Steven Haemmerle is the Executive Vice President of Hunden Partners. He joins the Hunden executive leadership team as a senior real estate professional with over 30 years of public, private, and not-for-profit real estate experience, including strategic planning, the development of high-profile mixed-use projects, large-scale project management, architecture, and real estate operations. Steve has a unique understanding of real estate strategy, is skilled at organizing and completing complex projects, leading experienced teams of professionals, and developing projects in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors.
Steve is the former Managing Principal of Strategic Redevelopment Advisors, a company that he formed in 2019 to provide advisory services to public sector, commercial, and not-for-profit clients enabling them to conceptualize and realize their real estate development objectives. Services include strategic planning, project implementation, program management, and design and project management.
Steve served as Executive Vice President of Navy Pier, Inc. from 2011 to 2019, and was responsible for all real estate development at Navy Pier. During Steve’s tenure there, he worked with the Urban Land Institute to gather recommendations for the redevelopment of Navy Pier; helped form the not-for-profit, Navy Pier, Inc.; directed the creation of the Centennial Vision, the framework plan for the redevelopment of Navy Pier; and hosted an international design competition that resulted in the hiring of James Corner Field Operations, who gave shape to Navy Pier’s Pierscape. Much of the transformation of Navy Pier has been completed, including its exterior public spaces and the retail portions of the interior. Steve negotiated agreements with the architects, consultants, and contractors for the project as well as leases with Chicago Children’s Museum and Chicago Shakespeare Theater that allowed them both to expand their presence at the Pier. Steve sourced and negotiated a complex air-rights lease with a private entity for the development and operation of a hotel and rooftop venue at the Pier’s historic East End. All told, nearly $375M has been invested in Navy Pier since 2010.
From 2003 to 2008, Steve served as Vice President of Strategic Planning at the St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE), a publicly traded real estate company and the largest private landowner in Florida. JOE was engaged in town and resort development, commercial and industrial development, and rural land sales. At JOE, Steve was responsible for directing high-profile corporate initiatives, including the development of a mixed-use gulf-front commercial project, the negotiation a resort management and branding agreement, and providing advisory services for relocating a commercial airport in northwest Florida. He was also responsible for implementing strategic initiatives that increased the underlying value of JOE’s landholdings. After working for the St. Joe Company, Steve provided real estate consulting services to a variety of private and public sector clients.
Between 1990 and 2003, Steve held senior development positions at the MPEA, which at the time was the owner and operator of Navy Pier and McCormick Place. He was a key member of the team responsible for the initial redevelopment of Navy Pier and oversaw its business operations after it opened to the public. At McCormick Place, Steve was responsible for all pre-construction activities for the $1.1B McCormick Place West Expansion, which included land acquisition, entitlements, planning, design, and construction, including the negotiation of an $850M design-build agreement. Early in his career, Steve worked as an architect and for a private developer.
Steve graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Architecture degree and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.