I was back on Whitney Portal Rd for Labor Day weekend on the way to Lake Tahoe, and watched the sun come up at 6 a.m. almost twenty years after I stood on that mountain's summit in 2008 and 2009. This time I wasn't making a proclamation, I was quiet, meditative, in listening mode, reflecting, and contemplating on a mesa I have visited many times.

Next month I turn 47 years old, and mornings like this have a way of putting the stresses of life in the rearview. The key for me is to stay focused forward looking through the front windshield and staying present in the moment. Over my morning coffee at the local cafe, I saw a quote on the wall that stopped me:

These legacy brand names from the 1980-90s in San Diego, encouraged me to join a small, local owned and operated CRE brokerage: BRE Commercial (BRE). This would be the platform that would allow my entrepreneurial nature to thrive. The culture of autonomy, focused experts across submarkets and product lines and CRE's limitless possibilities was the perfect storm for me to enter the game.

Transitioning from a decade baseball player, professional athlete, Ivy League Team Capitan and global traveler across 3 continents since my teens, my mentors knew I would compete to be the best at whatever position I was asked to play.

My first real estate sale transaction was born out of an apprentice program 2003-04 and closed in 2005. This was a $52 million sale of Porta D' Italia, a 190-unit condominium conversion in Little Italy.

I represented the buyer, Lennar (NYSE: LEN), a publicly traded homebuilder alongside my senior broker Linville Martin. No one around me, including my Dad, thought a transaction that large was possible. The truth is I didn't know the magnitude being my first sale transaction.

I was in my mid-twenties lacking transactional experience yet my relationships opened the door to the lead. That belief was enough to earn runner-up for Rookie of the Year in 2005.

This would become a foundational lesson that everything else in my life would be built upon:

Backtracking a bit to 2004-06 the early days as a real estate salesperson, Oliver McMillan gave me my first mixed-use leasing assignment at the corner of 8th and G in East Village. Dene Oliver and Jim Reynolds took a chance on someone young and unproven, and that corner became Neighborhood. This would be the first restaurant that launched Arsalun Tafazoli and Consortium Holdings.

Neither of us could have built San Diego without the people willing to bet on us twenty years ago. We were chosen and trusted to perform before either of us had proven we could, which proves to me that anyone can be successful if given a chance.

Times would not be easy, and when the for-sale residential home and condo market cratered in 2006, many of us took financial hits. I shifted my team away from landlord leasing and development/land advisory in the GFC into tenant rep retail, food and beverage and tactical urbanism.

We found that the smaller, faster, more agile bets built on activation and placemaking instead of big capital stacks were most successful. We hit our stride in 2012-13, with my team branded Urban Strategies with partners Michael Burton and Pasquale Ioele. We were unstoppable growing market share and doubling our volumes annually.

We would shift again finding our own client bases and niches in real estate, and for me the turning point was the acquisition of the lease for Craft & Commerce in 2010-11, and then predevelopment work for Kettner Exchange between 2012-14. Both in Little Italy, these would be pivotal moments that would catalyze development and investment on the west side of Downtown and the waterfront for the next decades.

Looking back at hundreds of food and beverage project openings, hospitality/hotel and creative office projects, entertainment districts, and education campus consulting over 25 years, my takeaway was that the individual entrepreneurs, work horses and emerging brands risked it all for their vision.

That's the key to economic development's success, taking risk when everyone else is on the sidelines.

I noticed from ages 30-35 a handful of clients moved ahead between 2009-14 and didn't retreat in the downturn, they doubled down.

My mixed use development experience as a broker led me into starting my principal career during the 2012-14 window. I had closed my first land sale at the start of the GFC 2008-09 with Jonathan Segal AIA. The site would become The Q in Little Italy. Then in 2010-11, I facilitated the land sale that became the Charmer in South Mission Hills where I represented both the Seller and Buyer, Segal again. I followed that by facilitating his son Matt Segal's first acquisition of the Golden Hill Post Office.

These transactions, due diligence and design/development studies that ensued would light a fire inside me. It also began building key relationships and doors that would open across CA for billions of development capitalizations, millions of square feet leased and thousands of units built over the economic cycle.

That led to 2011-13 work with Graham Downes Architecture, Blokhaus Development, Lloyd Russell AIA, Mike Burnett and Foundation 4 Form and Butler Malick Master Builders. I learned to work alongside architect-developers rather than just transact with them and I started guest lecturing and mentoring students of mine own and with my professor buddies at the Woodbury University's Master of Real Estate Development program, USD's Master of Science in Real Estate program, and the NewSchool of Architecture and Design.

