Real Perspectives Podcast

Building a co-living enterprise was a challenge even before the COVID pandemic, but Starcity founder and CEO Jon Dishotsky took the approach of building communities from his early days and family focus on communal living.

Today, Starcity is growing, it just acquired a competing operator Ollie, which gives it instant exposure on the East Coast, and the company is poised for further growth as it moves forward with plans to get to 3,000 units and more over the next few years.

We sit down with Jon to talk about how transformative co-living has been in major urban areas of the country and the world and where this industry will be heading in the future.

Robert Freed is the Chief Executive Officer of SummerHill Homes and SummerHill Apartment Communities, a privately owned home builder focusing on the unique needs of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Over the last 40 years, SummerHill has completed more than 70 developments representing over 5,000 single-family homes, condominiums, townhomes, and apartments.

Robert draws from a dynamic background in real estate, corporate finance, and accounting to overseeing SummerHill Housing Group. He joins us to talk about the changes with which the industry has been faced in 2020 and what it means for his company and other homebuilders across the country.

Tony Vargas is the Global Head of Workplace at sprinklr, a New York-based technology firm that is growing across the globe. Tony is making great strides in creating an environment for the company's distributed workplace to feel engaged and connected, as well as experience work in a brand new mode guided by the limitations imposed by COVID-19. He doesn't think the office will ever be the same again, and work performed there will likely be only purposeful and driven by a need to gather together physically a few times a week. 

That implies that pre-COVID office utilization is an outdated model, and measuring employee efficacy needs a reinvented scale, as well.

We sit down today with Mark Whiting, the co-founder, chairman and CEO of San Francisco-based Drawbridge Realty. Drawbridge is a real estate investment and development company that targets commercial property investments in growth markets across the U.S. Its portfolio primarily consists of office properties leased long-term to large corporations with an emphasis on strategically important locations.

Mark Whiting and Mark Pearson formed Drawbridge Partners in 1999. In late 2011, Drawbridge Partners recapitalized the company with a major institutional investor, Almanac Realty Investors, and changed the name of the company to Drawbridge Realty Trust. During the next three years, Drawbridge tripled the size of its portfolio and generated steady growth in profitability and valuation. In December 2014, Drawbridge formed a partnership with international asset management firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., LP ("KKR") which made a significant investment in the Company to substantially grow the platform.

Peter Conte is a member of a Transwestern team that assists clients in every stage of the real estate process including real estate leasing or disposing of facility leases, providing strategic, long-term planning via portfolio analysis, site selection and employee location consulting.

Peter is the Bay Area head of Transwestern's BioTech Advisory Group, leading the company's efforts in life science and biotech office and laboratory disposition, having years of professional lab experience with the USDA and public/private cancer research departments before working in brokerage.

Bob Tiscareno is the founder and principal of Seattle-based Tiscareno Associates, an architecture firm focused on bringing design vision in mixed-use and multifamily developments across the greater Puget Sound region. Bob started the form in 2002 and built it into a mid-size, full-service architecture and planning firm. 

Bob’s mantra is all about forgetting egos and forgoing habits and letting go of “the way we did it before.” The firm is focused rather on gathering around the same table for fresh, collective thinking that solves every problem with ingenuity and teamwork.

As the owner and sole proprietor of SECO Development, Michael has experience in real estate development that stretches over three decades. He has been purchasing and building real estate since 1980, but he formed SECO Development in 1989 and has been developing mixed-use projects in Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Renton.

As a principal in SECO, Michael is intimately involved in all aspects of development and is personally in charge of acquisitions and dispositions. He is involved in design, marketing, and financing while maintaining strong relationships with the cities in which he builds. SECO’s latest project is Southport on Lake Washington, which offers an impressive Hyatt Regency hotel on the shore of Lake Washington with another 730,000 square foot campus in its background. The development is surrounded by housing, retail and connections throughout the greater Puget Sound region.

Today, I sit down with Maddie Meyersieck and Jack Seymour, two younger members of the commercial real estate community in San Francisco to talk about their perspective on the market, and how today’s environment is shaping not just their industry but also their young careers.

Maddie is a Senior Associate and Jack is an Associate in agency leasing and tenant advisory with Transwestern in San Francisco. Both are still in their 20s, and working to grow their careers further themselves beyond what is happening across the industry today.

Jessica Grimes is the Chief Marketing Officer of Compass California, a division of Compass, formerly Pacific Union International.  

A recognized leader in the industry, Grimes has led creative services, branding, advertising and marketing strategies and teams since 2012, guiding Pacific Union through its growth as a boutique luxury real estate brokerage to its current stage today as Compass California with sales volume of $14 billion inside of the dynamic Compass emerging global brand.

A son of an artist and cabinet maker, Mark Quattrocchi grew up surrounded by drawings and sawdust, influencing his decision to take drafting as his seventh-grade elective. From this early age, he knew he was going to be an architect. Paying for his architecture education by his carpentry work, he graduated equipped with a Master of Architecture degree and a keen understanding of construction, perfect for opening his own firm, Quattrocchi Architects, in 1986.

Soon after, Quattrocchi got the opportunity to design a new classroom building at Mendocino Community High School in Mendocino, CA. He was so moved by the passion of the teachers and school administrators that he completely immersed himself in the process of educational design. To this day, this ranks as one of his favorite projects because it inspired him to veer the firm to be educationally-focused. Later, Steve Kwok joined as partner in 1993, and together they built Quattrocchi Kwok Architects (QKA), a thriving K-12 and higher education firm with two office locations and a staff of more than 60 people.