Troy Furbay has only been on the job five weeks, but he’s already got big plans with Loews Hotels. The new executive vice president of acquisitions and development can draw on his almost 10 years of similar experience at Kimpton Hotels, where he helped lead the San Francisco-based boutique hotel company into markets up and down the East Coast.

His task with Loews is to drive similar growth in gateway cities and resort locations across the country. Although Loews has just 19 properties, Furbay says the company’s brand recognition belies a much larger player in the industry and will help fuel expansion.

Not only will Furbay draw on the brand name, he’ll also be armed with the backing of Loews Corp.’s balance sheet.

Furbay wants to add properties in New York City, where Loews is headquartered, and in other prime markets like Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. He says Loews is considering everything from acquisitions to new construction to adaptive reuse. He also wants to grow Loews through management contracts—five of the 19 properties aren’t corporate owned—and will look for opportunities in assisting owners in distress.

Furbay recently took some time to discuss his new position and plans for growth.

Where is Loews looking to expand?
If you look at our portfolio, where we need distribution is in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and more in New York. One of the things that attracted me to Loews is its tremendous brand recognition. Despite the portfolio of 19, if you ask anybody walking down the street, most would have guessed it was much larger. It’s really a good opportunity to capitalize on the brand recognition of Loews and Jonathan Tisch.

How do you do that?
We have the benefit of strong corporate ownership through our parent company, Loews Corp. and its large balance sheet. We can grow through substantial or all-equity investments into a project or acquisition, and we’ll look at some interesting things on the debt side as well (buying notes).

Is new construction an option?
In not too many markets does it make sense when you can buy at or below replacement cost. But in a handful of markets, it’s making more and more sense, particularly in gateway cities on the East Coast like Boston and New York City. We’re looking at new builds in those markets.

Can projects like that get financed?
Our take through some discussions is in key markets, with really strong fundamentals, (lenders) are starting to open up to new construction—it’s limited to four or five cities in the U.S. I don’t think the floodgates are going to open yet, but a project in Boston or New York City could get funded.

We are much more looking at existing assets, acquiring and rebranding or redeveloping them or adaptive reuse of other commercial buildings.

You’ve got some experience with adaptive reuse at Kimpton…
You bet. Loews has done a couple projects like that, most recently in (New Orleans). I’ve done quite a bit of those with Kimpton and that’s a great way to get in below retail cost.

Have you been surprised at some of the trading prices of top assets in gateway cities?
I think a little, but buying aggressive at the bottom feels better than buying aggressive after three to four years of a strong uptick. Big prices—but the expectation is the next three years look strong, and that’s the consensus I think. There’s a lot of money in the market now with a fairly low cost of capital, which is propping up prices. But on historic means, the transaction volume is still really low. There have been a number of highly publicized acquisitions, but those were what, maybe 10 that caught a lot of attention? In a normal transaction market, those wouldn’t get that.

How does the new job differ from the old?
Kimpton was and continues to focus on a different hotel, a smaller boutique hotel, primarily in city center and urban locations. Loews is different in that respect; we’re really strong in resorts and very strong in larger hotels. Loews’ average hotel size is 400 to 450 keys, with more meeting space than Kimpton, a heavier group focus and more in the luxury category. We’re a little bit different fundamentally, with bigger boxes.

Anything else you can take from your experience at Kimpton?
I think in the past we’ve been very focused on larger 400-room hotels with heavy meeting space. One thing that occurred to me when I joined is we are right up at the top of guest satisfaction with Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton with service scores, which blew me away, particularly in these larger hotels. There’s no reason we couldn’t bring that into a smaller hotel, a luxury 200-room property, and expand our bandwidth.

I’m convinced we could be effective and grow with a smaller box strategy. A 200-room hotel with less meeting space in the upper-upscale to luxury category will open up new opportunities.

Would that open the door to some new markets?
We still need to get into the markets I mentioned earlier to broaden our distribution, but in markets we’re already in, like New York or Atlanta, having a multi-asset approach will help the existing hotel and leverage down costs. In particular, in New York we could have half a dozen hotels and capitalize on our brand recognition and most of our resources are here with the headquarters.