Page 38 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— April 6-April 19, 2016
Robert E. Stanley, PE,
was
named vice president of
Walker
Parking Consultants’
Denver
office.
In addition to managing the
office’s opera-
tions, Stanley
oversees all
Walker proj-
ects in the
Denver, Phoe-
nix, Tucson,
Arizona, Las
Vegas and
Salt Lake City
areas.
He is a
parking pro-
fessional with nearly 20 years of
experience. Stanley joined the
Chicago office of Walker Park-
ing Consultants in 1996 and
became director of operations of
Walker’s Denver office in 2007
and managing principal in 2013.
He also is a licensed Profession-
al Engineer in nine states and a
LEED AP.
Stanley holds a master’s
in civil engineering from the
University of Illinois-Urbana
Champaign.
s
Annah Moore, CCIM,
joined
CBRE Group Inc.’s
Fort Collins
office as a vice president with
brokerage services.
In this role, Moore will lever-
age her 15
years of expe-
rience work-
ing in North-
ern Colorado
commercial
real estate
to help buy-
ers, sellers,
landlords and
tenants with
their invest-
ment, land,
industrial, office and retail real
estate needs.
On the buyer/tenant rep side,
Moore specializes in helping
clients with site selection, lease/
purchase analysis, negotiation
and closing. For sellers and
landlords, she provides com-
petitive analysis, guidance in
valuation, marketing, negotia-
tion and closing assistance.
Before joining CBRE, Moore
was a broker associate with
Realtec Commercial in Fort
Collins, where she was directly
involved in more than 300
transactions and $100 million of
volume, including office build-
to-suits, investment property
sales, site selection and land-
lord/seller representation.
Moore received a Bachelor of
Science in business with a mar-
keting emphasis from Montana
State University.
s
RNL,
an international architec-
ture, planning and design firm,
named two new principals and
three new associate principals
to its leadership team.
David
Carnicelli, RA, Nancy Locke
and
Dominic Weilminster, AIA,
LEED AP BD+C,
were named
associate principals in the Den-
ver office.
Carnicelli has been practic-
ing architecture for over 23
years. He
has extensive
experience
in a number
of building
types, most
notably mul-
tifamily and
residential
facilities,
including
affordable
housing.
As RNL’s Commercial Sec-
tor Studio lead, he provides
management, mentorship and
leadership for architectural proj-
ects that are initiated by private-
sector clients.
Locke is an urban designer
and landscape architect with
more than 20 years of experi-
ence creating
culturally,
economically
and ecologi-
cally resilient
places. Her
focus is on
shaping a
viable and
dynamic pub-
lic realm for a
broad range
of project
types, including urban mixed-
use developments, hospitality
and master-planned communi-
ties. She is the firm’s studio lead
for the Urban Design and Land-
scape Architecture group.
Weilminster is an architect
who divides his talents between
the firm’s
higher educa-
tion, civic,
cultural, com-
mercial and
master-plan-
ning projects.
His approach
to solving cli-
ent problems
is evident
locally in the
design of the
University
of Colorado Denver School of
Architecture and the Eastside
Human Services Building in
Denver. He also holds a seat on
RNL’s board of directors.
s
Structural, civil and environ-
mental consulting engineering
firm
JVA Inc.
promoted leaders
in its management team.
Craig Kobe
was promoted
to principal.
He has been
with the JVA
structural
team since
2002 and
manages the
Winter Park
office. Kobe
has designed
numerous
mountain
resort and
residential
projects.
Kevin Vec-
chiarelli
was
promoted to
senior associ-
ate. He has
been with
the JVA civil
team since
2005, work-
ing out of the
Winter Park office. He actively
Who’s News
Robert E. Stanley
Annah Moore
David Carnicelli
Craig Kobe
Kevin Vecchiarelli
Nancy Locke
Dominic
Weilminster
by John Rebchook
During the past 25 years.
Arnie Meranski’s Western
Centers has bought, sold and
managed dozens of proper-
ties, most of them grocery-
anchored shopping centers in
the Denver area.
“I think what I am most
proud of is that none of our
investments have ever lost
money,” said Meranski, presi-
dent and founder of Western
Centers.
“I think that is an unparal-
leled record,” Meranski said.
In fact, his first deal, a
90,000-square-foot center in
Lakewood, was not only a
home run, but also a grand
slam.
More than a grand slam, in
fact.
“We bought it for $800,000
and sold it for $5 million,” he
recalled, after owning it for
only 2 ½ years.
Timing was the reason West-
ern Centers was able to make
such an incredible return on
its first deal.
It bought it during the sav-
ings-and-loan crisis, when real
estate prices were depressed,
and sold it into a recovering
market, he noted.
