Page 42 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— June 15-July 5, 2016
Lars Andersen
and
Shane
White
joined
JVA Inc.
Andersen joined the civil
department of the structural,
civil and environmental con-
sulting engineering firm as a
design engineer and will be
working in
the Boulder
office. He
received his
Bachelor
of Science
degree in
civil engi-
neering at
the Univer-
sity of Colo-
rado. His
project experience includes
working as a field engineer
on the U.S. 36 Managed Lanes
Project and as a design engi-
neer for a civil design firm in
Monterey,
California.
White
joined the
environmen-
tal depart-
ment as a
design engi-
neer and will
be working
in the Boul-
der office. He
received his master’s degree
in environmental engineering
at Colorado State University.
He has worked on water and
air quality projects related to
oil and gas operations as well
as environmental management
projects for the U.S. Depart-
ment of Defense.
s
Charles K. Knight
was
named
Colorado Housing
and Finance Authority’s
new
general counsel.
Knight has been a licensed
attorney for 34 years.
As general counsel, Knight
is a key member of CHFA’s
executive management team,
overseeing
all aspects of
its legal and
enterprise
risk function,
and leading
the author-
ity’s in-house
legal staff,
internal
audit and
compliance.
Knight advises CHFA’s board
of directors and staff in all
legal matters relating to the
administration and operation
of CHFA and its programs.
Knight succeeds the recently
retired Charles Borgman, who
served as CHFA’s general
counsel since 2004.
In his prior role, Knight
founded Venture Law Advi-
sors LLC, a legal advisory
firm representing emerg-
ing Colorado and California
businesses. His experience
further includes serving as
a principal of Abaco Invest-
ment Group, as co-founder
and outside general counsel
of Main Street Power Com-
pany Inc., and president and
CEO of AmeriVest Properties
Inc. Knight served on CHFA’s
board of directors from 2011
to 2015.
Knight also serves as an
adjunct faculty member at the
Daniels College of Business
at the University of Denver,
where he teaches classes in
the Executive MBA program.
Knight holds a bachelor’s
degree in experimental psy-
chology from the University
of California at Santa Bar-
bara and Master of Business
Administration and Juris
Doctor degrees from the Uni-
versity of California at Los
Angeles.
s
Saunders Construction Inc.
added two individuals to its
executive team.
Dave Sandlin,
formerly a
Saunders project executive,
took over as vice president
of Fort Collins-based
Heath
Construction LLC,
where he
will lead the
company in
conjunction
with cur-
rent Presi-
dent Randy
DeMario.
In 2014,
Saunders
Construction
partnered
with Heath
Construction to create a new
construction solutions provid-
er in the Northern Colorado
market.
In the Den-
ver metro
area,
Justin
Cooper
joined Saun-
ders as vice
president
of project
development
and will be
involved in
several of
the company’s high-profile
projects in the metro area,
including the redevelopment
of Ninth and Colorado, 1709
Chestnut and The Colorado
Health Foundation. Cooper
has extensive experience in
project integration.
s
Monroe & Newell Engi-
neers Inc.
named
David Kast,
PE,
and
Ryan Barth, PE,
as
principals of the firm.
Kast, an 11-year veteran of
the firm, holds a Bachelor of
Science in
civil engi-
neering with
a specialty
in structural
engineer-
ing from the
University of
Pittsburgh.
Over the past
decade, Kast
has worked
on some of the firm’s most
significant projects, including
Rolling Hills Country Club in
Golden and Trailhead Lodge
at Wildhorse
Meadows in
Steamboat
Springs.
Barth, a
10-year vet-
eran of the
firm, holds
a Bachelor
of Science
degree in
architectural
engineering from the Univer-
Who’s News
Lars Andersen
Shane White
Charles K. Knight
Dave Sandlin
Justin Cooper
David Kast
Ryan Barth
by Jill Jamieson-Nichols
Dan Conway may have
had a hand in more develop-
ment projects than anyone in
Colorado, but you won’t find
his name on any buildings.
Conway, president and
director of economic and
market analysis at THK
Associates, has spent nearly
50 years evaluating real
estate developments. He’s
been involved in many of the
Denver metro area’s master-
planned communities, virtu-
ally every golf course devel-
opment and many Colorado
ski resorts. He’s worked
in all 50 states and numer-
ous foreign countries, from
Canada and Mexico to Saudi
Arabia, Spain, Italy and
Czechoslovakia.
