Mayer Brown enhances its nationally recognized real estate investments platform with a San Francisco-based three-partner team

SAN FRANCISCO – Mayer Brown announced today that three prominent real estate and hospitality lawyers – Teresa Goebel, Benjamin Tschann, and Dustin Calkins – have joined the firm in San Francisco as partners in its Real Estate and Real Estate Funds practices. Teresa and Ben will also serve as co-leaders of the firm’s global Hospitality & Leisure practice group. The three-partner real estate team joins from Goodwin Procter LLP.

The trio will strengthen the firm’s real estate offering to capture near-term growth aligned with San Francisco’s recovery and the accelerating AI boom. The market-leading team will seek to capitalize on the economic growth cycle in the San Francisco Bay Area and provide a client-ready offering competitive with the largest real estate shops in California and a national hospitality platform. By combining with Mayer Brown’s long-established practice, the group creates one of Northern California’s most broad based and sophisticated real estate practices, including the largest, most experienced bench of hospitality and leisure practitioners, with particular strengths in large-scale development, equity joint ventures, and programmatic investment platforms. 

“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. “Teresa, Ben, and Dustin bring precisely that mix. Their track records in hospitality and leisure, sophisticated joint ventures, and portfolio transactions will deliver immediate value to our clients across cycles and strategies.” 

Teresa focuses on the acquisition, development, financing, management, and sale of hotels and mixed-use hospitality properties worldwide. She regularly structures and negotiates hotel management agreements and related equity and debt investments, advising many of the world’s leading hotel companies and investors. A longtime leader in the hospitality bar, she has served in senior roles across key industry organizations and is consistently recognized for her depth in complex hospitality transactions, mixed-use projects, and dispute-sensitive deal architecture. 

Ben brings vast experience advising owners, operators and investors with a practice centered on hospitality, operating-businesses and real estate – including hotels and resorts, athletic and sports facility investments, senior housing and assisted living, student housing, and serviced residential – across the full lifecycle of transactions ensuring seamless counsel for the industry’s most sophisticated stakeholders. He advises institutional investors, REITs, insurance companies, family offices, sponsors, operators and developers on acquisitions and dispositions, joint ventures, preferred equity and mezzanine investments, debt financings, workouts and restructurings, and hotel management arrangements in the United States and internationally, including cross-border management and franchise matters in Latin America, Europe and the United Kingdom.

Dustin advises public and private real estate investors, developers, operators and sponsors with a practice focused on joint ventures, acquisitions and dispositions and financings.  He utilizes his market depth to advise clients across industry type – industrial, multifamily, office, hospitality, sports venues and retail – for single assets and national portfolios, ground-up developments and redevelopment projects, commercial leasing, and complex loan facilities. Dustin has guided clients through marquee transactions, including programmatic joint ventures and recapitalizations, billion-dollar portfolio deals, CMBS financings, private REIT conversions and large-scale mixed-use developments. 

“We’re excited to join Mayer Brown’s integrated real estate platform,” said Teresa. “San Francisco is a compelling growth market, and the timing is right. For our clients, this move brings our hospitality, joint venture, and financing experience together with the firm’s commitment to real estate, global reach and collaborative culture so we can support the full deal lifecycle and deliver on complex, programmatic real estate strategies on a platform that serves our clients.”

“We are delighted to welcome Teresa, Ben, and Dustin,” said Ward Johnson, managing partner of Mayer Brown’s Northern California offices. “Their arrival underscores our continued investment in the Bay Area and enhances our market-leading real estate platform with particular strength in hospitality and operating-business real estate.”