Mr. Mark R. Munsell

"shared Mark Munsell, President of Munsell Realty Advisors.

The Christmas trees will be lit every night beginning on Wednesday, November 29h through January 1, 2007.

Mark Munsell managing partner of the Sterling Building, the new headquarters of BlueBridge Networks, was pleased with the Company acquiring the Sterling Data Center facility, "Cleveland really needs more entrepreneurial endeavors like BlueBridge Networks.

One of Mr. Voinovich's repeat clients is Mark Munsell, president of the office and retail investment and management firm Munsell Realty Advisors of Beachwood.
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"He's my buddy," Mr. Munsell said."He's a no-nonsense businessman.

"Having BlueBridge as a tenant in the building and watching them grow with their expanding list of clients has reinforced The Sterling Building as being the prominent data center and information services building in downtown Cleveland", said Mark Munsell, owner of The Sterling Building.

"The expansion of BlueBridge has had a profound effect on the Sterling Building," noted Mark Munsell, President of Munsell Realty Advisors and owner of the Sterling Building, "In addition to their growth, other companies have considered the Sterling Building as an option for new office space.

Munsell keeps his firm small and his plans big Real estate investor finds triumph, failure as he aims high in deals

Mark Munsell has built Munsell Realty Advisors Inc. into a major player on the Cleveland real estate landscape.
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Mark R. Munsell, president of Munsell Realty Advisors Inc. of Beachwood, traces his interest in real estate to his Uncle Sid.

As a freshman in 1975 at Ohio State University, Mr. Munsell visited his mother's sister's family in San Diego.Mr. Munsell decided he liked the lifestyle of his Uncle Sid Greenawald, who owned apartment buildings, drove a big Cadillac and played a lot of golf, one of Mr. Munsell's manias.He returned home to Eastmoor Boulevard in Columbus, with plans to pursue a real estate career.

"I couldn't work as much as I wanted, take classes to be an ophthalmologist and have fun in college," Mr. Munsell said.He switched to business and graduated with a concentration in real estate.
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"If I have a deal," Mr. Pacella said, "I want Mark Munsell to say he's interested.
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For his part, Mr. Munsell doesn't diminish the bitterness of his rejoinder when learning he didn't win BP.

"I'm competitive," Mr. Munsell said."I like to win.I don't do something if I'm not in it 100%."

That also shows in his family life.He currently coaches travel and AAU basketball teams of two of his four sons and reels off their won-loss records.Mr. Munsell and his wife, Leslie, also have twin 5-year-old daughters; the sons range in age from 10 to 21.

One of Mr. Munsell's strengths is his depth of contacts in Northeast Ohio real estate.

After graduating from Ohio State, he passed on corporate real estate jobs with the likes of Galbreath Co. of Columbus because he wanted to learn all facets of the business.He joined former Cleveland investor Rocco Neri, now an auctioneer in Chicago, for two years because Mr. Neri paid less but offered that variety.

He then spent a year working for First Union Real Estate Inc. downtown.Finding he didn't like corporate life, he joined Equity Investors Co., a real estate investment company in Mayfield Heights where he worked 12 years.
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For the future, Mr. Munsell's plans are clear: keep buying property to satisfy the goals of his investors.He said he's looking at three deals totaling $100 million locally and, because big real estate deals are scarce in Northeast Ohio, out of town.He won't say what properties he's targeting.

"Usually I know a building pretty well before I buy it," Mr. Munsell said.
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But Mr. Munsell clearly takes those concerns to heart after buying the Sterling Building in 1999 for $12.5 million.By 2003, three tenants filed for bankruptcy protection and shut down.He found himself with oodles of specially outfitted data collection center space using fiber-optic lines on Euclid Avenue that was producing no revenue.

"Oh, God, I couldn't sleep," Mr. Munsell said."You don't lose 70,000 square feet from your building and survive."

For the next two years, Mr. Munsell said he spent more time downtown than in Beachwood.He took the novel approach of corralling investor support for prospective tenants, such as BlueBridge Networks LLC, which provides secure data backup for companies.By 2004 the building was stable once more.And Mr. Munsell was gunning again for big deals.

Or small ones.Though BP eluded him last year, a partnership led by Mr. Munsell bought a 20,000-square-foot office building at 31200 Pine Tree Road, Pepper Pike, for $2.5 million.
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A smile crosses Mr. Munsell's face as he thinks of the building.He explains the smile by saying he likes the building and believes in Dr. Feng's work.

Even so, Mr. Munsell said he's looking for properties out of town, though it's difficult because he likes to "read the paper, hear the radio" wherever he owns something.Even though he'll look elsewhere and continue looking here for deals, he describes his transplanted home, Cleveland, as his home today.

He doesn't worry about the city's future the way many do.

"If I didn't believe in it," Mr. Munsell said, "I wouldn't be here."

A planned restaurant on the first floor and an expected lease with a technology company are set to push occupancy in the building to more than 90%, said Mark Munsell, managing member of Sterling Telecom Office Building LLC and president of Munsell Realty Advisors in Beachwood.

The five-story building, constructed in 1910 at 1255 Euclid Ave., was the site of the old Sterling-Lindner-Davis Department Store.Mr. Munsell and his partners bought the building and two parking lots that serve it in 1999 for $12.6 million from Mutual of New York, an insurance and financial services company.That year, more than 90% of the building was leased, Mr. Munsell said.

Much of the building's utility came from fiber-optic cables running along East 13th Street and Euclid, which give the building high-speed access to the Internet, Mr. Munsell said.But the crash of the telecom industry changed that situation.

By early this year, bankrupt telecom tenants gave back 60,000 square feet in the building, Mr. Munsell said.Cable and Wireless' operations in the United States gave up space on the second floor.Another telecom company, Genuity, also went bankrupt and gave back its space on the fifth floor, Mr. Munsell said.

A planned restaurant on the first floor and an expected lease with a technology company are set to push occupancy in the building to more than 90%, said Mark Munsell, managing member of Sterling Telecom Office Building LLC and president of Munsell Realty Advisors in Beachwood.

The five-story building, constructed in 1910 at 1255 Euclid Ave., was the site of the old Sterling-Lindner-Davis Department Store.Mr. Munsell and his partners bought the building and two parking lots that serve it in 1999 for $12.6 million from Mutual of New York, an insurance and financial services company.That year, more than 90% of the building was leased, Mr. Munsell said.

Much of the building's utility came from fiber-optic cables running along East 13th Street and Euclid, which give the building high-speed access to the Internet, Mr. Munsell said.But the crash of the telecom industry changed that situation.

By early this year, bankrupt telecom tenants gave back 60,000 square feet in the building, Mr. Munsell said.Cable and Wireless' operations in the United States gave up space on the second floor.Another telecom company, Genuity, also went bankrupt and gave back its space on the fifth floor, Mr. Munsell said.

Mark Munsell
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Mark Munsell