Page 38 - BusinessWest June 17, 2024

Restoration and redevelopment of the Reliance Building in Chicago, now home to the Hotel Burnham, is another project in the McCaffery portfolio similar to the one in Springfield.
West talked at length with Woodbury about McCaffery Interests, the Clocktower building project, and how this Springfield initiative fits the company’s mission — “to transform underutilized urban assets into dynamic destinations that serve modern lives as they intersect at work, home, and play.”
Landmark Decisions
Woodbury said McCaffery handles a broad range of work, from development to property management. And in that first category, it focuses on both redevelopment of existing (again, usually underuti-
lized) properties to new construction.
But the common denominator, if you will, is that essentially all
this work is carried out in cities.
“The focus has always been in urban areas,” he told Business-
West. “We like the life, the vitality, and even the grit of cities.”
Most projects are in larger cities, including Pittsburgh, Chicago,
D.C. and the surrounding area, and, most recently, Denver, where the company has several projects in various stages, including T3 RiNo, a mixed-use, 250,000-square-foot office project in that city’s burgeoning River North (RiNo) District.
Formed in 1991 by Dan McCaffery (Woodbury said he joined him “almost immediately”), the company’s first signature project was the revitalization of a former Saks Fifth Avenue store on Michi- gan Avenue in Chicago.
“We renovated it, leased it out, and put in Nike, Sony, and Cole Hahn; it was the height of what we call Main Street retail,” he recalled, adding that the project set the tone for other initiatives to come.
These include restoration of another historic property, 400 Post St. in San Francisco’s Union Square, that was destined to be torn down. “It was a great piece of real estate that had been overlooked for years,” Woodbury recalled. “We said, ‘heck, this is a cool, old building; let’s restore it.’ We put in a Disney store and a Borders Books.”
As he cited those names, he noted that retail has certainly changed over the past few decades and especially the past several years; thus, the company now focuses mostly on mixed-use proj- ects, be they new construction or renovation of existing structures, with retail on the ground floor and residential in the floors above — which is what is proposed for the Springfield project, as we’ll see.
And while McCaffery does most of its work in larger metropoli- tan areas, the company considers projects in communities across the country.
“We’re opportunity-focused — we search for unique opportunities and chase them,” Woodbury said. “The other thing is, we love real estate — old buildings, new buildings, it doesn’t matter; we love real estate.
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“The focus has always been in urban areas. We like the life, the vitality, and even the grit of cities.”
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38 JUNE 24, 2024 << COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE >> BusinessWest