A new three-story, 82-room Sleep Inn & Suites hotel will open in January at 4600 S. Sixth St.. in Milwaukee near General Mitchell International Airport.

The hotel is about 1.5 miles from the west entrance to General Mitchell International Airport and about half a mile from Interstate 94. Several new hotel developments have been proposed for sites near the airport in recent months. This is the first of those projects to break ground.

Construction began in April for the hotel. The site was previously a vacant lot.

Some of the units in the hotel will be suites with separate sleeping and living room areas equipped with refrigerators and microwave ovens. The hotel also will have a meeting room for groups of up to 35, high-speed wireless internet access, an indoor swimming pool, a whirlpool, a fitness center and breakfast service. In addition, the hotel will have additional parking available for guests to use "park and fly" overnight packages.

Sleep Inn is a division of Silver Spring, Md.-based Choice Hotels International Inc. The hotel is being developed by West Bend-based American Design-Build and North Liberty, Iowa-based Kinseth Hospitality Companies.

"We believe this property will be very successful in attracting hotel guests from General Mitchell Field, and we are delighted to open our second hotel (the other is the Hampton Inn & Suites in West Bend) in partnership with American Design & Build in the greater Milwaukee area," said Bruce Kinseth, vice president of Kinseth Hospitality. "We look forward to providing high quality lodging accommodations and great service, at a reasonable price, to guests in the airport area."

About 25 people will work at the hotel. Kinseth Hospitality announced that Brian Thoe will be the hotel's general manager and Stacey Geil will be the assistant general manager. Thoe most recently worked at Holiday Inn in Mason City, Iowa, and Geil was the reservations manager for the Brookfield Suites Hotel in Brookfield.

Milwaukee-based Marshall & Ilsley Corp.  has instituted a system-wide moratorium on owner-occupied residential home mortgages. The foreclosure moratorium requires troubled homeowners to work in good faith with the bank to reach a successful repayment agreement. The program applies to home loans in all M&I markets and will be in effect until March 31, 2009.

"This recessionary economy is obviously challenging for many families as they try to balance the family budget each month," said Mark Furlong, president and chief executive officer of Marshall & Ilsley. "During these stressful economic times, M&I is committed to ensuring our customers have access to the resources and products that can enable them to stay in their homes."

The bank has also enhanced its mortgage foreclosure relief program by extending terms and rate reductions that can cut monthly payments. It has also created streamlined assistance programs.

"I am grateful to Marshall & Ilsley Corp. for taking this tremendous step toward keeping families in their homes as they work to get back on their financial feet," said Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee. "With strong private partners like M&I, I am confident that significant progress can be made addressing the impact foreclosures are having on our neighborhoods and residents."

First the banking industry, then the automotive industry and now the commercial industry is asking for a piece of the federal bailout.

With a record amount of commercial real-estate debt coming due in the first quarter, some of the nation's largest property developers are asking for federal assistance, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal.

A recent report by Deutsche Bank warns policymakers that thousands of office complexes, hotels, shopping centers and other commercial buildings are headed into defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies.

With roughly $400 billion in loans coming due next year and virtually no credit available for borrowers to refinance, The Real Estate Roundtable is warning policymakers about the possibility of a wave of commercial real estate loan defaults in the coming year and years.

According to research firm Foresight Analytics LCC, $530 billion of commercial mortgages will be coming due for refinancing in the next three years, with about $160 billion maturing in the next year.

Credit, meanwhile, is practically nonexistent and cash flows from commercial property are slowing down.

Unlike home loans, which borrowers repay after a set period of time, commercial mortgages usually are underwritten for five, seven or 10 years, with large payments due at the end, the Journal reported.

A dozen large real estate trade groups have sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking to be included in a new $200 billion loan program that was initially created by the government to salvage the market for car loans, student loans and credit-card debt.

The new facility for commercial real estate debt being proposed by The Real Estate Roundtable and others could be seeded by funds from the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) established under the recently enacted Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), with additional leverage from the Federal Reserve, similar to the structure of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF).

Roundtable board member William Rudin of Rudin Management Company noted in today's issue of Commercial Mortgage Alert, "People are aware, but everybody is waiting for the new (Obama) administration to come in … We would argue that it's better not to wait, but to get this on the table now."

The real national gross domestic product contracted by a 0.5 percent rate in the third quarter, unchanged from the federal government's previous estimate, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported Tuesday.

The department also announced that the national sales of new homes fell to a 17-year low in November.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said the median existing home sale price fell 13.2 percent in November, the sharpest monthly decline on record since the prices were first tracked in 1968.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said he had expected a decline.

"The quickly deteriorating conditions in the job market, stock market, and consumer confidence in October and November have knocked down home sales to another level. We hope the home sales impact from the stock market crash turns out to be short-lived, as was the case in 1987 and 2001," Ynn said. "It is, therefore, imperative to provide incentives for homebuyers to get back into the market. It also depends on how effectively Congress and the new administration can help facilitate the short sales process and unclog the mortgage pipeline - impediments remain for some buyers with good credit."

NAR president Charles McMillan, a broker with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Dallas-Fort Worth, said called for a federal housing stimulus to spark an economic recovery.

