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COPT says new CEO taking over in May
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Stephen E. Budorick, Corporate Office Properties Trust executive vice president and chief operating officer, will become the firm’s CEO in May.
Budorick will replace CEO Roger A. Waesche Jr. following the firm’s annual meeting of shareholders.
“Succession planning has long been a priority for the board and in Steve we have the ideal person with the vision to lead COPT forward,” Thomas Brady, chairman of COPT’s Board of Trustees, said in a news release.
The change in leadership follows a year that saw the Columbia-based office real estate investment trust make bold moves in the Baltimore market. In March, COPT purchased 250 W. Pratt St., home of Pandora Jewelry’s regional headquarters, for $63.5 million. A few months later, the firm acquired Baltimore’s tallest building, the 37-story Transamerica office tower, for $121 million.
COPT also unveiled last summer plans to build a $1 billion mixed-use project with 400-foot residential tower along the Canton waterfront.
In December, COPT sold off two Timonium office properties for $44.5 million in December. In the fourth quarter of 2015 alone the company sold off $150 million in suburban office properties.
At that time, Waesche said it was part of a plan to “recycle proceeds from the sale of suburban office properties” to pursue a “strategic objective of increasing the amount of urban, amenity-rich and mass-transit served building in our Regional Office Portfolio.”
