Rod Stevens

Rod Stevens has worked in commercial real estate for almost 40 years and through four previous recessions. He has planned and financed a number of innovative new projects and solved problems for those that needed assistance. His skills include market research and financial analysis, due diligence investigations, project programming and planning, financial underwriting, and turnaround management.

Rod’s experience includes work with financial institutions, developers, and high net worth individuals. As Vice President of Portland-based Wyse Investment, Rod negotiated and placed real estate investments on behalf of the Stoel Rives, Les Schwab and other regional pension funds, as well as a number of high net worth individuals. After the savings-and-loan crisis, Rod helped a bank create liquidity from its holdings by structuring a cash flow mortgage backed by the restructured loans on 75 Texas properties.

For more than 30 years, Rod has worked at a boardroom level on the use and workout of real estate, serving as an advisor to senior executives in both decision making and turnaround execution. His experience includes:

• Responsibility for turning around and selling out a partially sold 300-unit high-rise condominium project in Sarasota, Florida. The project included two 20-story buildings and a set of 20 waterfront townhouses divided into three homeowner associations with a master association responsible for maintaining the roads and grounds. As part of the turnaround, he resolved complex construction and marketing challenges that were preventing both new and resale of the units; restructured the master homeowners association by improving the records and management of multiple homeowner associations to comply with state law, the condominium bylaws, and best industry practices; and resolved long-standing issues with the homeowners.

• Port Quendall, Renton, WA: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s staff had spent more than $15 million planning an 80-acre, mixed-use development on a waterfront brownfield site in Renton. Rod managed a PR crisis with city and state problems and had invested in the old plan, negotiated a final agreement with environmental regulators who tried to re-open a court-ordered settlement, stopped the acquisition of a neighboring site with even worse pollution problems, and met with Allen to provide a detailed accounting of where the money had been spent.

• Kenmore Village, Kenmore, WA: The client had spent about ten years and $10 million trying to turn an old shopping center into a lifestyle mall with upscale retailers. Pre-sales were unsuccessful, and the development partner walked away when the 2008 recession struck. Rod got the community on board with a new approach. To draw broad response from possible buyers, he prepared a briefing book with a detailed discussion of site issues that saved them time on due diligence investigations. When taken to market, the property drew 12 solid offers. The client fully recovered their investment, and the site was developed with approximately $100 million of new apartments, restaurants, office, and public space.

• 888 Blvd. of the Arts, Sarasota, FL: A Dutch pension fund had taken back a 300-unit high-rise condominium project which it had invested in five years before. The fund had also tried to fix construction problems three times, unsuccessfully, angering homeowners who were about to sue. Taking over the project, Rod recruited a team of construction, marketing, legal and management talent to determine a turnaround solution. Rod carried out the solution opening a new sales center even as the turnaround work was occurring while keeping owners in their units. In two short sales seasons of five months each, the project was completely sold.

Rod’s educational background includes a BA in history from Stanford University and an MBA from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business.