In 2006, I left RSG to attend business school, not knowing how things would fundamentally change with regard to California Redevelopment and ultimately with RSG as a company. My time as an analyst at RSG was amazing; I was working as part of the Real Estate Studio – and we were working on behalf of several incredible clients providing real estate advisory services. Many of these cities needed assistance to analyze large-scale development proposals. Needless to say, it was an exciting time. Furthermore, I loved the culture of teamwork and the positive impact that RSG was creating for communities in California.
My goal in attending business school was to gain the finance and business focus specifically geared toward commercial real estate. After graduation I joined a prestigious commercial real estate company with the hope of focusing on acquisitions and asset management, but soon learned that the economy was crashing and our business was going to shrink. I was also reminded about my very fond memory of time at RSG from a work culture standpoint. Frankly I missed it and had hope of finding it once again.
A few years later, in 2011, California Redevelopment Dissolutionment happened, and California Redevelopment Agencies were effectively gone. Personally, since I experienced the shock to the Commercial Real Estate Industry, I wasn’t completely surprised about what happened to redevelopment, but I knew that at some point in the near future there would still be a need to help our local communities using real estate development and investment as a tool, now more than ever.
Fast forward to today, and I see and now experience firsthand that RSG has made a transformation of sorts; where we are focused on community building and having our city clients’ interests at heart. I also understand that we are able to provide advisory and transactional services for cities that have to deal with their proper asset management and disposition questions. It is once again the beginning of a potentially exciting time, and I’m glad to be a part of it once more.
Written by Andrew Gee who was an Analyst at RSG in 2006 and recently returned as a Senior Associate.