Richmond State of the Market

Louis J. Rogers is the founder and chief executive officer of Capital Square and its related entities He is also the founder and chief executive officer of Rogers Realty Advisors, LLC. Prior to founding Capital Square, he served as managing director of private programs at a national real estate sponsor and was the former chief executive officer of its FINRA-licensed broker-dealer. Rogers was a founding member of a national real estate investment sponsor in 1998, where he ultimately served as president and on the board of directors until 2007. Under his leadership, the company became the nation’s largest tenant-in-common (TIC) sponsor, which syndicated in excess of $5 billion of real estate in over 100 offerings, including TICs, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and real estate funds. Prior to 2004, Rogers was an influential tax, securities, and real estate attorney. He was a partner with the Hirschler Fleischer law firm in Richmond, Virginia (1987-2004), where he founded and led the firm’s Real Estate Securities Practice Group. Rogers was responsible for billions of dollars of TIC, REIT and fund offerings as an attorney and executive officer. In 2017, Rogers was a finalist for the 2017 EY Entrepreneur of the Year Mid-Atlantic. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, he was listed as one of the most powerful and influential leaders on the Virginia 500 Power List by Virginia Business and was also awarded Real Estate Forum’s Best Bosses 2020 by GlobeSt. In September 2022, Rogers will be honored by the Richmond chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for his significant impact on the Richmond community. Rogers earned a Bachelor of Science from Northeastern University in 1979 (with highest honors), a Bachelor of Arts (with honors) in 1981 and Master of Arts in 1985 in Jurisprudence from Oxford University, and a Juris Doctor degree in 1984 from University of Virginia School of Law. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary and lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Loretta Cataldi has joined Divaris Real Estate as Principal and Managing Broker for the Richmond office. Besides her role, she specializes in all aspects of sales and leasing for tenants and landlords throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Loretta has executed over four million square feet of commercial space over her twenty-plus year career. She brings experience in Leasing, Development, Landlord Representation, Land Sales, Tenant Representation, Site Selection, Expansion Strategies to the Retail, Office, and Industrial sectors of commercial real estate. Her previous experience includes Property Management. A sampling of representation includes; Saul Centers, Holladay Properties, Madison Properties, Holland Trust Properties, Whitestar Investment, VEREIT, ShopCore, CIM Group, Clayco, Douglas Development, Regency Centers, Ramco-Gershenson, Café Rio, Anytime Fitness Brands, Stumpy’s Hatchet House, Huddle House Invisible Ink, Bojangles, Earth Fare, Wells Fargo, New York & Company, Growler U, and Meritage Hospitality to name a few. She knows networking is a critical element to building one’s knowledge and relationships within the real estate industry. Loretta is actively involved with multiple organizations such as the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), Urban Land Institute (ULI), Commercial Real Estate Women of RVA (CREW), and Greater Richmond Area Commercial Real Estate (GRACRE). Loretta is a licensed broker in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

Ashley Peace serves as President of Sauer Properties, Inc., a private company based in Richmond, Virginia specializing in commercial real estate development and investment. Peace is responsible for strategic leadership and operations of the company. Peace’s team recently completed the development of approximately 330,000 square feet of Class A retail and office at The Sauer Center, an award-winning, mixed-use center anchored by a Whole Foods Market. Peace has extensive real estate knowledge with specialties in the areas of residential and commercial real estate, land use planning, and valuation. As a former Director of Real Estate Development for HHHunt Corporation, Peace executed a broad range of corporate real estate strategies and transactions. Peace managed the land use, entitlements, and design process to develop new construction apartment and senior living communities throughout the East Coast for HHHunt Corporation; $230 million+ in development. Peace previously served as the Director of Real Estate and Construction for Lidl US. Peace was instrumental in the international retailer's entry into the US market overseeing real estate acquisitions, land use development, and construction throughout the Southeast. Peace's regional real estate team constructed eight of Lidl's first ten stores which opened in June 2017. Her team went on to construct and open twenty-four (24) stores in eighteen (18) months. As a land use planner, Peace worked on large-scale economic development projects in the Richmond, VA region and provided planning and real estate consulting services to Bon Secours Richmond Health System. Peace also worked for Colliers International (formerly MGMiller Valuations) as a Commercial Real Estate Analyst having appraised over one hundred commercial properties. Peace has valuation experience in all property types including residential, agricultural, industrial, retail, office, multi-family, hotels, and historic properties. Peace has personally renovated and sold multiple investment properties and restored a historic landmark utilizing historic tax credits. The Peace’s former historic home, White Plains was awarded Preservation Virginia’s 2013 Historic House Rehabilitation Award and was featured on the Garden Club of Virginia’s 2015 Historic Garden Tour. Peace enjoys spending time with her family and volunteering in the community. She is a parent volunteer for St. Catherine’s and St. Christopher’s Schools and serves on the Board of Trustees for Capital Trees. Professionally, she enjoyed serving as an appointed Planning Commissioner for Hanover County. Peace is active in the Richmond Real Estate Group, Greater Richmond Association for Commercial Real Estate, CREW (Commercial Real Estate Women), and is a member of VCU’s Real Estate Circle of Excellence. Peace holds a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from Virginia Commonwealth University and a B.S. from Virginia Tech.