Conway is what is known
as an urban land economist,
someone who builds an
economic model for how a
piece of real estate should be
developed. “If I can see his-
torically for the last 20 years
how a region has performed
economically, employment
wise, we can make projec-
tions as to how it’s likely to
perform in the future and
we can extrapolate what
that will mean to population
growth, we can extrapolate
what it means to the hous-
ing market. We can look at
job growth by industry and
know how it relates to the
office market, to the indus-
trial market, to retail/com-
mercial, the hotel market.”
Conway has decades of
data and is continuously
adding to it. His clients
include cities, a Who’s Who
of real estate developers,
anyone who owns real estate.
“I’ve got the greatest
people in the world as my
clients. That’s why I’ve done
it so long. They’re the cream
of the crop. They are people
who want to build beautiful
things,” said Conway.
Conway is a Wisconsin
native who was one of the
first students to study under
acclaimed University of
Wisconsin real estate profes-
sor Jim Graaskamp. He was
recruited out of the program
to join a Denver firm where
he worked closely with
renowned land planners
Robert O’Donnell and David
Jensen. He joined THK 10
years later, in 1978.
“The greatest part about
it it is we have anywhere
between 35 and 40 assign-
ments active at any one
time that we’re working on
and they change every 30
days,” he said. “Today we’re
crunching on getting a feasi-
bility study for a convention
center and hotel and casino
in Black Hawk, and tomor-
row we’re crunching on get-
ting a feasibility study done
for a big shopping complex
that will be developed in
the mountains. We’re doing
a lot of self-storage feasibil-
ity studies right now; we’ve
got two or three big master-
planned communities. We
just finished a golf course
study in Minot, North Dako-
ta. I’ve got two proposals to
write on people who want
us to look at golf courses and
to see if there are alternative
uses for a golf course that
isn’t performing very well as
a golf course,” he said.
In addition to feasibility
studies and market research,
THK provides an array
of landscape architecture
and planning services, and
currently is working on a
number of river restoration
projects. The company also
provides expert testimony
on real estate matters. Con-
way recently testified as to
the value of a planned com-
munity in Las Vegas, where
the developer borrowed
$450 million and distributed
money to investors right
away, leaving nothing to
fund the project.
“Its amazing the litigation
people get involved in in real
estate,” he said. “I’ve had
brother suing brother, I have
had father suing son – some
real ugly stuff.”
He’s also had some inter-
esting clients, one of whom
controlled 120,000 acres
in Nevada and wanted to
develop a community with
individual sections of land
devoted to various nation-
alities. “He wanted the Ger-
mans to have a section of real
estate. He wanted the Irish to
have a section of real estate,
he wanted the Indians, the
Pakistanis. We went through
and showed him why some
of that worked and why
some of that didn’t work.
That was kind of a crazy
assignment.”
Among more memorable
assignments was working
with Urban Land Institute
to provide expertise for a
potential international space
research park at Kennedy
Space Center, a highlight
of which was watching a
launch with astronauts’ fami-
lies.
The biggest change Con-
way has seen in the Denver
area thus far in his career is
“the amount of real estate
that is urbanized.”
“When I came here in ’68, I
think in the metro area there
were 650,000 people. It was
tiny,” he said. Conway said
Denver has benefitted from
“spectacular leadership”
that results in projects like
Denver International Airport,
Coors Field and light rail, for
instance.
The city now is at the top
of the list of the nation’s fast-
est-growing cities. “There’s
a reason why – because it’s
the best place to live. I recog-
nized that when I came out
here 50 years ago,” Conway
said.
For many years, Conway
taught real estate and urban
land economics classes at
the University of Colorado
Denver and University of
Denver, respectively. “I really
enjoyed the students,” he
said. “It’s fun to see what’s
on their minds and how they
view real estate and plan-
ning.”
Among his idols are his
wife, Kathy, who taught in
inner-city schools in Denver
for 40 years and continues to
substitute. The couple lives
in Cherry Hills and has three
grown children and eight
grandchildren.
Conway estimates he’s
participated in around 10,000
assignments over his career.
“I don’t want to retire. I
won’t retire as long as I
have such great clients. It’s a
blast.”
He makes it his business
to know everyone in the real
estate community and keep
his finger firmly on the pulse
of the market.
“I better know everything
that’s being done or I’d be
out of business pretty fast,”
he said.
s
Profile
Dan Conway
