Inside View: Nate Podratz, director of capital markets for Mortenson Development

Director of capital markets for Mortenson Development

Nate Podratz, 37, has joined Mortenson Development, an affiliate of Golden Valley-based M.A. Mortenson Co., to lead its capital markets business. Podratz has 15 years of experience in real estate finance and most recently was managing director at GE Capital Markets in Chicago.

Podratz, a Maple Grove native, will lead Mortenson's capital markets initiatives, which include sourcing equity, debt and joint venture investors for national developments, design-build ventures, acquisitions and dispositions.

"We're looking at growing this development company significantly over the next five years, and we're going to need capital partners that have the solvency and the purse to help us implement that," Podratz says.

Mortenson's current projects include the $325 million Mall of America expansion and the 4Marq luxury apartment tower in downtown Minneapolis.

Q: How did you get started?

A: Coming out of college, I really wanted to focus on the finance side of real estate because I thought it's really the backbone. I worked as an underwriter and an evaluations guy and went through a lot of acquisitions and mergers. I saw best practices across several organizations, and that led to exponential growth of my network.

A: My wife and I have always had the return to Minnesota on our radar … and the opportunity at Mortenson became known to me. To be totally transparent, I thought of Mortenson as more of a construction company and really didn't know what they were doing on the development side. It became very apparent to me that this is a very dynamic company with a national reach.

Q: What are your main responsibilities?

A: Everything capital-related. We have development managers out on the front ends trying to find deals, opportunities and customers. When they have something in the earlier stages, they will come to me and I'll help them determine if the deal is financeable and whether we can find a capital partner interested in doing the deal with us. My goal is to have the relationships on the equity and debt side and know who to go to try to determine if those opportunities are aligned with those platforms.

Q: What type of investors do you pursue?

A: Public, private, institutional and even high-net-worth. It's a pretty wide range, so we try to drill down based on the deal, location, size and product type.

A: We have over a half-billion dollars of development coming out of the ground across apartments, office, industrial, hotels and medical office buildings.