Goodwin 3-Partner Group Heads to Mayer Brown's Real Estate, Hospitality Practices
Mayer Brown has added a three-partner team in real estate and hospitality from Goodwin Procter in San Francisco, with two of the additions set to lead its hospitality and leisure group.
The firm on Wednesday announced the arrival of Teresa Goebel, Benjamin Tschann, and Dustin Calkins as partners in its real estate and real estate funds practices, saying the additions create “one of Northern California’s most broad based and sophisticated real estate practices” as well as the “largest, most experienced bench of hospitality and leisure practitioners.”
Goebel and Tschann will lead Mayer Brown’s leisure group, the firm noted.
“Real estate investors are navigating a market that demands sector specialization, capital stack fluency, and highly commercial execution,” said Brian Aronson, co-lead of Mayer Brown’s real estate practice, in a statement. The three laterals this week bring exactly that, he added. “Their track records in hospitality and leisure, sophisticated joint ventures, and portfolio transactions will deliver immediate value to our clients across cycles and strategies,” Aronson said.
In turn, the partners themselves pointed to a strong infrastructure offering and a broad footprint, both nationally and internationally, as some of the advantages of making the move to Mayer Brown.
In general, they advise clients throughout the hierarchy of real estate project financing, including private equity funds, high-net-worth investors, and other companies involved in developing or subsidizing projects with a heavy real estate component.
The firm noted that Goebel focuses on acquisitions, development, management and sale of hotels and mixed-use hospitality properties; Tschann advises hotels and resorts, athletic facility investments, senior and student housing and serviced residential real estate in multiple kinds of transactions, and Calkins works with public and private investors, developers and sponsors while focusing on joint ventures, acquisitions, dispositions and financing.
Tschann said Mayer Brown’s strength in infrastructure is “pretty unique” and created plenty of opportunities. He said even though hospitality is sort of his group's banner industry, they’re complementary practices because that group also works with operationally-intensive businesses – whether it’s data centers, clean energy, or oil and natural gas generators, for example.
“Those are all operationally-intensive businesses. So our experience dealing with regulatory matters, employees, unions, licensing and permits, IP – that all comes into these things when you move from just owning a building to owning and operating it and producing a product,” he said. “Whether it’s an experience or good, it has additional lawyers. So we see ourselves as straddling between real estate and their infrastructure group.”
He also pointed to Mayer Brown’s offices not only on the East and West Coast, but in Chicago and Houston, in the Southeast in Charlotte, and in the Mid-Atlantic, in Washington, D.C. Goebel added that she works with clients in Asia, South America and London, where Mayer Brown has offices as well. “Having boots on the ground in those jurisdictions is enormously helpful to us,” she said.
Besides that, Calkins noted that Mayer Brown has the capacity to build up significantly in the Bay Area, where all three partners are based. The firm noted in its release that part of the logic in bringing them on was to “capture near-term growth aligned with San Francisco’s recovery and the accelerating AI boom.”
In a statement, Goodwin Procter said that "[w]e wish Teresa Goebel, Benjamin Tschann and Dustin Calkins the best."
The AI boom is fairly self-explanatory. But Goebel added that, since Covid, the city has been focused on bringing businesses back, particularly downtown. “And being a hospitality lawyer, we also see that in the hotel offerings, with increased occupancy and travel in San Francisco, as opposed to the immediate and post-Covid [periods],” Goebel said.
Calkins added that Mayer Brown’s desire to expand in the Bay Area at a time when it’s arguably at the forefront of another growth cycle made the move a “natural fit.”
He said that, along with Scott Buser, another partner in Northern California in real estate, the team will have four of the top attorneys in the practice in the area, and will be able to “represent and advise the entire capital stack of a real estate project, independently in San Francisco, which I think is a unique offering,” he said. “And I’m not sure another firm has it.”
Reprinted with permission from the November 4th edition of The American Lawyer © 2025 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.
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