After five years with Walton Group of Companies, a Calgary-based multinational real estate and development company, Jon Ryder has rejoined the Calgary office of Dentons.
Having grown up in the real estate business — he started collecting family rents at age seven — Ryder graduated from the University of Manitoba before joining the law firm of Fraser Milner Casgrain, which became Dentons.
After four years there, he moved on to explore an in-house opportunity with Walton.
Having started as a lawyer at Walton International, Ryder was chief operating officer and general counsel for Walton Development and Management when he left. He advised various business groups on operational and business matters, ranging from investor communications to sophisticated contract negotiations, and managed real estate transactions valued at more than $500 million.
Founded by Bill Doherty, Walton has 97,000 acres of land under management in Canada and the U.S. Its Calgary projects include the residential communities of SkyView Ranch and Cornerstone in the northeast, and Point Trotter, a 273-acre full-serviced industrial park in the southeast.
Ryder returns to Dentons with invaluable experience in residential and industrial development, land use and planning and leasing, as well as transactions in commercial, industrial and office projects.
“I’m excited to be starting the next phase of my career back at Dentons where it all started. Having worked in private practice, I now have a unique insight into what my clients need,” he says.
Ryder has joined a team of lawyers that has become the largest commercial real estate advisory group in Alberta, with 13 in the Calgary office and another six in Edmonton.
It’s led by partner and department manager Craig Hill, who joined Dentons after 30 years in practise to build up its commercial real estate department.
Today, its advisory team represents many of Calgary’s most influential real estate clients, a portfolio that includes AIMCo, Brookfield Residential, Grosvenor Americas, Hopewell Developments. Qualex-Landmark, Qualico and The Swan Group.
They have worked on five of the highrise towers in the Beltline and are legal counsel for the East Village developments by the Calgary Municipal Land Corp.
The firm’s scope of involvement is much wider, working closely with more than 80 Dentons commercial real estate lawyers in Canada’s key economic hubs of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver, as well as with many U.S. offices, including the busy 10 in Phoenix.
Now the world’s largest law firm, Dentons has more than 125 locations serving 50-plus countries. It has 4,000 lawyers in China, and Hill says they report a keen interest in investing in Alberta, primarily in real estate ventures.
Ryder is looking forward to contributing to Dentons alongside his new partners, particularly with the opportunity to work with John Merrett and Tim Bardsley, who are well-respected in their specialty fields of municipal planning and land use, and with helping the firm increase its market share throughout the province.
News and notes
It was only a year ago that I wrote about Nomodic Modular Structures and its success in providing purpose-built modular housing for remote camps. The need for prefabricated buildings for oilsands projects is likely a little slack right now, but Nomodic CEO Kevin Read reports his company has made major strides in transcending markets by expanding from remote workforce accommodation to multi-family units.
In Calgary, he has an inner-city, multi-family residential/commercial project in Sunnyside, and is supplying a nightly rental recreational development in Canmore. Nomodic has increased its specialized service offering from custom design and project management to also include modular construction services, which lets it control the process from start to finish.
It’s keeping a watchful eye on cost and quality benefits while increasing its customer base by 200 per cent and growing its employment base from seven to 26 staff.
Things are going well for Nomodic, while Read has been recognized as a finalist for this year’s EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in the emerging entrepreneur category.
David Parker appears Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Read his columns online at calgaryherald.com/business. He can be reached at 403-830-4622 or by email at info@davidparker.ca
