Leadership

Liam Thornton

Playa Associates Inc.

Liam Thornton is the founder and principal of Playa Associates Inc. a specialty investment, development and advisory firm, with offices in Portland, Oregon and Boise, Idaho. Playa Associates’ primary area of focus is developing experiential, branded, and entertainment business concepts into economically viable real estate development projects. Liam has breadth and depth of investment and development experience with functional ability in the areas of strategic planning, investment analysis, project finance, market research, brand-building, land acquisition, entitlement, leasing and project management. He is adept at assembling strong multi-disciplinary teams and has a demonstrated track record of successfully initiating, financing and completing large and complex projects as well as creating and executing corporate business development strategies for companies with strong experiential brands. His development experience has encompassed multiple platforms including retail, gaming, sports, hospitality and entertainment.

Prior to founding Playa Associates, Liam Thornton was the Senior Vice President of Development for House of Blues Entertainment, directing the domestic and international expansion of the House of Blues club venues and House of Blues concert venues. During his tenure as the chief business development executive, House of Blues doubled the number of branded venues in their club portfolio and developed their first gaming property. In this capacity, Liam worked directly with the CEO, the President, and the Board of Directors to create the new club venue development strategy and develop, from the ground up, the internal and external multi-location organization to successfully execute this strategy. He also created contractual, financial, and design standards and metrics used to drive this implementation of House of Blues’ growth strategy.

Before joining House of Blues, Liam was the Vice President and Executive Director of New Business Planning and Development at Universal Creative, the real estate planning, design and development division of Universal Studios Recreation Group (USRG). This was a new position created at Universal to grow the recreation business (theme parks, City Walk retail-entertainment destinations, hotels and new retail concepts) globally. The geographical focus of new project development was primarily international, with regional concentration in Japan, Southeast Asia and Western Europe.

Prior to joining Universal Studios, Mr. Thornton was a development executive for Disney Development Company and Walt Disney Imagineering identifying, evaluating and initiating location-based entertainment, hospitality, sports facility, and architecturally significant corporate real estate investment and development projects. Liam had a key role in Disney’s valuation, feasibility assessment and initial negotiations related to a potential acquisition of an NBA franchise and NFL franchise as well as the corresponding arena and stadium development projects. Liam also led the pre-development team for the Anaheim Stadium renovation working closely with the team ownership and public officials.

Before Disney, Mr. Thornton was a manager for a large west coast commercial builder and developer with responsibility for the development of over 2 million square feet of commercial office, retail, hotel, restaurant and club properties for private and institutional investors.

Mr. Thornton holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Santa Clara, School of Civil Engineering, where he was a DaVinci Scholar, and a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Urban Planning with a concentration in Finance. He is a member of the Design Management Institute, Urban Land Institute, International Council of Shopping Centers and an alumni member of the MIT Center for Real Estate.