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W&D Webcast: Barry Sternlicht Wants the U.S. to Reopen, Safely
“The financial suicide of the country is not in anyone’s best interests.” That’s Barry Sternlicht, who has piloted Starwood Capital Group to success across multiple geographies and asset classes, on why the current shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic can’t go on indefinitely.
Sternlicht was the guest on the latest of Walker & Dunlop’s series of Wednesday webcasts. A longtime business colleague and friend of Walker & Dunlop CEO Willy Walker, Sternlicht made the case for reopening the economy safely, with proper testing and prevention protocols in place.
It’s a scenario he’s now in a position to help make a reality, as a member of the Great American Revival Industry Groups, a bipartisan roster of business leaders assembled by President Donald Trump to help steer the economic recovery.
Key to the health and safety protocols advocated by Sternlicht for a post-shutdown American are thoroughness and uniformity. “You need to do it everywhere,” he told the webcast audience.
That said, he also advocates a “narrow-scape” approach to reopening the economy, determined in part by the severity of the pandemic within a region. Upstate New York, for instance, would be on a different timetable for returning to normalcy than New York City and its suburbs. “It doesn’t have to be one size fits all,” Sternlicht said.
Whatever timetable a particular region is on, though, Sternlicht expects a full general recovery to be some time in coming. However, he pointed out that the development of an effective vaccine would accelerate that timeline.
Starwood Capital’s investments have run the gamut from apartments to hotels, and include industries that have shed thousands of jobs in the shutdown. Yet Sternlicht said these industries “aren’t going the way of the dodo bird.”
That said, there are going to be secular changes. Sternlicht doesn’t believe office demand has been permanently hurt by the current imperative to work remotely. However, he said, “the era of people piling on top of each other in cubes—that’s over for a while.”
Brick-and-mortar retail, another sector in which Starwood is a major player, similarly will survive the shutdown. Yet, Sternlicht predicted that shopping malls will be “radically re-tenanted” in the recovery.
On-demand replays of the hour-long webcast are available by clicking here.
For comments, questions or concerns, please contact Paul Bubny
- ◦Economy
