Six years ago, the Southern Arizona CCIM Chapter realized that the newest generation of commercial real estate brokers and agents might not know of the many contributions of the prior generations of real estate practitioners and set about to make our real estate history an important part of the culture and fabric of the industry.

Many of Tucson’s pioneering real estate families are still with us and some of Tucson’s Real Estate Legends are still active and can recount their experiences through interesting and sometime hilarious, real estate stories.

Last year, Dan Lyons and Andy Romo were honored with induction into Tucson’s Real Estate Legends by CCIM members, Jim Marian, CCIM, and George Larsen, CCIM, who began the tradition.

And this year, at the 25th Annual CCIM Forecast Meeting, Robert Sarver and Family received the honor.

THE SARVER FAMILY HISTORY

The First Generation

Patriarch Jack Sarver grew up in Flint, Michigan. At the age of 11, he began to work at his father’s gas station. He attended the University of Michigan but had to quit after his freshman year for financial reasons. He returned to working with his father at the family gas station. But, this young man had a bigger vision for his future.

One year later, Jack borrowed $500 and began a tire retreading business. With his hard work, he turned that business into the largest tire retreading company in Michigan. He earned enough to support his two sisters, and he sent his brother to dental school. Jack’s initial success in Michigan began a family legacy that continues today here in Tucson, in banking, in the family’s continuing involvement in real estate and in the Sarver family giving generously to many different Tucson causes.

In 1947, Jack met Irene on a double date. Irene was a young teacher, working in an inner city school district. It was love at first sight. Jack and Irene married that same year and had their first child Gary in 1949. Unfortunately, Gary died three and a half years later. Daughters Betty Anne and Ellen Gail also came into the world while Jack and Irene lived in Flint, Michigan.

Jack’s entrepreneurial success continued. He started an auto and home supply store. He developed the Auto-Rama Hotel, which became the largest hotel in Michigan. Jack, together with partners, then began to develop shopping centers and apartments in Flint. In 1948, he founded and served as President of Flint Savings and Loan.

In 1960, Jack was asked to relocate to Tucson to finance and develop the Desert Inn Hotel in downtown Tucson. Irene was shocked at this sudden turn of events. Her family and friends all lived in the Flint, Michigan area. She cried for days but reality was that Irene had so much love for Jack that she would follow him anywhere. So they both agreed to make the move to Tucson on the condition that the family would return to Flint if Irene did not like life in Arizona. Jack, Irene, and the girls moved into the Country Club Apartments at 6^th and Country Club. They immediately became involved in our community, and Irene fell in love with Tucson. Shortly thereafter, son Robert was born.

Jack opened and ran the Desert Inn. In 1962, he founded and served as President and Chairman of American Savings and Loan, located at Casas Adobes Plaza. Son Robert began working at American S&L while still in high school. In 1965, Jack developed the Aztec Inn on Alvernon. Room rates at the Aztec in 1965 were $7.50/night, with free TV, direct dial room phones and Tucson’s first Olympic sized pool.

In 1969, Jack developed Tucson’s first Howard Johnson’s hotel and around that same time, purchased the downtown Redondo towers out of foreclosure.

The most well-known Sarver hotel development was built in 1971 at the southeast corner of Speedway and Campbell. It was the Plaza International Hotel. The U of A had just opened its medical school, and the Plaza Hotel provided facilities for medical meetings and university conferences. Jack also was a key advocate of the Downtown Convention Center and helped shape our downtown cityscape. He worked hard to promote tourism for the region.

Irene was a devoted wife, mother, and a strong minded business partner with Jack. She used her boundless energy and talents to help many Tucson philanthropic organizations, such as Jewish Family and Children Services, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, and the Brewster Center for Domestic Violence. She was also an original board member of the Arizona Cancer Center. Irene loved Tucson, and our community loved her back.

Jack died in 1979 at 58 years old. Our city lost one of its real estate legends. Irene remained a positive force in the Tucson community until her passing in July of last year.

The Robert Sarver Saga

Son Robert inherited his father’s ambition and then some. He graduated in three years from the University of Arizona in 1982. At the age of 23, he founded National Bank of Arizona, which he subsequently sold to Zions Bancorp. He later founded Alliance Bank, where he is now Chairman of the Board.

Robert knew real estate. He founded Southwest Value Partners in 1990 at the depth of the RTC Recession. That was both gutsy and courageous, and the result was to start an investment company that has prospered over the past 25 years, with 3,000 apartments, 6 million square feet of offices and shopping centers, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 10,000 acres of land investments.

Robert is majority Owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and recently formed a group that took over control of a professional Spanish soccer team.

