Andrew is a founding Principal of Timberline Ventures where he leverages his 25 years of hands-on real estate experience. Widely regarded as an entrepreneurial and innovative thinker in the real estate industry, Andrew’s experience crosses many disciplines including, legal, finance, land development, construction, strategic planning and capital markets. Under Andrew’s leadership, he grew the Campus Evolution Villages brand to approximately 10,000 beds since his launching of the company in 2012. Campus Evolution was recognized as a leader in student housing and has gained ranking as a top 20 student housing owner by Student Housing Business; today Andrew also and serves as Executive Vice President of B.Hom Student Living. Student housing is not new to Andrew, as Mr. Stark was instrumental in launching American Campus Communities (NASDAQ: ACC), an early student housing company, which later went on to be the first company in the sector to go public on a US stock exchange.
Andrew and his partners brought the capital to ACC to acquire its first asset and then acquired the company, built-out the management team and provided all growth capital leading up to its IPO. This initial venture was successful in bringing creative thinking and capital to this student housing vehicle in a sector that was in its infancy. Prior to launching Campus Evolution, Mr. Stark oversaw and consummated the recapitalization of a ’34 Act specialty finance company with private equity funding during the economic downturn of the late 2000’s. He was responsible for negotiating and completing this highly complex transaction in the face of shareholder challenges and pending SEC investigations. Mr. Stark secured capital commitments for the transaction, and after closing, immediately implemented action items to stabilize the management of the organization and commenced asset dispositions to move the company into positive cash positions for future originations and growth. As Managing Director of Cantor Fitzgerald, Mr. Stark focused on opportunistic investments in real estate assets and platform vehicles, including distressed land assets, development projects and strategic investments in capital constrained assets. As President of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of a publicly traded homebuilding which he sold his company to, Andrew oversaw the company he grew ten-fold in revenue to be a leading regional homebuilder prior to consummating a combination with the public company.