Pioneer lands office deal

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Dec 27, 2002 by Dickinson, Casey J

SYRACUSE - The Pioneer Companies will soon add four million square feet of property to its management portfolio. Chicagobased NOCHA, LLC a subsidiary of American Landmark Properties, chose Pioneer Management Services Co. to manage the 34 buildings it recently purchased from Keystone Properties for $178 million. The properties are located in Syracuse, Albany, Rochester, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Many of the buildings were originally developed and managed by Pioneer prior to a 1998 sale to Keystone. Formerly known as American Real Estate Investment Corp, Keystone purchased 12 properties from Pioneer in 1998 for approximately $87 million.

Cos. offices; One Park Place; One Clinton Square; 1045 James St.; as well as buildings in Pioneer Business Park, an East Syracuse office park. The new management deal also includes industrial properties, including warehouse space on Steelway Boulevard near the village of Liverpool.

The properties bring the Pioneer management portfolio up to nearly 10 million square feet, says Michael P. Falcone,

chief executive officer of the Pioneer Cos. He credits Pioneer's management success to the company's experience in the property business as well as an attitude of ownership toward managed buildings.

"We manage every property as if it were one of our own," he says.

Founded in 1987 as Pioneer Development Company, the Pioneer Companies traces its roots to the 1960s and founder Michael J. Falcone's work in developing Central New York. The elder Falcone, now chairman of the Pioneer Cos., cofounded the Pyramid Cos. with developer Robert Congel. In the late 1960s through 1975, Falcone helped build Pyramid's $250-million portfolio of shopping centers, office buildings, and industrial properties. Michael J. Falcone established The Pioneer Group in 1975. Along with their father, Michael P. Falcone, his brother Mark, Dale Van Epps, and Daniel J. Murphy founded the Pioneer Development Company in 1987. The two companies merged operations in 1994.

The business adopted the Pioneer Companies designation in 1998 to reflect its move beyond property development, as well as its multiple-company, corporate structure. Each Pioneer project typically gets a new company, says Falcone. The Pioneer Cos. include more than 120 partnerships.

The extensive development-experience available at Pioneer means few situations are new to the company's management team.

"Our decades of experience give us an advantage in property management," Michael P. Falcone says, "we can tell our clients 'we've seen this before,' and offer a solution."

Management isn't the only growing area at Pioneer.

Pioneer is overseeing development of more than four-million square feet of new space in the 16 states in which it operates. The company's new projects stretch from its home turf in upstate New York to Denver and Phoenix. Mark Falcone, brother of Michael P. Falcone, established Denver-based Continuum Partners, LLC. The Pioneer-affiliate company is working on several projects in the Denver metro area, including a new downtown" project known as "Belmar" for the City of Lakewood. Continuum is transforming the area surrounding an old shopping center into a number of mixeduse buildings encompassing 3.5-million square feet of space. The Belmar project will create 19 city blocks on the grounds of the former Villa Italia Mall. Scheduled to open in 2004, the $500-million Belmar project incorporates six garages with parking for 7,500 vehicles. The Pioneer Cos. is also developing two shopping centers in Phoenix in addition to retail projects in New York.

Closer to home, Pioneer has added a Hilton Garden hotel to the eponymous suburban office park near Carrier Circle, and its Basin Associates, LLC is developing a new hotel called the Packwood House in a former post office in the village of Skaneateles.

The new year will bring even bigger projects for Pioneer, Falcone predicts. Pioneer has entered into an equity partnership with one unnamed New York City-based company and plans to enter into a second equity partnership soon. The partnerships will combine Pioneer's development skills with the companies' financial backing to purchase and renovate existing properties as well as create new developments. The groups' plans include large-scale projects in the $300 million to $500 million range, says Falcone.

"We're a national development company," he says. "There really isn't any place we can't go."

The Pioneer Cos. have offices in Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Denver, Phoenix and Washington D.C.