REOC

Richard J. Voelker, CRE

Richard Voelker has been engaged in the commercial real estate business, nationally and internationally, for 35 years.

Curriculum Vitae:

Voelker graduated from Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, in 1960 with a degree in accounting. He was employed until 1965 as an auditor and tax accountant for Ernst & Young in New Orleans and Dallas. He then served as the controller for a regional securities firm. He began his real estate career in Dallas in 1968 doing site acquisitions and project financing for a local retail developer.

Throughout his long career, he has been primarily engaged in counseling assignments for corporate, institutional and private clients.

Career Highlights:

In 1974, Voelker was retained by Edward S. Marcus, Chairman, Neiman Marcus, to assist him in completing the private assembly of 3500 acres in Flower Mound, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, under the HUD sponsored and financed “New Town” program.

In 1978, he was retained by Frito-Lay’s president, D. Wayne Calloway, to initiate a feasibility study for the development of a new 400,000 SF corporate headquarters campus in Dallas. The engagement included the evaluation of architectural and engineering firms, developer proposal reviews and evaluations, internal programming, location research and acquisition, the organization of internal and external project teams and employee relocation planning.

In 1981, an important private client was a principal guarantor in five real estate development partnerships. The organizer and general partner of those partnerships had died accidentally, threatening the continuation and successful completion of all five projects. The client’s personal exposure approximated $20,000,000. He asked Voelker to take over the management of the five partnerships, complete the development work and sell them in an orderly manner.

In 1983, one of the financial institutions which had been a lender to three of those five development partnerships retained Voelker to work them out of four large defaulted loans in Texas and Colorado that threatened the institution’s continued existence. All four loans were on developments with cost overruns in markets experiencing declining demand.

In 1988, Voelker was retained by Enserch Corporation, a NYSE listed oil and gas exploration and distribution company, to advise senior management in the valuation, acquisition and disposition of corporate properties in Dallas and Houston. The engagement included leasing and managing the 20-story, 365,000 SF, class A office building, Enserch Tower, in Houston.

Also in 1988, he was retained by CRSS, Inc, a global engineering and architectural firm based in Houston, to manage all office leasing transactions in the U.S. and in the U.K within their 700,000 SF portfolio. The engagement included the planning, sale-leaseback financing and project management of a 228,000 SF office building development in Greenville, South Carolina.

In 1991, he was retained by Exxon Corp.’s U.S. pension fund. The engagement included the valuation of office and industrial property investments throughout the U.S., the preparation of sell-hold analyses on each investment and, ultimately, the disposition of most of the $235,000,000 portfolio.

In 1993, Voelker was retained by the new Chairman of Westinghouse Electric Company to advise him on the scope and cost of the company’s office and industrial real estate portfolio. He ultimately determined that the company owned or leased 43,000,000 SF in 33 countries and that they were not occupying approximately 10,000,000 SF of that portfolio. Voelker was further charged with re-engineering the global real estate and facilities management functions at Westinghouse, managing an average daily volume of 110 transactions in various stages of completion around the globe and disposing of the 10,000,000 SF of surplus office and industrial space.

Office Building Assignments:
Beginning with the 365,000 SF Enserch Tower in Houston, Voelker has been responsible for the leasing and management of nine major office buildings in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. He also managed the 500,000 SF Westinghouse corporate headquarters building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Project management assignments included the 400,000 SF Frito Lay corporate headquarters building in Dallas and the 228,000 SF CRSS regional headquarters building in Greenville, South Carolina.

Multi-Housing Interests:
In 1997, Voelker began acquiring, developing and managing apartment properties in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. In partnership with other investors, he developed a 356-unit garden apartment community in Austin and a 320-unit garden apartment community in Houston. In partnership with Legacy Partners Residential and Citigroup Private Bank, he acquired and currently manages a 496-unit apartment community in Dallas.

Professional Associations:

The Counselors of Real Estate (CRE) www.cre.org

Voelker was invited to membership in 1990. He currently serves on the Executive Committee, as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and as Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee.