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Taking advantage of a location surrounded by freeways leading to downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and the Los Angeles International Airport in the popular West Los Angeles area, Transwestern Investment Co. has picked up Corporate Pointe in Culver City for an undisclosed price. It did so on behalf of Aslan Realty Partners IV L.L.C., a fully-discretionary institutional equity fund. Corporate Pointe consists of two multi-tenant office towers totaling 442,000 square feet in the West Los Angeles submarket. The property is currently more than 93 percent occupied. In-place rents are 24 percent below market, according to Transwestern information. Culver…

Income-producing real estate is feeling the strain of persistent turmoil in the world’s financial markets and the downbeat outlook for the U.S. economy, according to the latest survey of real estate executives by the Real Estate Roundtable, which was released today. Still, a majority of those surveyed expected some improvement in the not-too-distant future. The survey, conducted for the Washington, D.C.-based Roundtable by FPL Advisory Group, polled over 100 upper-level managers in the real estate industry, including CEOs, presidents, board members and other executives to get a C-suite eye-view of the market. The participating executives hailed from across the spectrum…

“You have to get back to basics in a down economy,” says Bill Upshaw, new COO of Windsor Hospitality Group, which is both practicing that philosophy and looking forward to substantial growth over last year in an industry that’s increasingly struggling. A 25-year veteran of the hospitality business, Upshaw was most recently vice president of operations for Benchmark Hospitality. Previous to that, he had held positions at Marriott, Mariner Corp., the Durbin Cos. and Crestline-Barcelo. Windsor Hospitality is an affiliate of Windsor Capital Group, a privately owned hotel ownership and management company with 31 hotels in 13 states and nearly…

As it nears the November opening of its luxury SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills (pictured), SBE has received $33 million in preferred equity from the Lowe Structured Investment Fund, a discretionary investment fund managed by Lowe Enterprises Investors. A source close to the deal told CPN that the total price tag is roughly $229 million, including acquisition and renovations.“This property is a solid fit with the loan criteria established for our fund,” said Philip Peters, LEI executive vice president and portfolio manager for the fund, which offers mezzanine debt and preferred equity for commercial, residential and hospitality properties in the…

BDO Seidman signed a 15-year lease to occupy 121,400 square feet of office space on three floors at Manhattan’s 100 Park Avenue. The transaction, for which financial terms were not disclosed, raises building occupancy from 67 percent to 80 percent. The 100 Park Avenue building (pictured), owned by SL Green Realty Corp., is nearing completion of a $72 million capital improvement program. The redevelopment includes a new two-story atrium lobby, complete re-cladding of the façade featuring a glass curtain wall along Park Ave., 2,000 new insulated windows, new elevator cabs and infrastructure upgrades. The building is on track to receive…

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…