On Friday Dec. 12, MidAmerica Group Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Marvin Pomerantz sent his private Hawker jet to whisk Teresa Wahlert from Des Moines to his home in the tony California desert oasis town of Rancho Mirage in an attempt to lure her to his company.

It worked.

She flew home Saturday. By Sunday morning, Wahlert, a former telecommunications executive who is one of the top economic development officials in Central Iowa, was on the phone with Steven Zumbach, the chairman of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, telling him that she would be leaving the organization at the end of January. On Feb. 1 she will become president and chief operating officer at MidAmerica. She succeeds Joe Pierce, a 15-year veteran of the company who has been chief operating officer for four years.

Wahlert’s move is the result of on-again, off-again conversations she had been holding for years with Pomerantz, whom she met in 1995 when the two served as board members of what was then Norwest Bank. It leaves the Partnership searching for a leader for the second straight year and prompted speculation about whether Wahlert will ultimately succeed the 73-year-old Pomerantz, who suffered serious health problems earlier this year, as head of the real estate development empire he founded in 1961.

“Marvin was asking me how long I want to work,” recalled Wahlert, 55, of her conversations with Pomerantz at his California home. “And I was asking him how long he wants to work.”

Wahlert comes to MidAmerica with no experience in the real estate development industry. Her biggest challenge, at least at first, is going to be familiarizing herself with the business. Pomerantz brushed that issue aside, saying in an interview, “she’ll learn the real estate business. We’ll teach her that.”

Other challenges include the economy and the soft market for office space, where vacancies have grown locally and nationwide amid overbuilding and downsizing by corporate tenants. There were 1.3 million square feet of unoccupied office space in Greater Des Moines in the second quarter, about 12.2 percent of the market according to a recent survey by Grubb & Ellis Co./Knight Frank. That was 1 percent higher than in the first quarter. Interest rates, which could rise in the coming years, could put further pressure on the industry.

What Wahlert does bring to the table, Pomerantz said, is a deep reserve of management experience built during a 32-year career with what is now Qwest Communications International Inc. That career, from which she retired after running Qwest’s operations in Arizona and several other states in 2002, gave Wahlert exposure to a large company and taught her familiarity with federal, state and local government. The telecommunications industry is heavily regulated and during her career, Wahlert lived in Des Moines, Omaha, Boston, New York, Arizona and Denver.

She holds a bachelor of science degree at St. Mary’s College of Notre Dame, a master of business administration degree from Creighton University and a master of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“She has great experience and is a born leader,” Pomerantz said. “She has the capability to look over the mountain top.”

Pierce said he is leaving to pursue other opportunities. He joined the company in 1988 after spending several years as an accountant at what is now Deloitte & Touche Tohmatsu. He said he had been talking with Pomerantz for several months about a change, and felt the end of the year was the best time to do it. His resignation is effective Jan. 1.

“For me, it was a time to move on,” he said. “I am happy for Teresa and Marvin and I am happy for myself. I want to grow and experience new things in my career and felt that was outside MidAmerica.”

MidAmerica has 350 employees and either owns or manages about 2 million square feet of upscale commercial and industrial office space, mostly in Greater Des Moines. The company’s local holdings include the Regency and West Ridge office parks and the North Park Business Center, which is home to Rain and Hail LLC.

The company also holds the Coldwell Banker franchise, run by Carolyn Helmlinger. It is the No. 2 residential realtor in Central Iowa, behind Iowa Realty. MidAmerica’s commercial development efforts are managed through its Grubb & Ellis/MidAmerica Pacific franchise, which in addition to development and ownership of business parks and office buildings, owns hundreds of acres of land throughout the metropolitan area.

Wahlert’s Sunday morning call to Zumbach had the echo of events a year ago at the Partnership, the main engine for economic growth in Greater Des Moines.

On a Sunday morning in December 2002, Zumbach, who then was set to begin his year-long term at the Partnership’s helm, and outgoing Partnership Chair Suku Radia, called Wahlert early to join them for breakfast. The pair asked her to come work at the Partnership. Michael Blouin, who had served as president of the organization since its founding in 1999, had been named head of the Iowa Department of Economic Development by Gov. Tom Vilsack.

Though Wahlert is leaving day-to-day management of the Partnership, she is not leaving the organization entirely. MidAmerica holds a position on the Partnership’s 75-member board. Wahlert is expected to fill that seat.  At the Partnership, Wahlert helped create its framework in the late 1990s and served as its first chairwoman in 1999. She left that job when she was transferred to Arizona by Qwest.

As the Partnership’s president, Wahlert has presided over a series of changes and accomplishments. She has pared its workforce to 40 employees from 55, melding previously overlapping positions and eliminating others altogether. The Downtown Community Alliance, headed by Chris Greenfield, is the most recent addition to the Partnership.

Along with Zumbach, Wahlert led a fundraising campaign that netted more than $17 million, money that will fund the group for the next five years. She also presided over the Partnership’s Project Destiny Task Force, which recently completed its initial recommendations for projects that will lay the groundwork for social and economic change in Greater Des Moines over the next decade.

Those recommendations, which include everything from giving all school-aged children in Greater Des Moines laptop computers to expanding the area’s network of walking paths and significantly changing local government structure and financing, will be prioritized in the next 30 days. They will be presented at the Partnership’s annual dinner Jan. 29, when Principal Financial Group Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive J. Barry Griswell will succeed Zumbach as chairman. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be the event’s keynote speaker.

The Partnership’s board was expected to meet Friday to determine the process by which Wahlert’s successor will be chosen. Potential candidates include Martha Willits, who served as co-chair of the Project Destiny Task Force with Griswell and is head of the United Way of Central Iowa; Iowa Department of Revenue Director Mike Ralston; West Des Moines City Manager Jeff Pomeranz; and Iowa Insurance Commissioner Terri Vaughan, people close to the process said.

Other names that are being discussed include Greenfield and Debi Durham, who runs the economic development group in Sioux City area and was Republican Doug Gross’s running mate in the 2002 gubernatorial election, those people said.