ST. LOUIS—The popularity of crowdfunding has soared in the commercial real estate world, and some heavy hitters from the service side of the industry have decided to get involved. Earlier this week, a team that helped build St. Louis-based broker Cassidy Turley into a national firm launched Selequity, an online platform for accredited investors that want to invest in commercial real estate projects.

The launch was announced at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2015 conference in New York City by AJ Chivetta, chief executive officer of Selequity and a partner with Armstrong Teasdale LLP, a member of the Cassidy Turley legal team. Other Selequity founders include: Mark Burkhart, former chief executive officer of Cassidy Turley; Bill Florent, former chief financial officer of Cassidy Turley; as well as Maria Desloge of Armstrong Teasdale.

“This is a platform for people who want to raise capital for projects that they want to continue to run and control,” Chivetta tells GlobeSt.com, rather than funding acquisitions or new development. “It's not that we won't do that at some point,” but as the team gets the platform up and running, it will concentrate on serving property owners looking to get some liquidity in a fast and efficient way.