Sears Taps Hill as Chairman of Coldwell Unit

Arthur J. Hill was nominated as the new chairman and chief executive of the Los Angeles-based Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group of Sears, Roebuck & Co., it was announced Tuesday.

Hill, 46, is currently chairman and chief executive of Homart Development, a Chicago-based unit of Coldwell. He will succeed C. Wesley Poulson, 55, longtime head of Coldwell Banker who disclosed earlier this month that he will retire at the end of August and form a private real estate investment company with two other former Coldwell executives.

Hill assumed his current posts at Homart, a major shopping center and office building developer, in 1984 after serving as the company’s president. A native of California, Hill graduated from Stanford University in 1961 and received an MBA from UCLA six years later.

He was executive vice president and a director of First Newport Corp. of Newport Beach, a real estate development firm that was acquired by Coldwell Banker in September, 1981. A year later, he moved to Homart in Chicago.

A successor to Hill at Homart has not been named.