Only 39 years old, Craig Stoehr, who was born in West Allis and raised in Oconomowoc, has already had an eventful career.
He worked in New York for one of the world’s largest law firms, he helped plan the 1994 World Cup and has lived in several different European and Middle East cities working in several different sports industries.
In 2005, he returned home to Wisconsin and helped start a real estate investment and development firm called Badger Pacific Equity Partners LLC, with a pair of California investors.
Stoehr serves as managing partner of the company. During the next five to seven years, they plan to invest $500 million in equity capital in real-estate related projects, including some in the Milwaukee area.
They have purchased and plan to redevelop the 43,200-square-foot former Milwaukee Antique Center at 341 N. Milwaukee St. in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward and a 70,000-square-foot building at 625 N. Milwaukee St., Milwaukee.
In addition, the firm and a group of local investors took over management of the Milwaukee Mile racetrack in West Allis and plan to develop a 10-acre site next to the track.
Not content with just real estate investing and development, Stoehr acquired almost 25 percent of San Francisco-based Blue Marlin Corp., a leading designer of international vintage sport clothing, last year.
“Craig has established himself as one of our most recognizable and successful young entrepreneurs, clearly demonstrating an appetite for risk, as well as his vision and creativity in growing the companies and organizations with which he is involved,” said Martin Greenberg, a partner in Greenberg & Hoeschen LLC, a Milwaukee-based law firm.
Before embarking on his entrepreneurial career, Stoehr set the bar high in law school. He ranked No. 1 in his first-year class at Marquette University Law School before transferring to Northwestern University, where he earned his juris doctor. He focused on technology-media-telecommunications, gaming and lodging and energy industries at the New York law firm Latham & Watkins LLP for six years.
In 2002 and 2003, Stoehr served as chief executive of the Class 1 World Powerboat Championship, the waterborne kin to NASCAR. In that capacity, Stoehr oversaw all business aspects of the championship, including the staging.
He later spent a year in Dubai as the co-chairman of Grand Prix Worldwide Limited, a Formula 1 auto racing sports marketing agency.
Stoehr also has served as founder and chief executive officer of a sports-related online media company, which he sold in 2002 to a company in the United Kingdom. In addition, he also served as corporate finance director of SoftNetSystems in 2001, a then-$1.1 billion media and communications company.
