Location Santa Barbara, California, United States Regions West Coast, Western US Gender Male Also Known As Pat Smith WestPac CEO
Website www.westpaccommunities.com/bios/patrick-smith/ LinkedIn View on LinkedIn
Pat Smith is the CEO of WestPac, an investment management firm founded in 1974 and handling a diverse portfolio of privately-held properties. WestPac currently employs 350+ employees with operations in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Hawaii, and Australia.
Pat Smith and WestPac, in collaboration with a series of banks and private
investing partners, have developed projects that include over 5,000 apartment units, seven hotels, five senior living communities, and a series of single family subdivisions, condos, and office spaces.
Pat graduated from California Polytechnic in 1976 with a B.S. in Architecture. He went on to found Smith and Company, a real estate development firm, before meeting Alex Pananides and partnering together under the name WestPac (a name Pananides had been investing under for several years).
Pat Smith currently resides in nearby Santa Barbara with his wife, Jennifer, where he does creative strategic planning for the future of WestPac.
Recent Projects
Former Lake Trust Credit Union Building Located in East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University, the large historic building that once was home to Lake Trust Credit Union had fallen into disuse and disrepair. Rather than allowing the city to raze the building or let it fall further into decay, Smith and WestPac purchased the historic building and its surrounding area with big plans.
Investing $33 million into the project, the former Lake Trust Credit Union has been transformed into a mixed-use space featuring dozens of residences on the upper floors and a series of retail spaces on the ground floor including a gym, shopping, and much more. This development is said to have helped revitalize the Lansing downtown area, which has long been one of Smith’s passions.
“We’ve always looked at revamping the 501 block, the old Lake Trust six story building with the walkout basement into multifamily, because it’s got super cool views of the city,” Pat Smith, WestPac CEO said. “It’s got some historical...mid-60s architecture, and we wanted to facilitate that, keeping that building and also doing a renovation of the renaissance of that building.”
Hotel Cerro Located in San Luis Obispo, the same town where Smith once attended college, Hotel Cerro is a collaboration with longtime partners Hamish Marshall and Alex Pananides. This luxury hotel also resulted from a reinvigoration of a historic building, a 100-year-old brick structure that Smith reinforced with steel trusses in order to keep much of the original brickwork and architecture. The result is a hotel that combines modern luxury touches like garden suites with a historic vibe that visitors and residents to SLO love.