Mr. Harkless has significant design, planning, and construction experience from his time in Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York City and has worked on a variety of projects from affordable housing and luxury condominiums in Manhattan to large scale institutional projects in Montgomery County, Maryland. His comprehensive background informs his long term and holistic development philosophy which strives to create sustained economic and social opportunities for urban communities. He is currently a principal at Lynx Ventures, a real estate development and investment firm based in Richmond, Virginia, where he is primarily responsible for development management and project execution. He is also a co-founder of Hatch Richmond, a consortium of companies that enables growth in the food and beverage industry in Central Virginia. Mr. Harkless is a Board Member of Storefront for Community Design, the Partnership for Housing Affordability, BridePark. Mr. Harkless earned a bachelor in architecture from the University of Virginia and dual master’s degrees in urban planning and real estate development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scott Doyle, Director, works within the multifamily investment sales team of Walker & Dunlop’s Bethesda, Maryland office. Mr. Doyle represents multifamily owners, developers, and operators. He oversees the development and execution of multifamily properties throughout the Mid-Atlantic and is responsible for expanding market share within Core Plus, Value-add, and Opportunistic multifamily assets. He specializes in middle-market, private client relationships. Prior to joining Walker & Dunlop, Mr. Doyle served as Managing Director of Seaport Global Securities, a full-service, mid-sized, independent investment bank that offers capital markets advisory, sales, trading, and research services. He also has served as Senior Vice President for KLR Group and Pritchard Capital Partners. Mr. Doyle earned his degree from Georgetown University.

Tom has practiced architecture for over 30 years, and has been involved in integrating sustainable design resilience principles into a variety of ground-breaking adaptive use and affordable housing projects, with these projects recognized with multiple awards for design, smart growth, sustainable design and historic preservation. Tom is involved in the ongoing exploration of the relationship between sustainability, preservation and urban design, with a particular emphasis in the use of urban adaptive use projects to promote neighborhood revitalization and civic engagement and is currently working on 4% and 9% LIHTC projects in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

As the Vice President (previously Director of Business Development) for ARCO Design/Build, Drew Enstice brings 15+ years of experience in the construction industry. With expertise in strategic and operational marketing and client relationships, Drew plays an integral role in driving ARCO’s new business opportunities in addition to finding solutions to the needs of future clients. He manages client relationships in Maryland, Virginia and Central Pennsylvania. Prior to joining ARCO in 2018, he spent 5.5 years as a project manager for Whiting-Turner in Baltimore followed by over 5 years of traveling to construction projects across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions as a sales manager for Trimble. Drew graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Industrial Engineering.

