Dallas, near the junction of the Dallas North Tollway and I-635. Fountain Place had large blocks of available…

Construction of The Yards, a 5.5 million-square-foot redevelopment endeavor in southeast Washington, D.C., by Forest City Washington, is in the works, and the company has just opened The Yards Pavilion to give a peak at what is to come when the first phase of the project delivers late next year. An outdoor marketing gallery, The Yards Pavilion features exhibit panels and kiosks detailing the multi-faceted $1.7 billion project, the first structure of which will debut late next year as the 170-unit Foundry Lofts apartment building. “The Yards will change the city by creating this exciting, mixed-use riverfront neighborhood from former…