History
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1962
Hall Equities Group was founded as Dynamic Agents Inc. by Merle Hall and Phil LaMarche in Lafayette, CA and enters the residential real estate brokerage business. Within a few years, the company is the largest residential home broker in the region and Merle Hall buys out Phil LaMarche.
1976
Dynamic Agents exits the residential real estate brokerage business to focus on investment brokerage and property management for private investors. The company name changes to Merle D. Hall Company.
1986
Mark Hall joins his father at Merle D. Hall Company after a five year period with Los Angeles based Tishman West, the Western US division of New York based Tishman Management Corporation. From 1986 to 1992, Mark is instrumental in obtaining numerous asset management contracts on behalf of private investors and completing many acquisitions of shopping centers, office buildings, industrial complexes, and apartment buildings.
1989
Merle D. Hall Company completes development of its first retail shopping center, Palm Court in Walnut Creek, CA. The company acted as overall project manager, arranged equity financing, and orchestrated all construction management and lease up.
1992
Mark Hall acquires 50% of the stock of Merle D. Hall Company and assumes executive leadership of the organization. Mark negotiates a transformational investment for two of the company’s largest clients, exchanging 14 small rental homes and used car lots for a 30,000 square foot Safeway store and a 65,000 square foot office building on a long-term lease with Kaiser Permanente in downtown Walnut Creek, California.
1994
Mark Hall and long time partner, Richard Clancy, make an opportunistic purchase of the newly developed Tower Court luxury condominiums in Walnut Creek, CA. Over the years, many further investments have been financed from this acquisition including a Dow Chemical Research facility in Walnut Creek, CA; the Children’s Hospital complex in Walnut Creek, CA; Britton Place in Lacey, WA; Laguna Village in Sacramento, CA; and part of the ZMC Hotels acquisition in Duluth, MN.
1995
Mark Hall leads a partnership that purchases 30 acres (including 150,000 square feet of office and laboratory buildings) in Shadelands Business Park in Walnut Creek, CA. The partnership conducts a major remodel of the asset and converts it to a state-of-the-art life sciences laboratory complex under a design-build contract with the University of California and the US Department of Energy. This investment results in the development of the company’s first self-storage facility, medical building and surgery center, and life sciences buildings.
1999
Mark Hall completes acquisition of 100% of stock in the operating company and changes its name to Hall Equities Group.
2005
Hall Equities Group enters the hospitality industry with the construction and management of two hotels in Turlock, CA including a Holiday Inn Express and a Marriott Fairfield Inn and Suites. These two hotels are part of a 159 acre site which Hall Equities Group owned and developed into a 1.14 million square foot regional retail complex. From 1995 to 2005, Hall Equities Group completes the development of more than 1.6 million square feet of projects.
2008
The financial crisis hits hard, but Hall Equities Group liquidates several key, high quality assets, including its entire Southern California office portfolio, at the peak of the market in 2006 to 2007. With significant liquidity and zero development debt, Hall Equities Group makes several strategic and successful acquisitions in the downturn and constructs five new projects between 2008 and 2013.
2015
Anticipating the pressure placed on traditional retail shopping centers by online retailers, such as Amazon, Hall Equities Group decides to sell certain properties and move investment capital into the hospitality industry. This resulted in the acquisition of the Minnesota-based hotel management company ZMC Hotels and all 29 of its hotels in a single transaction. The acquisition expands the company’s hotel portfolio to include 34 boutique and branded hotels, totaling approximately 4,000 rooms in 12 states. The primary asset disposed of for this acquisition is Hall Equities Group’s Monte Vista Crossings retail center in Turlock California, which is the 9th-rated open-air shopping center in North America as measured by foot traffic.
2015
Mark Hall launches COPA Innovation Laboratories, a new operating company dedicated to operating and investing in youth sports training businesses, product development and engineering, and the eventual franchising of affiliated business units. COPA Innovation Laboratories is designed to synergistically support a new area of growth for Hall Equities Group, which entails the investment, development, and operation of multi-tenant Sports Malls. These Sports Malls are also intended to affiliate with a ZMC Hotel-owned hospitality project, to support the room demand generated from tournaments, camps, and clinics offered by Sports Mall tenants.
2017
ZMC Hotels makes an investment in a then nine-year-old Oakland-based high-rise modular construction and development firm, RAD Urban. RAD Urban pioneers cutting-edge technology for the design, manufacture, and installation of steel frame volumetric modular high-density buildings aimed primarily at high-rise urban multi-family apartments and hotels.
2018
Mark Hall acquires the franchise license for the Division II United Soccer League Professional Soccer Team for the San Francisco East Bay Area.
2019
RAD Urban struggles financially, leading to the takeover of the company by ZMC Hotels through a foreclosure process.
2019
Hall Equities Group completes construction and the grand opening of its first prototypical Sports Mall, consisting of 227,000 sq ft in Walnut Creek’s Shadelands Business Park. The Shadelands Sports Mall is anchored by the 110,000 sq ft COPA Soccer Training Center, the largest and most advanced indoor youth soccer training facility in North America.
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic strikes. RAD Urban is forced to cease operations and lay off more than 300 employees and close its Lathrop, California factory. ZMC Hotels is forced to temporarily shutter 14 of its hotels. The company’s brand-new SportsMall must also cease operations. Other impacts in the Hall Equities Group’s retail shopping center and multi-family apartment portfolio are seriously affected as well. This proves to be a historical low point in business operations for the enterprise. Fortunately, no assets are lost to foreclosure, and all business units and properties, except for RAD Urban, recover.
2020
Mark Hall sells his USL Professional Franchise License to the Oakland Roots Sports Club organization. The Oakland Roots Sports Club enters a collaboration agreement with COPA Soccer Training Center for a groundbreaking talent identification and training partnership.
2020
Mark Hall launches Modology, a new business unit dedicated to the design, manufacture, and sale of 100% off-grid relocatable buildings. This business unit is built substantially on the lessons learned from the RAD Urban experience.
2022
ZMC Hotels experiences a significant expansion of its hotel portfolio through a series of acquisitions, increasing the total portfolio to 55 hotels across 22 states.
2023
The digital media division of Hall Equities Group/COPA Innovation Laboratories is organized into its own standalone business unit known as Vertical Creative Studios.
2024
A variety of Hall Equities Group real property assets are organized into a single business unit, known as Global Sports Mall Realty. This business is dedicated to building upon the unique business knowledge the company has developed in the area of multi-tenant sports training and competition-oriented real estate.
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