| In one night, Roosevelt University celebrated its 10th anniversary, the 90th birthday of co-founder Marshall Bennett, and the donation of $100k in new scholarship funds from Northern Builders founder James Grusecki (not to mention serving up one of the best dessert trios at any real estate gala we've been to). | |
| Here's Marshall, right, celebrating his birthday with Walton Street Capital's Neil Bluhm. Neil says that he thinks commercial real estate hasn't been hit nearly as hard as past recessions, since this one wasn't CRE's fault. Now, investors are starting to see why real estate is a good investment again—returns are similar to US Treasury bondsand often much better than stocks. (And certainly better than stuffing cash in cookie jars.) He also congratulated Marshall on creating a quality educational program for young people coming into the industry. | |
| We snapped James with Betty and Richard Oberdorf just before he announced his new scholarship donation. James also received a lifetime acheivement award from Roosevelt, which he says is hopefully more for his charity work (James has spent a lot of time redeveloping the Biograph Theater and building housing for single moms) than for his three 500k SF+ industrial parks. Northern's latest venture, Cherry Hill Business Park, is home to the Navistar distribution center. | |
| Here's a couple more Chicago real estate legends. Marc Realty's Jerry Nudo is looking at refinancing some of his historic downtown office buildings and tells us he recently had some success with a $10M refi in the West Loop with some help from Draper and Kramer. JRG's Charles Huzenis is building his capital markets business little by little. |
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