Meeting Speaker for January 7, 2013 - Art Chapman

JMA Ventures, founded in 1986 by Art Chapman, has grown in the last decade from a small, family-owned boutique business into a company with a range of high-profile, upscale investments, most of them in San Francisco and Tahoe.

It owns Homewood Mountain Resort in Tahoe, where it plans a major expansion, and has a share of the combined Squaw Valley-Alpine Meadows ski resort. It recently bought and is marketing million-dollar-plus homes on the ski slopes at Northstar in Tahoe, and owns an exclusive time-share residence hotel at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. It teamed with investors a few years ago to build a bayfront restaurant, EPIC Roasthouse, in San Francisco. In the last two months, it has bought office buildings in Austin, Texas, and outside of Seattle.

Mr. Chapman called JMA's new Sacramento property a long-term investment, and said it will be one of his personal priorities. The company's initial focus, he said, will be to make Downtown Plaza a place "more comfortable, family-friendly, that emphasizes security and cleanliness. Those things you are going to see from Day One.