Although Western Centers
currently owns 20 buildings
with 894,193 sf and manages
another 250,000 sf or so in
shopping centers, Meranski
himself has never been very
high profile.
“I’m not really comfortable
talking about myself,” admit-
ted the 61-year-old.
Yet, his Western Centers is a
force in the world of smaller,
typically older, suburban
shopping centers.
“We have very good rela-
tionships with the brokerage
community and if a center
becomes available in the $3
million to $10 million range,
we are one of three groups
that it would be logical to
call,” Meranski said.
Meranski understands what
it is like to be a broker, as
during a pivotal point of his
30-year career in real estate, he
was a successful retail broker
at Fuller and Co. And his son,
Joel, is following in his father’s
footsteps, while following his
own path, as a broker with
Colliers International.
The elder Meranski also was
known to wash dishes and
make a mean Caesar salad,
skills he learned as a part-
owner of an Italian restaurant
on East 17th Avenue in Den-
ver’s Uptown neighborhood.
Today, Western Centers’ big-
gest and flagship holding is
the 168,508-sf Mission Trace
North.
“It just had a milestone of
being 100 percent leased for
the first time, which is pretty
cool,” Meranski said.
He estimated that center is
worth $35 million in today’s
market.
Western Centers also
opened the Hemp Centre in
a center in Aurora, which is
focused on serving clients in
the cannabis industry.
“I received lots and lots of
offers of becoming involved
in the cannabis industry on
the production side, which I
had absolutely no interest in,”
Meranski said.
However, he thought the
Hemp Centre would be a
responsible way to have a con-
centration of cannabis stores
in one place.
“We poured a lot of money
into the center,” he said.
“We also have a church as a
tenant, which plays its role,”
he said. “And we would like
to get some medical and coun-
seling tenants in there,” who
could deal with consumers
who are abusing marijuana.
Meranski wasn’t planning
on a real estate career and cer-
tainly not in the Denver area.
He grew up in Miami.
While he was a student at
Florida State University, his
stepdad, who had been a gen-
eral contractor, developed a
system for closets.
“He was kind of pioneering
in that industry,” he said.
“I tried working for him for
a few years,” he said.
But he was never passionate
about the business.
“It was a family business,
but I never had much interest
in it. Honestly, I didn’t know
what I wanted to do.”
He didn’t know it at the
time, but his life was going to
change while playing racquet-
ball with a Denver real estate
investor, Marty Herzog.
“Marty had a place in
Miami where he liked to
spend part of the winter,”
Meranski said.
“Marty told me if I was ever
interested in learning the real
estate business, I should join
him in Denver.”
When Meranski was 30, he
got married and took Herzog
up on his offer.
“I just immediately fell in
love with the mountains and
the whole lifestyle,” Meranski
said.
He arrived in Denver in
1984, just before the S&L crisis
kicked off and the Resolution
Trust Corp. took over failed
projects on behalf of the gov-
ernment.
That was a time when most
owners couldn’t sell proper-
ties, because they had lost so
much value that they were
underwater on their loans.
The RTC was taking back
overleveraged shopping cen-
ters, leasing the retail space for
a huge discount, driving near-
by properties into foreclosure,
creating a vicious cycle.
“I’d make cold calls and
everyone was leaving town,
and they were telling me I
was crazy for wanting to buy
in Denver,” he said.
After 18 months with Her-
zog, “It just wasn’t working
out,” so he decided to go in a
different direction.
“My stepdad lent me $7,500
and I bought half of a little
Italian restaurant, Dario’s, on
17th Avenue,” he said.
“The owner taught me how
to wash dishes and pour wine.
Most of the time, she made
me pay for my lunch.”
His wife was pregnant and
he decided he needed to make
more money, so he re-entered
the real estate world, but this
time as a commercial real
estate broker.
“I interviewed at all of the
brokerage houses and Fuller
and Co. was the only one to
make me an offer,” Meranski
said.
To this day, he still considers
John Fuller, the founder of his
namesake firm, as one of his
mentors.
“Fuller already had super-
star brokers in land, office
and industrial, but they didn't
have much of a presence in
retail, so I kind of filled that
niche,” Meranski said.
Soon, he was closing a deal
a month, which was consid-
ered astonishing at the time,
he said. After a couple of years
at Fuller, he sold back his
interest in Dario’s to the origi-
nal owner.
“By that time, my only
involvement was to stop by
on a few evenings each week.
I made a pretty good Caesar
salad,” he said.
At Fuller, he made a cold
call to Dan Weingarten, a real
Profile
Arnie Meranski
Please see
Whoʼs News,
Page 39