In 1998, Robert and his wife Penny made a very substantial gift to the University of Arizona Heart Center. The Heart Center was thereafter renamed the Sarver Heart Center. Robert and Penny described their generous donation more as an investment rather than a gift; an investment made in honor of his father Jack, who not only experienced life saving heart surgery, but also counseled patients who were considering new heart procedures and were scared.

We are proud to honor The Sarver Family for both their business contribution and endless community contributions made to our community. The family truly lives out the family motto that has been passed down over several generations. That motto is: If you live in a community and you take from that community, you must give back to that community. There is no question that Family members have been and continue to be true Legends to the Tucson community.

SCOTTSDALE, AZ – Commercial real estate developer SimonCRE announces two new additions to the growing team roster. Jennifer Polansky joins the team as Lease Administrator and Elena Wall has been named Director of Marketing.

Polansky has over 13 years of experience in lease analysis and property management. She will be responsible for the preparation and production of lease documents with regard to all of the buildings in the SimonCRE portfolio. In addition to the drafting of lease documents, Jennifer will work closely with the SimonCRE Legal Department to assist with the execution of new leases, lease amendments and lease renewals.

As Director of Marketing for SimonCRE, Wall will be developing and implementing marketing strategies and tactics to help drive growth. In addition, she will focus on content creation, public relations and overall brand development. Wall is a marketing strategist with a proven record of administering online and offline marketing campaigns. Throughout her career, she has focused on creating comprehensive marketing campaigns, strategies, and solutions to increase revenue, promote brand awareness, and drive business growth.

“We are thrilled to have Jennifer and Elena join our team,” says Joshua Simon, President and Founder of SimonCRE. “Their respective experience will help support SimonCRE’s infrastructure as we continue to grow.”

The expansion of the SimonCRE team comes in wake of its consistent growth. SimonCRE currently has over 50 projects in the pipeline valued at $100 million, creating thousands of jobs across the country. The projected total transaction volume will surpass $140 million in 2016.

Real Estate Daily News Buzz is designed to give news snippets to readers that our (yet to be award winning) editors thought you could use to start your day. They come from various business perspectives, real estate, government, the Fed, local news, and the stock markets to save you time. Here you will find the headlines and what the news buzz of the day will be.

Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 12.67 points, or 0.1%, to 16,014.38. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 1.23 points, or 0.1%, to 1,852.21. The NASDAQ composite index slid 14.99 points, or 0.4%, to 4,268.76.

Benchmark U.S. crude oil dropped $1.75, or 6%, to close at $27.94 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils, fell $2.56, or 8%, to close at $30.32 a barrel in London. In other energy trading in New York, wholesale gasoline fell 6 cents, or 6%, to 90 cents a gallon, and home heating oil fell 7 cents to 97 cents a gallon. Natural gas fell 4 cents, or 2%, to $2.10 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Manhattan’s Luxury Condos May End Up as Rentals, LeFrak Says “Today’s luxury New York condominiums may become tomorrow’s rental apartments as for-sale units pile up in a market with fewer buyers, billionaire real estate investor Richard LeFrak said. The added supply of listings for lease will limit rent growth, LeFrak said in a Bloomberg Television interview Monday. ‘New York rents are probably going to flatten out now, and you’re probably going to see some of the condominium inventory turn into rental inventory,’ he said.” (Bloomberg)

Commercial Real Estate: Too Much Buying? “My takeaway here is that most of the investors in the survey seem to think we are in the late stages of the commercial real estate recovery. Their reaction to that is puzzling; I fail to see how sound a practice it is to engage in bidding wars for the best properties in the best markets after a seven-year bull market in CRE. Prices in some markets are looking a bit frothy, and I find myself nodding in agreement with Sam Zell’s statement in December that, ‘With pricing currently available in the commercial real estate market, it is very hard not to be a seller.’” (The Street)

Phone Companies Shed Surplus Real Estate “Old-school telephone companies are wrestling with a dilemma their younger rivals would love to have: what to do with all that real estate. Buildings accumulated over decades, from windowless and fortress-like switching centers built to handle landline gear to modern warehouses filled with web servers, are up for sale after their telecom owners decided to focus on wireless services.” (Wall Street Journal)

Built Up by Oil Boom, North Dakota Now Has an Emptier Feeling “Hotels that were once booked solid for months are about half occupied. Some of the new luxury apartments built to handle the surge of arrivals are dark. Business is down by 40 percent at a new brewery that once had two-hour dinner lines for cowboy-cut rib-eyes and Williston brownies (which come à la mode). And many of the camps built to house an influx of workers, the vast majority of them male, are emptying out like a bar after last call.” (The New York Times)

Jamestown Buys 49 Percent Stakes in NYC Madison Avenue Towers “Jamestown LP, a real estate company whose holdings include Manhattan’s Chelsea Market, bought 49 percent stakes in two Madison Avenue office buildings, demonstrating an appetite for the market at a time when deals may be slowing. The properties involved are 200 Madison Ave., a 26-story, 750,000-square-foot (70,000-square-meter) building whose tenants include apparel maker PVH Corp., and 63 Madison Ave., a 15-story, 870,000-square-foot building where New York Life Insurance Co. and CBS Corp. lease space.” (Bloomberg)

Real Estate Crowdfunding Calls French Crowdfunding Regulation into Question “Real estate crowdfunding started late in 2014 in France. But, hardly a year later, it is going strong with 26 platforms vying for a share of the market. However, as crowdfunding moves from real estate development to buy-to-let projects, new platforms are encountering some resistance from the French regulator.” (Crowdfund Insider)

Real Estate Magnate Trump Defends Using Eminent Domain to Seize Homes for Private Development “At Saturday’s debate, Jeb Bush attacked Donald Trump for using eminent domain to try to seize the home of an elderly woman in Atlantic City to build a ‘limousine parking lot.’ Trump defended the practice but hit back after the debate, accusing the Bush family of using eminent domain to build the Texas Rangers baseball stadium.” (Democracy Now!)

Moderate Global Commercial Investment, Rental Growth Predicted for 2016 “According to CBRE Group’s newly released 2016 Global Real Estate Market Outlook, moderate economic growth with low interest rates, punctuated with bouts of pessimism and volatility–the factors that have characterized the world economy for the past few years–are likely to continue in 2016, supporting moderate growth in commercial rents and investment sales volume globally.” (World Property Journal)

Super Bowl ‘Rocket’ Mortgage Ad Brings Jeers—and Loan May Not be So Quick “It was a promotion for Quicken Loans’ Rocket Mortgage, so named because it tries to connect applicants with mortgages in just eight minutes. That’s all the time that’s needed to get a mortgage – not just a pre-approval, Quicken claims. And when consumers get mortgages, it’s a shot in the arm for the entire economy, the commercial tells us. For many viewers, that hit a little too close to home to the business model that cratered the financial system in 2008.” (MarketWatch)

Five Trends That Point to a New Era for Retail “Stores that double as classrooms, sensory-rich environments and a rental versus a buy retail model. These are three of the five trends that shopping center developer Westfield believes will shape the future of retailing. The trends are highlighted in a new report from Westfield, ‘How We Shop Now: What’s Next?,’ for which the developer interviewed 13,000 shoppers across the United States and United Kingdom along with leading industry experts and trend-spotters.” (Chain Store Age)

Energy agency says gasoline will average under $2 in 2016 — For the first time since 2004, U.S. drivers are expected to pay an average of less than $2 a gallon for gasoline, the government said Tuesday. They can thank the huge glut of oil around the globe. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its monthly short-term energy outlook that regular gasoline will average $1.98 a gallon nationwide in 2016. The last time oil averaged less than $2 for a full year was 2004, which was also the last time gasoline at stations in some states fell below $1 a gallon.

Alpha says lenders offer $500M for coal producer’s assets — Alpha Natural Resources said it has received a $500 million offer from existing lenders for the potential sale of the bankrupt coal producer’s core assets. Bristol, Virginia-based Alpha announced the offer in a filing Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Virginia. The filing said the unspecified lenders have agreed to serve as the lead bidder. The offer would set the floor for an auction process that lets competitors make higher bids. Alpha filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August. Since the filing, the company has announced plans to lay off hundreds of workers in central Appalachia, citing tough market conditions.

Deutsche Bank shares hit as markets fret over European banks — The CEO of Deutsche Bank reassured employees and markets that the company’s finances were “rock-solid” as Europe’s banks took another a beating in the stock market Tuesday. Shares in Germany’s biggest lender are down 23 per cent since it reported a 6.8 billion euro ($7.5 billion) loss for 2015. The bank’s sagging shares reflect converging factors that are undermining bank shares across in Europe. Banks in the 19 countries that use the euro have some 1.9 trillion euros in loans that aren’t being paid back on time.

Nation’s second-largest food-service firm files to go public — The nation’s second-largest food-service distributor has filed papers for an initial stock offering. U.S. Foods Holding Corp., based in Rosemont, Illinois, said Tuesday it plans to raise $100 million in the IPO, although the amount was listed to calculate fees and will likely be revised. In its filing, U.S. Foods said it has about 25,000 workers and annual sales of $23 billion. It reported a net loss of $73 million last year. The filing comes several months after a judge blocked plans by larger rival Sysco Corp. to acquire U.S. Foods for $3.5 billion.