People Principals

Jim Simon is responsible for ensuring that RSG’s products and services meet his clients’ needs and satisfaction. As a Principal of the firm, Mr. Simon leads and oversees engagements, ensures product quality, reviews data, analysis and presentation, and is the primary contact person on assignments, regardless of size. Mr. Simon’s expertise lies in the areas of real estate economics, redevelopment plans, economic development strategies, local government studies, and similar community development strategies and implementation initiatives.

Over the past 19 years with the firm, Mr. Simon has worked on over 50 redevelopment plan adoptions and amendments, more than ten economic development strategies, analyzed financial and market aspects of over $500 million in development in the last ten years, and aided in the incorporation or annexation of over a dozen communities. Mr. Simon’s work includes a wide range of public and private sector clients, from private developers in Boise, Idaho, to the small town of Holtville on the Mexico-California border. Most of Mr. Simon’s clients include redevelopment agencies, incorporated or emerging cities, and developers of public-private developments. His assignments are geographically diverse – with equal amounts of engagements in Northern California and Nevada as Southern California.

One of Mr. Simon’s proudest moments as a consultant, one that he frequently shares with clients and staff, was a redevelopment plan adopted for the 3,800-acre South Stockton neighborhood. An area with a well-known legacy of social, physical, and economic problems, the typical approach of telling the public the City’s redevelopment agency could help them fell on deaf ears. This came to a head at a project area committee meeting, where a few residents of South Stockton complained that the broad redevelopment plan would just be another set of big promises. Instead, they wanted a grocery store – that’s it. So, the team put that in the redevelopment plan, and shortly after adoption of the plan, the first full-size grocery store in the community opened.

Sometimes in consulting, it is the response to criticism that defines your firm and staff. Recently, Mr. Simon oversaw the economic development strategy for the City of Oroville, a community of approximately 13,500 residents in Butte County. The initial draft of the strategy focused on near-term implementation recommendations and development incentives, but was not well received by staff. At no additional cost to the City, Mr. Simon met face to face with the client and completely rewrote the entire strategy from beginning to end within the span of six weeks. The result was a strategy that focused on broader policies, measurable objectives, and new initiatives that the City has already begun to implement with RSG’s assistance.

Why Mr. Simon has a passion for his work is summed up in how he naturally feels about his clients and projects. Mr. Simon works to understand his clients’ goals and needs, and adopts those as his own and instills that in his projects. He often uses the word "we" when referring to clients, and embeds in his assignments the understanding of what is the client ultimately trying to achieve and how he can add the most value to that end.