Kettner Exchange in Little Italy was my first development advisory and entitlement assignment, and it marked the real pivot from pure brokerage into principal advisory work. The project won an Orchid Award from the San Diego Architectural Foundation and I saw firsthand what it takes to go from a raw vision to become the City's top destination, still true more than a decade later.

The breaking point: Partnered with Graham Downes and Blokhaus Capital Corporation, we won the bid in 2012 to purchase the Britt Scripps Inn and the old Mandarin House Chinese restaurant site and 13 unit apartment house in Banker's Hill. The development site would become 41 West, a condominium tower that ICON Properties built at 2604 Fifth Avenue, but not before some major life experiences unfolded.

During the 2011-2013 timeframe, I got married and watched my first son, Connor, come into the world. Shortly thereafter, I lost a dear friend and business partner, architect Graham Downes to an act of violence that shook the whole San Diego design community.

As the market found its footing again, I moved from tactical, small-scale infill development into mixed use. From apartment, hotel development and value-add repositioning, adaptive reuse and New Markets Tax Credit financing, I liked capital stacks and financial tools that let capital flow back into the communities. I targeted overlooked buildings, corridors and the communities left behind.

In 2013-14, the small brokerage company that I had spent over a decade growing with became Cassidy Turley a national brand. My Urban Strategies practice and the Downtown San Diego focus had expanded across So Cal and often was multimarket national chain store work.

I had a thirst for ground up development and when the brokerage business was acquired by DTZ, I exited the climb of the corporate ladder. DTZ move ahead and acquired Cushman Wakefield (NYSE: CWK) in a deal worth billions, in turn consolidating the CRE industry. I was clear I had made the right career move taking the risk to venture on my own.

I formed Fitzgerald Real Estate Corporation in 2013 and by 2016-20, I had assembled my first thousand units of land and a billion of development as a principal. I had made it or so I thought and it turns out decades later looking back, I am just getting started.

New Markets Tax Credit financing is one of the tools that works best like LIHTC and other social/conscious capital models because the programs are built for exactly the kind of building most people write off. Three projects tell my story and were the catalyst for me embarking on a new BHAG in 2015-20.

Wholly Creation's 40 years of experience runs the full spectrum of housing and real estate verticals, not biased by one niche or lens. The part that matters most is how we work today both vertically and horizontally scaling.

The work isn't finished. I keep innovating in workforce and affordable housing, modular off-site construction, and mixed-use development efficiencies, and what I have coined Community Building Beyond Development. The is more to life than a brokerage commission and just another project, we have to find meaning in our work. All should be able to afford an apartment at all levels of income, especially the middle incomes and frontline workers of society.

One of my most recent projects, a land acquisition role played in 2022-23, 6171 Mission Gorge Road, is nearing completion of 483 units. It has been touted as the largest privately funded modular workforce housing in California, It was built on the conviction that Impact Housing US LLC was founded on in 2021:

Seeing the opportunity is one thing. Proving it, quickly and credibly, is another. Our programmatic approach includes a set of project-type playbooks, workflows, and systems-thinking tools, built with software and AI, that let us assess almost any site or structure fast.

We're formalizing and updating the Toolkit now, as Modules 0 through 5, with fresh thinking built for a market where rates are higher for longer and, from 2023 through 2026, the real work is adaptive reuse and building with structures that already exist, not ground-up speculation.

A new pipeline running the length of California involves acquiring legacy land and repositioning it for the workforce and neighbors who need it most. From San Diego up through Orange County and Los Angeles to Sacramento we are sourcing opportunities with defunct malls, underutilized commercial parcels, and vacant motels/offices complexes.

We are working with sellers, brokers, cities and our clients/teams to reposition land toward mixed-use, higher-density, for-sale housing, and what our most vulnerable neighbors actually need: workforce, affordable, senior and large family communities.

If you're a developer or capital partner with funds or programs looking for off-market sites or want to learn more about our site built vs modular, off-site construction experiences, contact us to assess you property or portfolio.

Which brings me to where the work sits today. For the last year, we've been supporting and facilitating Pop-Up Winona on El Cajon Boulevard, alongside the ECBBIA and Tootie Thomas. The property owner leased the site at a discount to have activation and community benefit. The past year since October 2025, there have been more than 50 public events that drew over 5,000 people. This has brought energy to a stretch of the Boulevard that has not had much hope for decades and decades is disinvestment.

It's a small project by dollar volume compared to an institutional-size sale or a billion-dollar development program, but it's the same muscle: showing up, building trust, and doing the community and economic development work a corridor actually needs. I held a board seat for 5 years with the nonprofit, and their success matters to me as much as anything because the community is hungry for more gatherings and events.

Many will follow. Few will be able to say they were there first. I am never leaving. I never left. I narrowed my focus, expanded my scope, and jumped timelines to answer the call on work other people thought was impossible.