STG Recruits Veteran to Head Operations

SANTA ROSA, CA-The locally based value-add real estate investment company STG Group has lured industry veteran Steve Grant to head its operations. Grant’s experience includes being Western region president for Houston-based Transwestern Commercial Services and, prior to that, chief investment officer for Chicago-based Rreef Capital.STG owns and operates about three million sf of retail, industrial and office property in northern and southern California, Las Vegas, Nevada and Anchorage. Grant tells GlobeSt.com he decided to join STG Group while he was putting together a condo conversion deal. “After managing one conversion, I has bought an empty building and was dialing for dollars to do another two,” says Grant. “I called up (chief executive) John Zeigler and he convinced me to come run his company instead.”Grant says his initial role at STG will be to start repositioning recent acquisitions made by Zeigler. “He did an outstanding job of buying these properties and now its time to play a little catch up–stabilize them and raise some third-party co-investment dollars,” says Grant. “We’re taking this opportunity to make sound improvements in our current holdings, in lieu of investing in additional properties which we believe are overvalued due to the current low interest rates.” Among those properties Grant is working on is the 1.2-million-sf former Pirelli tire manufacturing facility in Hanford, CA that included excess developable land. The 185-acre asset had been taken off the market after being listed at $14 million. “He hit Pirelli when they wanted to book quarterly earnings and picked it up for $4 million,” says Grant. “That is the best deal I’ve ever seen.”Eventually, Grant says interest rates will rise and so will the opportunities to pick up distressed assets. “Current low rates have allowed owners of problem properties to survive,” he says. “A rise in interest rates, however, will force many of these problem properties onto the market. STG specializes in turning these properties around … .”