"We need more than low interest rates to encourage enough buyers to enter the market and meaningfully draw down inventory, which would stabilize home prices – that, in turn, would help the economy to recover," McMillan said. "We should extend the first-time buyer tax credit to all homebuyers and eliminate the repayment feature, and make permanent the higher loan limits that are vital in high-cost markets - the faster we do this, the faster housing and the economy can recover."

Title: safety director 

Company: Mortenson Construction

Education: Master's degree in industrial safety, University of Minnesota-Duluth; bachelor of science, health promotion and wellness, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; certified industrial hygienist; graduate certificate in ergonomics from University Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Family: Wife, Kristin; and three children, Breckin, Dax and Kenley.

City of Residence: Sheboygan Falls

What are you working on? "Backed by a top-notch safety program, Mortenson Construction places a very strong emphasis on keeping our entire workforce safe. As safety director, I am currently working on planning, implementing, and supervising all project safety and health programs, including our Zero Injury Program, for all of the projects our Wisconsin Operating Group is currently working on." 

How does the market look to you? "I'm very optimistic for 2009 and 2010. Southeast Wisconsin has slowed down slightly, but there is activity in multiple sectors. I'm hopeful that 2009 will bring new opportunities and challenges for our team."

What was the best deal you've ever been involved in? "My career experiences have afforded me the opportunity to work for two large global companies. With these companies, I had the opportunity to visit countries around the world and observe their diverse manufacturing operations and cultures. Equipped with this knowledge, I have been able to further my experiences here in the United States and contribute my insight to further grow Mortenson's safety and health programs."

Cardinal Stritch University will move its College of Education and Leadership, its adult learner program and its executive MBA program from its Fox Point-Glendale campus to a three-story, 24,000-square-foot building in the former Pabst brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee.

The university will occupy the entire building, which is located southeast of McKinley Avenue and North 11th Street and is visible from Interstate 43. The building is owned by Bando/Chmura LLC. The university has a 10-year lease for the building, with an option to purchase it after 7 years.

Cardinal Stritch will have about 60 employees working in the building and hundreds of students will visit the buidling on a regular basis for classes and seminars during weekdays, weeknights and weekends, said Dr. Helen Sobehart, president of the university. The university will move into the building next fall.

"We need space and we need to grow out so we can partner with the community, the city, all of southeastern Wisconsin and the business community," Sobehart said.

The downtown campus will be called Cardinal Stritch University City Center.

Cardinal Stritch has 7,500 students and is land locked at its current campus, Sobehart said. The university plans to remodel Clare Hall, currently used by the College of Education and Leadership, into a residence hall. The school needs more housing for freshmen.

Cardinal Stritch also is planning a major expansion in St. Francis. The university plans to develop a 129-acre site at 3501 S. Lake Drive, which includes the Cousins Center property and a vacant Wisconsin Energy property. The campus will be developed in phases. Once fully built out, it would have a student population of 1,870 and 420 employees, according to the university. It could take about 20 years for the St. Francis property to be fully developed, the university says.

The former Pabst brewery complex is being redeveloped into a mixed-use urban neighborhood, called The Brewery, by Joseph Zilber, founder of Zilber Ltd. Zilber is gutting and selling several of the buildings in the complex to other developers. Zilber is also trying to convince the state to place a new school of public health for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at the brewery complex.

"To have Cardinal Stritch choose The Brewery is really a validation of what we are trying to accomplish here," said John Kersey, president of The Brewery Project LLC. "What we are trying to do here is build a neighborhood, and we are thrilled to have Cardinal Stritch in our neighborhood. They could have gone anywhere. We pledge to make this an incredible place to visit."

Staff and students at Cardinal Stritch will park at a 900-space parking structure that Zilber is building in the complex.

Lee & Associates

• A Milwaukee-based investor sold the Walgreens store at 2700 N. Grandview Blvd., Waukesha, to a family trust out of California for $5.5 million.

NAI MLG Commercial

Wauwatosa-based Wangard Companies recently hired Andrew C. Smith as chief financial officer and vice president of acquisitions for Wangard Advisors LLC, Lori Seibel as marketing coordinator for Wangard Advisors and Michelle King has joined the accounting department for Wangard Partners.

Brookfield-based NAI MLG Commercial recently hired Dain Tofson as an investment analyst. His responsibilities will include: assisting in compiling, organizing and reviewing financial and operating elements of potential and existing real estate holdings. He will make recommendations about real estate acquisitions and provide long-and short-term operating forecasts as well as assisting in the preparation of investor communication materials.

Protech, a division of Milwaukee-based Inland Companies Inc., recently hired Mike Essman as a master electrician.

Mortenson Construction recently hired Doug Mortenson as a safety director. He will work in the company's Brookfield office

Milwaukee-based Kahler Slater received a Best Exterior Design Award from the Green Bay Mayor's Beautification Committee for the firm's design of the Kress Events Center on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus.

IREM Forecast Breakfast, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009, 7-9:30 a.m., Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago St., Milwaukee. For more information, call (414) 476-4736.

REACH Winter Gala 2009, The Big Chill, Saturday, Feb. 28, 7:30-10:30 p.m., The Eisner Museum, 208 N. Water St., Milwaukee. For more information, call (414) 271-2021.