|
Return to Contacts
For the past 25 years, Evan has been involved in many aspects of commercial real estate. Currently, Evan is President of Preferred Development, focusing much of his efforts in investment acquisitions, retail, government development and build-to-suit opportunities throughout the country.
Evan's entrepreneurial spirit began during college, where at the University of Iowa in 1983 he owned and ran a sports management company that promoted Gatorade at endurance events throughout the Midwest.
In the mid 1980's Evan worked as an industrial agent with Fuller Commercial Real Estate (Later Royal Le Page). There he was involved in several significant development projects including the Hawthorn Works in Cicero. While there Evan was also involved in investment properties and sold his first Walgreens in Bloomington, Illinois in 1986.
Evan spent the next 5 years as Vice President of Investment Sales at Benjamin E. Sherman & Sons. There he sold many large properties including 8 South Michigan Avenue (a 15 story office building overlooking Millennium Park), a $20,000,000 office building in Fargo North Dakota, and three Jewel/Osco - anchored shopping centers in suburban Chicago.
In 1992 Evan founded Preferred Lifestyle, Inc. for the primary purpose of redeveloping Chanute Air Force Base into downstate Illinois' premier retirement community. The project comprised over 2,000,000 sf of both institutional and residential buildings and the 175-acre Willow Pond golf course. Also during this time Evan became more heavily involved with Walgreens; selling more than 80 stores over a five-year period.
Wanting to expand the sales business into a turn-key development company, in 1997 Evan partnered with Tom Morabito and started Preferred Development focusing on single tenant retail properties. This led to a strong relationshipas a preferred developer for Walgreens as well as work with clients such as Bank of America Levi's, Five Guys Burger & Fries, Sherwin Williams and Jiffy Lube.
In addition to ground-up development, Preferred owns numerous grocery-anchored shopping centers and high-profile urban mixed-use properties in some of Chicago's most prominent neighborhoods as well as throughout the Midwest.
Evan lives in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood with his wife Staci and their three daughters; Hailey, Madeline and Camryn.
|
