Colorado Real Estate Journal -

Trammell Crow homecoming for Sperling

Ann Sperling, the first female partner at Trammell Crow, who after Labor Day rejoined the Denver office of Crow after almost a seven-year absence, didn’t originally plan a career in real estate.

In fact, if all had worked out as she initially planned, today she would be Dr. Sperling.

“I was four years of premed,” said Sperling, who not only returns to Trammell Crow, where she had a 25-year career, but rejoins her longtime friend, Bill Mosher, whom she had previously hired at Trammell Crow, where they worked together for a year.

Sperling changed her mind about medicine in the late 1970s in her senior year at Tufts University, where she received degrees in biology and psychology.

“Some of the physicians with whom I was working with were sort of seeing this dramatic paradigm shift in medicine,” she said.

“They saw it going in a direction that would give them less autonomy and less authority,” she recalled.

“They thought it was going to be less impactful going forward and recommended I reconsider going to medical school.” Instead of applying to medical school, she took a year and a half off and moved to Europe.

There, she studied at the Cordon Bleu in France.

“I still cook and love to cook,” she said. “My family teases me because I seldom cook French food. I typically cook more healthy fare.” Instead of becoming the next Julia Child, (“Julia Child was a great cook, while I was more aspirational,” Sperling said), she joined a public hospital in Boston and at age 24 ended up running a division when her boss left.

“Frankly, I was in over my head,” she said. “Unlike today, the people who were leading hospitals back then were not business people. I realized that in order to be successful in running an organization, I really needed to learn how to run things and I enrolled in Harvard,” where she earned a Master of Business Administration.

At Harvard, she had two turning points in her life: She fell in love with a Colorado native and she decided to focus on a career in real estate.

“Even though I had East Coast roots (she grew up in Chappaqua, N.Y.), I married a guy from Colorado and, like everyone else from Colorado, they are always drawn back to Colorado.” That was fine with Sperling.

“At the time I was graduating from business school, everything interesting in the world was happening in the West. The West was just exploding with growth.” And no industry was more exciting than real estate in the early 1980s.

She moved to Denver in 1982 and made the rounds of the various real estate companies.

“Trammell Crow was the New York Yankees of commercial real estate when it was a good thing to be compared to the Yankees,” she said.

She would end up staying at Trammell Crow for the next quarter of a century, an incredibly long tenure in an industry where jumping ship for a better opportunity is common.

“It was pretty unusual,” Sperling said. “But I had five different jobs at Trammell Crow, so it was always interesting. Honestly, although the market dealt us and everyone else a lot of ups and downs and challenges, I always felt I was with the A team. The people at Trammell Crow had the intellect and the drive and provided this great customer service and a spirit of cooperation that mattered so much to me. So it was easy to stay.” In 1986, with only four years on the job, she was named the first female partner at Trammell Crow, which then had been in business for 38 years.

“That was a huge honor for me,” she told the Colorado Real Estate Journal in 2000, adding that it “seemed almost extraordinary there hadn’t been one before.” Fast-forward 20 years, and two other seminal events occurred.

First, she hired Mosher, the former president of the Downtown Denver Partnership, who had left that organization to launch a career as a developer.

“I had known Ann through real estate circles at the partnership, so we’ve known each other since the mid-90s,” Mosher said.

“And we are kind of neighbors, so I know her husband and her kids,” he added.

They worked together at Trammell Crow, in different divisions, for about a year.

In 1996, the second crucial event in Sperling’s life occurred: CB Richard Ellis (now CBRE) purchased Trammell Crow in a deal valued at $2.2 billion.

“The merger was completed in December 2006 and I stayed through early 2007, basically to help transition the people.” She left Trammell Crow on extremely good terms, but wasn’t sure what her next step should be, and even if it should involve real estate.

“I asked a lot of smart people for their counsel and, after 25 years at the same company, I had to decide what I wanted to do next,” she said.

“Taking sort of this broader view, and sort of thinking outside of the box, I decided it would be a good time to take sort of a halftime break, especially since it coincided with my oldest child going to college,” Sperling said.

She helped her daughter transition to college, took a trip to Europe and oversaw a renovation of her house.

“Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that the real estate community was where I wanted to be and something I missed,” she said.

“I really wanted to be part of the placemaking and influencing the direction of cities,” she said.

“And I was drawn to leadership opportunities in real estate.” Her first stop, post-Trammell Crow, was with Catellus Development Group, at the time a wholly owned subsidiary of Denverbased ProLogis.

“Catellus was a national land development company that tackled really big, high-profile developments like Mission Bay in San Francisco and Mueller in Austin, Texas.” Soon after, the Great Recession happened.

“The world changed,” Sperling said. “Prologis’ stock went from $66 to about $2.50 and it ultimately sold Catellus.” She then joined Jones Lang LaSalle as its chief operating officer of the Americas. She was responsible for JLL’s growth in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Latin America.

She kept an apartment in Chicago, near JLL’s headquarters, but spent much of her time in the air, much like George Clooney in the 2009 film, “Up in the Air.” “I was in United’s Global Services’” frequent flyer program, which is an invitation-only program for United Airlines’ most valued customers.

In mid-2012, JLL was reorganized, and she was put in charge of the Market West division, which included everything from Chicago to the West, including Colorado.

Later, JLL was reorganized again and a new CEO was named. She left JLL in March, after almost four years there.

Mosher, meanwhile, had been having lunch with Sperling at least once every quarter.

“I told her if she ever wanted to get back into development, she should join us, or rejoin Trammell Crow, as it is,” Mosher said.

He approached her last spring when she left JLL.

“I knew she wanted to travel less, but she said she wanted to take the summer off and think about what she wanted to do next,” Mosher said.

Other firms also approached her, but she ultimately chose Trammell Crow.

Mosher couldn’t be happier.

“First of all, her roots are in Trammell Crow,” Mosher said.

“She has this underlying loyalty.

I think she is a very strategic thinker. And she has these great contacts in brokerage, finance and development. Of course, she also is very intelligent.

“How I view it, is I picked up the best free agent on the market.

She has really hit the ground running.” For her part, Sperling said it is not like she never left Trammell Crow.

“It is a homecoming of sorts for me, but a lot has happened in the market and to me in the past seven or eight years,” she said.

“I’ve learned a lot since I first left Trammell Crow and I think I can incorporate that knowledge and all of the experiences I have had into my new job” as a senior director at the company.

She will focus on finding new development opportunities for Trammell Crow, as well as working with existing capital partners.

Sperling said Trammell Crow has served as a launching pad for a lot of prominent people in Denver commercial real estate.

“When you think about it, a lot of people who worked at Trammell Crow are still around,” she said.

“Bill Rothacker is the CEO of Cadence Capital Investments; Joe Vostrejs and Pat McHenry are at Larimer Associates, and Mark Sidell is president of Gart Properties. That is a pretty great alumni network. I’m proud to be one of them and excited to be back at Trammell Crow.” Even though she went into real estate, instead of becoming a physician, to this day she is still intensely interested in the field and closely follows all of the changes in the health-care industry.

She has been on the board of Children’s Hospital and recently joined the Community Advisory Board of the Charles C. Gates Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Biology.

Sperling also is thrilled to be focused on Denver and to be closer to the action.

“I am back in the city I love,” Sperling said. “And I’m back on the street, so to speak.”