Two Faces of Development
Real estate partners Gene Wright and Alex Dmyterko pursue land centric and retail centric development in the Midwest and beyond.
Susan H. Fishman

Offering services from land development to consulting to brokerage, Dmyterko & Wright Partners is an experienced multi-tenant retail development team with more than 15 large-scale projects under their belts. Located in Oak Brook, Illinois, the firm specializes in two types of retail development: 1) land centric, in which it looks for areas in and around Chicago that are underserved for retail and attempts to get the land under control, and 2) retail centric, in which the company works with specific retailers to locate properties.

“We're directed by retailers to specific areas within a territory or a geographic region in which we would try to find properties that meet their criteria,” says founding partner Gene Wright.

Wright has more than 30 years of retail industry experience, was president and CEO of North-Star Advisory Group, a real estate consulting firm, and senior managing director for retail services at CB Richard Ellis. Alex Dmyterko, with more than 16 years of commercial real estate experience, has developed over 100 retail projects nationwide and in Puerto Rico, and acquired more than $500 million in investment properties. He is also the former president of Crosland's Retail Division, the largest development company in the Carolinas, and of Commercial Net Lease Realty Services in Orlando, Florida, a $1 billion REIT and the nation's largest retail build-to-suit development company.

“When the two of us sit down with a retailer, we can look at both sides of a problem,” says Wright. “We can really empathize with what the retailer is trying to accomplish and understand with a lot of clarity how to get it built, financed and sold.”

A significant part of Dmyterko & Wright's business is in large-scale multi- and mixed-use projects, and the company's land development emphasis is in Chicago and the Midwest. Notable projects that the company's principals have worked on for previous employers include Village Crossing in Skokie, Illinois; Coldwater Crossing in Ft. Wayne, Indiana; Sycamore Commons in Matthews, North Carolina; Birkdale Village in Huntersville, North Carolina; and Poyner Place in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Dmyterko & Wright is developing the second Sapporo Restaurant. The 11,000-square-foot restaurant is being built in Summerlin, Nevada.

Dmyterko & Wright Partners has established long term relationships with senior executives of a broad range of national retailers such as RadioShack, The Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards, Walgreens, CVS, Eckerd, Meijer's, Kohl's, Wal-Mart, Target, Linens n Things, Costco, Sam's Club, Michaels, Borders, Office Max, Pier 1, McDonald's, Harris Teeter, Dick's Sporting Goods and Galyans. The company is currently working with convenience store retailers, auto parts retailers, childcare centers and junior box retailers.

The partners also have a strategic alliance with several companies to provide equity and debt financing on joint ventured projects. They include Commercial Net Lease Realty, the largest freestanding retail REIT in the country, Heritage Property Investment Trust, owner of more than 153 shopping centers in 27 states, General Motors Acceptance Corporation and individual private investors.

Dmyterko & Wright's business grows through relationships on the retail side, says Wright.

“We help retailers with new concept development and that keeps us up to speed in terms of new ideas retailers are thinking about, geographically where they want to be and what the characteristics of the real estate might look like. It's extremely helpful for us in the development business in that it keeps us up to speed with the trends and the executive level with different retail organizations.”

Dmyterko & Wright plan to pursue the company's retail centric business in other areas of the country, and are currently looking for opportunities in Texas and in parts of California. The land centric business will continue to be driven by underserved opportunities in and around the Chicago area.

“Particular opportunities are in Southwest Will County and some of the outside counties in Chicago that are benefiting from the explosion in home growth due to the current interest rate environment,” Wright says.