TurnCap extends reach to real estate development

Add two more names to the roster of Northeast Ohio real estate developers. TurnCap, a Beachwood bridge lender, is moving into realty development, which coincides with the launch of Caledonia Development.

TurnCap showed its intentions with the addition of Nathan Wynveen as a principal effective Monday, Aug. 2. He will work on developments that TurnCap undertakes, he said, and will operate his own startup property brokerage, Caledonia Commercial, and projects for his own account through Caledonia Development.

Previously, Wynveen was a managing director at Hemingway Development, a Cleveland property powerhouse launched a decade ago by Jim Doyle Sr. and builder-developers Greg Geis, CEO of Streetsboro-based Geis Construction, and his brother Fred Geis, who has told associates for a year he has retired.

“I’ve had a great chance to work in development at Hemingway” and to learn from Doyle and the Geis brothers, Wynveen said in an interview last week. TurnCap provides a way to pursue added developments and learn from TurnCap’s principals while launching his own ventures.

Chantel Moody, a TurnCap partner, said the fund has spent the past few years gearing up a property development and investment arm that complements its “bread-and-butter business” of bridge lending.

Attorney Jon Pinney, a TurnCap managing partner, has worked with family offices on projects and other principals have pursued property deals in the past. Pinney was particularly active in retail properties, and he and other principals decided to “jump into it again” at TurnCap because they see opportunities as the nation recovers from the pandemic-bred recession.

Wynveen will focus on Northeast Ohio, while another principal, to be named later, will focus on out-of-town transactions. While Wynveen has a strong background in industrial real estate brokerage and development, Moody said, his scope will be broader, as TurnCap seeks opportunities such as redeveloping empty big-box stores, former bank branches and shuttered freestanding restaurants.

While TurnCap’s initial fund focused on lending, its bridge loans are in the $10 million to $50 million range. Alternative investments and developments it pursues may be as small as $1 million.

For his part, Wynveen said the arrangement is a chance to ally his own efforts with veterans in real estate law, private equity and lending. Among the projects he said he is pursuing are a mixed-use project and a warehouse of several hundred thousand square feet. He declined to provide specifics on them and their locations until they are further along.

Doyle, the Hemingway founder, said he is excited about the route that Wynveen is taking to launch his own realty developments. One of the goals of Hemingway was not only to develop properties, but to create a pipeline for the next generation of realty developers.

“(Wynveen) is just getting started, but it’s the same as when Michael Panzica left to launch Panzica Development. They were the anchors of Hemingway,” Doyle said. Panzica has launched apartment developments in Little Italy and Ohio City, as well as acquiring apartments, since exiting Hemingway in early 2020.

Doyle said he continues to work on property deals, primarily expansions, but is slowing down on pursuing additional projects, as is Fred Geis. Doyle pursued development as a second career after a long stint in real estate lending.

Doyle said moving into property developments is a natural move for TurnCap because several national mortgage brokerage concerns have ventured successfully in direct development.

TurnCap is a virtual who’s who of Cleveland real estate. In addition to Pinney, the managing partner at the Kohrman, Jackson & Krantz law firm in Cleveland, and Moody, other principals are Ned Huffman and Jim Doyle Jr. — respectively CEO and principal of the Cleveland-based Bellwether Enterprise commercial mortgage brokerage and mortgage banking concern — and Preston Hoge, who previously worked at Bellwether Enterprise and CBRE Group Inc.

Before joining Hemingway, Wynveen launched his commercial real estate career as an agent at the Newmark brokerage’s Cleveland office.

Rico Pietro, a principal at the Cushman and Wakefield Cresco brokerage, said Wynveen is “a talented guy. He’s well known. And he’s gotten himself into an organization which has access to liquidity, which means in these times he’s halfway there on a speculative development project.”