Oak Brook’s Ware Malcomb names head of asset strategy and landlord services team

Dawn Riegel (Photo courtesy of Ware Malcomb.)

Oak Brook, Illinois-based Ware Malcomb, an award-winning international design firm, today announced Dawn Riegel, Principal, as head of the firm’s Asset Strategy & Landlord Services Team. A unique pillar within Ware Malcomb’s Interior Architecture & Design practice, this team works with building owners, asset managers, brokers, and property managers to maximize their real estate asset values through a holistic, data-informed, lifecycle-driven approach.

Ware Malcomb’s approach centers on maximizing asset value through a holistic, data-informed, and lifecycle-driven strategy. It considers an asset at every stage, from acquisition and repositioning through ongoing reinvestment, so decisions made today support performance, flexibility, and long-term return. This perspective is grounded in current market conditions: tenant demand, leasing trends, and repositioning opportunities. The team works with property owners to identify opportunities for transformation, elevation or repositioning to higher-value alternative uses. They develop targeted strategies that can range from office-to-residential conversions to updating existing office amenities, and/or repositioning properties for industrial or data center demand.

The Asset Strategy & Landlord Services team outlines asset possibilities, creates due diligence reports, helps determine property identity with positioning workshop, assists in tenant attraction, transformation analysis, workplace training and education. Through portfolio-level insights, phasing strategies and operational optimization, the team helps owners make informed decisions about where and how to invest, while balancing market opportunity with ownership goals.

Complementing its Asset Strategy advisory services, Ware Malcomb provides Landlord Services designed to support assets throughout their lifecycle. Acting as an extension of leasing and asset management teams, the firm helps owners adapt properties to changing market demands. The basic Landlord Services include space planning, field verification, pricing plans, and contract documents. Adjacent services provided are lease exhibits, as-builts, BOMA calculations, common area upgrades, new amenity spaces, and exterior transformations.

These vast services support a wide range of improvements, from tenant workplace transformations to building renovations and amenity innovations. Guided by market demand, tenant expectations and leasing objectives, Ware Malcomb balances investment priorities with data-informed planning to help properties remain competitive, attract and retain tenants, and generate measurable return on investment.

Riegel has more than 23 years of interior architecture and design experience including workplace, corporate, retail, healthcare, industrial, public, and education product types. She joined Ware Malcomb in 2010 with a unique background in interior architecture, design, construction, and procurement. Riegel has contributed to many companywide initiatives, including Ware Malcomb’s National Accounts, the firm’s Envision visioning tool, the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) for space planning and now the ideal platform for Building Strategy and Landlord Services.

The Asset Strategy & Landlord Services team tailors its work to each owner’s objectives, recognizing that legacy holders, value-add investors, institutional owners, and partnerships each weigh priorities differently. From there, it helps redevelop properties into spaces that draw tenants and function as destinations, supports tenant attraction at the asset level, and keeps clients informed on where the workplace is heading. Sustainability remains a consistent consideration throughout. Underpinning all of it is a collaborative national and international platform and a proactive, educative approach.