Cindy Nelson chairs Gardere’s hospitality industry team. She handles sophisticated real estate and financing transactions, often involving iconic properties, and represents owners, REITs, opportunity funds and developers, especially in the hospitality and lodging sector. She has represented clients in the acquisition, disposition, leasing and financing of commercial enterprises both domestic and foreign, including hotels and mixed-use developments, shopping centers, multifamily housing developments, office buildings, industrial properties, unimproved land, and fractional and timeshare properties.

Cindy’s practice includes senior and mezzanine financing services, complex workout and debt restructuring, joint ventures, management agreements, franchise agreements, buying, selling, developing and ground leasing of all types of real estate products. She also assists investors with recapitalization of distressed borrowers and purchasers of troubled assets.

Dan Peek, located in Tampa, is a Senior Managing Director and is the Head of the Hospitality Practice Group of HFF. He is primarily responsible for institutional-grade hotel and resort property transactions throughout North America, Latin America and the Caribbean. During the course of his career, Mr. Peek has completed over $11 billion in investment sale, debt and equity placement transactions.

Mr. Peek joined the firm in October 2007. Prior to HFF, he was a co-founder and Managing Director of Regent Street, an affiliate of The Plasencia Group, Inc. (TPG), a boutique firm specializing in sale, financing and advisory services for distinctive hotels and resorts throughout the Americas. He also served as Senior Vice President at TPG, handling hotel and resort property transactions in the Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions. Before TPG, Mr. Peek worked in hotel operations and consulting, including a variety of management positions with Marriott International and Wiengardner & Hammons, and as a consultant with HVS International in New York.