Starwood Capital’s new division: Starwood Land Ventures, LLC

Andrew Calvo | September 12, 2007 | 0 Comments

Yesterday I came across a news bit on the PR Newswire: Starwood Capital Group and John Peshkin Form New Joint Venture to Focus on Land Acquisitions

Starwood Capital Group Global, LLC, a leading international development and real estate investment firm, announced today the formation of Starwood Land Ventures, L.L.C., a new joint venture with John Peshkin that will be focused on residential land acquisition, development and financing nationwide

Besides the fact that I am always in awe of the growth of Starwood Capital Group, this will definitely be a company to look out for. It’s interesting though, that in March, 2006, Starwood Capital started another land division – called Starwood Land Company, LLC, (press release) with almost the same operating goal – residential and resort development in the Eastern United States.. Oddly enough, ever since that press release – I have not heard or seen anything from that venture, although, the new venture announced today already has a website – www.starwoodland.com – I question if the original Starwood Land Company venture went south.

Starwood Land Ventures, LLC is headed by Jim Motta – the former President/CEO of St Joe/Arvida company. If you are not familiar with either of those firms, St Joe is the new name for St. Joe’s Paper Company, formerly one of the largest paper manufacturers in America.

Quick history on St Joe Paper Company, it was started in the early 1900′s by one of the duPont family members who became the largest private land owner in Florida by buying land that no one wanted for cheap. For decades afterward, the trees on the land were used for paper production. In the early 1980′s, Ed Ball, the leader of St Joe’s Paper Company died, and the new leadership decided to change the direction of the company into a Real Estate development company. In 1987, St Joe bought a company called Arvida Development, which was originally owned by the Walt Disney Company. A funny twist on all this is while Barry Sternlicht was in Harvard, he did a project on the Arvida Company, after graduation he joined JBM Realty Group, which purchased Arvida from the Disney Company, St Joe ended up purchasing Arvida from JMB. If you’ve been reading these press releases.. You’ll notice that most of the people that Starwood hires for their land division have some type of background with either Arvida or St Joe.

Sidenote- I’m curently in the middle of a book called “The Green Empire” by Kathryn Zietitz & June Wiaz, which is a biography of the St. Joe (Paper) Company.

As I try to learn and understand more and more about Starwood Capital – which is difficult to do since it is a private company – I get more and more confused by what division does what, who is responsible for what, and I see a lot of overlap.

For example:

Starwood Land Company is responsible for “residential and resort investments in Eastern United States and the Caribbean“
Starwood Land Ventures, LLC, is responsible for “residential land acquisition, development and financing nationwide“
Starwood Development continues “to oversee Starwood’s vertical development activities including hotels, resorts and mixed-use developments.“
Starwood Land Ventures, LLC is located in Bradenton, FL.
Starwood Land Company, LLC is located in Ft Lauderdale, FL.

Starwood Development is located in Scottsdale, AZ, and just to confuse things a little more, Starwood Asset Management is located in Atlanta,GA, which is the office that their Executive VP of Hotel Development works out of..

Does anyone understand this??

I hope Starwood Capital’s Headquarters (in Greenwich, CT) is able to keep tabs on all of this! Although, I’m sure if I knew the whole story it would all make sense. In the meantime, I’ll try my best to make sense of it anyway.

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