As the Oxford Hotel Ballroom started to fill up at JEWISHcolorado’s most recent Real Estate & Construction (RECN) event, the registration table did a healthy business checking in a diverse group of people. Some were there to meet and greet others in the industry. Others were drawn by the opportunity to hear the featured speaker, Walter Isenberg, Co-founder and CEO of Sage Hospitality.
Some had not missed a single RECN event since JEWISHcolorado started the group in late 2022 as a way to bring real estate professionals together to network, connect, and learn from the brightest minds in the business, all while building a better Colorado. Some had arrived for their very first RECN event after learning more about the organization in a video at MEN’S EVENT.
Maya Levy, Karen Klerman, and Walter Isenberg
Karen Klerman and Maya Levy were among the first to sign in. For several decades, Klerman was a real estate lender at various Denver banks. Recently, she retired and joined the University of Colorado Boulder Klump Center for Real Estate. This is not her first RECN event.
“I love the schmoozing, the events are often in cool locations, and JEWISHcolorado brings good speakers,” she said. “And anybody who knows about hospitality knows about Walter Isenberg. He is a big draw tonight.”
With her, Klerman had brought Levy, a Klump Center student at the start of her career.
“I want to learn and network and hear about people’s experiences,” Levy said. “Also, I’m excited this is a Jewish event because I am Jewish and love meeting Jewish people.”
Next to check in was Alexander Shapiro, an acquisitions and dispositions manager for a California-based apartment company. He confessed that he didn’t know who Walter Isenberg was when he registered, but googling him “definitely helped get me here tonight.” Shapiro has additional motives for engaging with RECN.
“Ideally, I would like to meet some brokers who could bring me some deals we could buy,” he said. “I would also like to meet people in the title world or in lending—anything that would help grow my business.”
After Shapiro, Annie Barcomb—who goes by O’Keefe in her business—checked in with a nametag listing her company as “L39 surfaces.” Barcomb does countertops for high-end custom single-family homes and commercial spaces, including restaurants and breweries.
“I have no social media, no website, and I don’t do networking events—except this one,” she said. “All my business is by repeat referrals.”
Barcomb had just started a new brewery project that day—through someone she met at a JEWISHcolorado RECN event. She had also just finished a countertop at a new Frank and Roze Coffee Co—a connection she had made through RECN and its Board Chair, Stuart Zall.
“Stuart is just such a likable, personable, fun, good person,” she said. “He just wants to connect good people together and keep us in the community.”
Next to check in was Jordan Scharg with Trailbreak Partners Commercial Real Estate Investment and Development. Regarding RECN events, he “makes it a priority to attend.”
“It’s about relationships and being present and having conversations with folks,” he said. “People are open to helping each other find success.”
That was the goal for RECN when it was started, and it continues to be the goal under the leadership of Stuart Zall.
“We make a lot of calls to people before these events and say, ‘If you are serious about your career, you need to be here,’” Zall said. “You can see the snowball effect as more and more people show up.”
Walter Isenberg (and you’re never too old to network)
“We started with no money and lots of bad ideas.”
That’s how Walter Isenberg describes the origin of Sage Hospitality in 1984 with his partner Zack Neumeyer. “I always say that I have been married to Zack longer than I have been married to my wife,” Isenberg said with a laugh.
In a question-and-answer session led by RECN Board member Kendra Goldstein, Isenberg talked about how Sage has developed a portfolio of “places you want to go to and not through,” with the development of four companies—Sage Hotel Management, Sage Restaurant Concepts, Sage Investments, and Sage Studio. Over the past four decades, Sage has grown to be a company known throughout the industry as a leader in hotel and restaurant operations, real estate investment, development, placemaking, strategic design and brand building.
“Getting into hotels is not for the faint of heart,” Isenberg said. “But if you love what you do, and you love the people you do it with, it’s not working.”
Sage boasts a long history of successfully operating hotels across the country, but it also can showcase dozens of major adaptive reuse projects that have transformed neighborhoods, notably Denver’s historic Union Station.
Looking to the future, Isenberg told a rapt audience that he has started doing sports stadium adjacent projects. He also voiced optimism about the future of downtown Denver.
“I think downtown Denver is going to recover, but it has a long way to go,” he said. “The office vacancy rate is an anchor on hospitality, retail, and restaurants, so it is going to take time to get it fixed. In the ‘80s we had a similar situation, and it took more than a decade to get the momentum back.”
A first-generation American and the son of Holocaust survivors, Isenberg talked about how the influence of Judaism in his life was rooted in two things—family and education. He also emphasized the importance of tzedakah.
“We started with nothing,” he said. “But when we could do something in the community—starting with donations to schools through auctions—we did it. I’ve been very blessed, so it’s important to give back to people who have challenges.”
Isenberg delivered his comments to the group with humor and humility. He recalled starting college at Cornell and having someone ask his roommate when his “little brother” was going home again. In response to being mistaken for a younger sibling, he grew his trademark moustache, shaved only once to raise $100,000 for a good cause. A week later, his wife turned to him and said, “Grow it back.”
When Isenberg finished speaking, a line formed to talk with him. Front and center in that line was Stuart Zall, who, as President of the Zall Company, has 40 years of retail leasing experience.
“Walter was talking about arena adjacent projects, and that’s what I am interested in,” Zall said. “So I beelined my way up to him after he spoke, and I said, ‘We need to talk. Here’s my card.’”
And that just goes to show that you are never too young or too old or too successful to network at a JEWISHcolorado Real Estate & Construction event.
Thank you to our Annual Sponsors:
Michael Staenberg | Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP
Carmel Partners | Chotin Family Foundation | Zall Company