Alexandra Stoelzle is director of development for Blaser Ventures (formerly known as BCG Holdings) in Salt Lake City. Stoelzle brings more than 10 years of experience managing large-scale, complex, mixed-use commercial development projects in prime U.S. markets and is responsible for overseeing Blaser Ventures’ mixed-use development portfolio. Currently, Blaser has five mixed-use developments nearing completion or underway, as well as several industrial projects, totaling approximately 4 million square feet of commercial space (office, retail, hospitality, and industrial) and 1,200 multifamily units (including 400 deed-restricted affordable units).

Most of their projects are in opportunity zones, so Blaser is in a unique position in the current market to build while many are waiting for interest rates to fall. As is always the case with development, day to day is rarely the same, so Stoelzle experiences all aspects of designing and building a project. Even where Stoelzle is working varies day to day, from in the office, to a construction site, to having a meeting on a chairlift with a snowboard strapped to her feet. Because Blaser is an early-stage company, each team member has to wear many hats. In addition to overseeing Blaser’s development portfolio, Stoelzle has worked on standardizing practices and hiring key roles, and led the firm’s rebranding, website creation, and social media presence, which all launched at the beginning of this year. In a little over two years, Blaser have gone from four to 10 team members and Stoelzle is currently working on growing the development team to support their robust pipeline.

Stoelzle earned a master of city planning and an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in real estate from the University of California, Berkeley, and a dual bachelor of business administration in international business and marketing from Grand Valley State University. She currently serves on the board of directors for Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Design Build International Assoc. Utah Chapter, and is co-chair of the NAIOP SFBA Golden Shovel Real Estate Challenge. She is one of four recipients nationally of the NAIOP 2021 Developing Leaders Award.

Stoelzle is Membership co-chair for ULI NEXT Americas Leadership Steering Committee, sits on the ULI Urban Revitalization Council and the ULI Utah Housing Summit Committee, and was the co-chair of ULI San Francisco Young Leader’s Group from 2017 to 2022.

Laura Woltanski is a director at Walker & Dunlop (W&D), one of the largest capital providers for multifamily development in the country. She focuses primarily on affordable housing, working directly with clients to understand their business plan and provide debt and equity options for deals ranging from new development, preservation, resyndication, acquisition and rehab, and workforce housing. Woltanski has collaborated with lending sources including Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Housing and Urban Development, and various other banks and life company capital sources. She is responsible for overseeing the loan process from quote to close. Since her start with W&D, she has helped arranged over $21 billion of financing.

Woltanski received a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and a master’s of urban and regional planning from the University of New Orleans. She is very involved with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at W&D, chairing the Women of Walker & Dunlop Employee Resource Group (ERG), serving on the leadership team for the Minds of All Kinds ERG, and heading the quarterly MERGE webcasts focused on putting faces and personal experiences to topics of diversity and intersectionality. Outside of work, she is attempting to develop a green thumb with a growing number of house plants and garden beds, enjoys taking her dog on strolls around the neighborhood, and finding creative outlets (currently making a crawfish boil wreath for her front door).

Woltanski currently serves as Marketing co-chair for the ULI NEXT Americas Leadership Steering Committee, Advisory Services co-chair for ULI Louisiana, and sits on the Urban Revitalization Product Council (Gold).

In the following Q&A, Stoelzle and Woltanski explore their passion for the commercial real estate (CRE) industry and their experiences with ULI.

Q1. ULI: So many of us in real estate fall into the industry and hence CRE professional organizations. How did you get involved with ULI?

Alexandra Stoelzle (AS): During my first year of graduate school at Berkeley, I participated in the ULI Hines Student Urban Design Competition. All participants were required to be members of ULI, so when the competition was over, I decided to put my membership to work and joined the ULI San Francisco Student Committee first as a member and then as a co-chair in 2013. I’ve held leadership positions locally and nationally ever since.

Laura Woltanski (LW): I had heard about ULI through my master’s degree program and we used them as an educational resource, but I didn’t realize they had local district councils with events and programming or the broader national and global networks. While halfway through my program, I started part-time at W&D and my manager at the time suggested I attend one of their local events. And that was how my ULI career began! Since then, I’ve been an active member of the ULI Louisiana district council, having held several different leadership positions, and became more involved with ULI on a national level about 10 years ago.

Q2. ULI: What is the most interesting project you’ve worked on over your career in real estate?

AS: I’ve had the opportunity to only work on interesting projects, so it’s hard to choose just one. While at Kilroy Realty in San Francisco, I led the development of a 100-year-old wholesale flower market paired with a mixed-use office and retail campus. Here in Salt Lake City, most of our projects have an adaptive reuse element, which makes them all unique in their own right. We’re working on everything from a medical office conversion to 88 units of LIHTC [low-income housing tax credit] affordable housing, to the adaptive reuse of two turn-of-the-century brick masonry buildings as part of a larger mixed-use project with attainable housing, public open space, and neighborhood-serving retail.

LW: With my previous team at W&D, I was the go-to person for heading up the funky deals. If it was a new market, product, or developer, I got to dig in and understand the ins and outs and advise both the client and lender on how we should move forward. I have worked on coliving, built-for-rent, and workforce development projects before they were more commonly accepted. I just closed on a project that will redevelop a YMCA along with building a mix of workforce and market-rate apartments. It was a forward permanent debt execution that involved tax abatements, ground leases, regulatory restrictions, subordinate debt, and green certifications. So lots of moving pieces for a first-time nonprofit developer, but it will be a great project with a much-needed purpose!

Q3. ULI: What are you most excited about in regard to the future of the industry?

AS: I am excited that the reality of a changed market is settling in more broadly across the industry, allowing the creative juices to start flowing rather than the shock and denial we have seen over the last four years. Instead of dwelling on what was and what could have been, we are finally focusing on today and what that means for the future. We are looking at how to improve multifamily and commercial design to accommodate evolving lifestyles, recycling obsolete structures, and implementing innovative financing strategies to promote affordability, sustainability, and community.

LW: I feel like as an industry, commercial real estate is just now focusing on leveling the playing field for women and minority developers, who bring creative ideas and solutions to many of the existing problems. It is also an interesting time as technology and AI [artificial intelligence] are starting to play a part in all aspects of a project and will only continue to grow in their CRE impacts and uses. Combine these two aspects with the reality of needing significant development of affordable housing and we could potentially see some cool things get done to help build more housing and make it affordable for all.

Q4. ULI: What are you currently reading/watching?

AS: I’m not really into TV series, but I watch a lot of movies and documentaries (once a student, always a student!). Killers of the Flower Moon was one of the most thought-provoking films I watched in recent months and I’m excited for the return of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. As far as reading, I spend so much time reading architectural plan sets, contracts, memos, and legal documents for work, that I prefer to spend most of my free time out enjoying nature (snowboarding, mountain biking, camping, etc.). When I do settle down with a book, it’s usually in German and related to astrophysics or mindfulness.

LW: I listen to a lot of audiobooks as I need noise and I can then listen while multitasking. I just finished listening to The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston, which was about locating an ancient city in the jungle of Honduras. It’s part adventure and part archeological ethics, making interesting points about the purpose of archeology, the impact of colonialism—both historical and current—and how societies function and determine how to build developments. I’m just starting The Mystery Guest, the second in a series featuring a neurodiverse maid [who] stumbles across all sorts of trouble in the hotel where she works. I usually have two or three books going and rotate between personal development, documentaries, and true crime and cozy mysteries, thrillers, and light-hearted books that don’t require much thinking

Check out past “Getting to Know Who’s NEXT” articles here.