John Newby is the CEO at Virginia Bio, the statewide non-profit trade association for the life science industry. Nearly 300 entities spanning biopharmaceuticals, medical device, med tech, diagnostics, digital health, bioinformatics, agriculture and industrial bio and related fields are based in Virginia, mainly clustered around research universities and medical institutions. Virginia Bio is the sole state affiliate and works closely with key national industry organizations Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), AdvaMed, Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA), Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) and We Work for Health. Newby was formerly the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services (VDVS), where he led an 850-member Agency located across 50 Virginia locations, delivering employment, education, benefits, behavioral health and long term health care services to Virginia’s Reservists, Guardsmen, transitioning service members and 725,000 veterans. Prior to leading VDVS Newby practiced corporate, intellectual property and Hatch-Waxman biopharmaceutical law at international law firms in Richmond and Washington DC, and at a multinational company. Newby previously commanded an Air Force special operations unit supporting the U.S. Army’s 3rd and 7th Special Forces Groups (Airborne), and served in Iraq as an aviator aboard the Boeing B-1B Lancer strategic bomber. Newby received a B.S. from the United States Air Force Academy, with Military Distinction, and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Chandra Briggman is President and CEO of Activation Capital, a leading innovation ecosystem development organization providing social, knowledge, and financial capital to tech clusters across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Before being named the CEO in May 2020, Chandra was Director of Venture Café Foundation located in Cambridge, MA, and was responsible for the strategy and operations of the global network’s flagship Venture Café Cambridge innovation hub. She played a key role in helping expand the revenue and the footprint in New England. Before her work in ecosystem development in Massachusetts, she held innovation roles with the United States Postal Service in Washington, DC, culminating with her work as the Director of Digital Platforms and the Innovation Lab. Her prior experience comprised leadership roles with multiple startups, including Founder as a serial entrepreneur. Chandra is an active member of the entrepreneurship and innovation community, including as a guest lecturer, coach/mentor, public speaker, and Chair of the Board for Youth CITIES - a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to youth entrepreneurship. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in the Humanities from Columbia International University, a Master’s in Marketing from Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Raj Vora is a life sciences core market leader at DPR Construction, one of the top technical builders and the #1 ranked pharmaceutical contractor in the U.S. for the last 5 years (ENR 2017-2021). Raj has more than 20 years of experience in the A/E/C industry, with emphasis on Life Sciences where he has delivered complex engineering and construction projects at a high level of quality while maintaining budget and schedule requirements. Focused on cell/gene therapy projects and companywide resources, he works across DPR to help our teams excel in the life sciences core market, which is focused on understanding and better serving customers in the areas of biotechnology, pharmaceutical, bio-agricultural, medical device and research institutes.

As Executive Vice President of Business Development, Mitchel Allen specializes in providing market analysis and site selection assistance to international and domestic companies looking to expand or relocate their business to Greater Richmond. In his role, he is responsible for implementing the strategy plan to attract more business to the region. Over the course of his decades-long career in economic development, Mitchel has successfully recruited over 60 companies creating more than 8,900 jobs and accounting for $4 billion in economic impact. Mitchel has received several awards and recognitions throughout his career including being named as one of North America’s Top 50 Economic Developers in 2020 and 2017, a recipient of the 40 Under 40 Development Counsellors International (DCI) award in 2019 and Economic Developer of the Year by the Arizona Association of Economic Development (AAED) in 2017.

Maritza E. Mercado Pechin, AICP is the Deputy Director for Equitable Development at the City of Richmond, Virginia where she is working toward creating a more equitable and sustainable city. Her office’s work focuses on implementing the city-wide master plan through 1) city-initiated rezoning, 2) community planning, 3) capital budget alignment, and 4) redeveloping city-owned property. Maritza was previously a planning consultant with AECOM and the development manager at Fulton Hill Properties. Maritza is an active member of the Urban Land Institute and the American Planning Association. Originally from Puerto Rico, Maritza speaks 5 languages. She earned an AB in Government from Harvard College and Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. Maritza and her family have lived in Richmond for 10 years in 4 different neighborhoods and currently live in Battery Park.

Marco Ireland has over 20 years of selling products and services to the commercial real estate industry. As the Business Development Manager for General Contractor EDC, Industrial Division, Marco’s responsibility is to expand their industrial portfolio by adding more 50-500K SF industrial projects on the east coast. EDC is a $150M per year Traveling General Contractor, that for the past 30 years has built thousands of projects in over 370 US cities for big box retailers, movie theaters, self-storage and industrial properties. Prior to Joining EDC last May, Marco spent the majority of his career selling real estate products and services. Most notable he spent 3 years selling CoStar’s commercial real estate market information in the Richmond metro area. Marco’s strength lies in developing and maintaining relationships by consistently providing innovative construction and development solutions to meet his clients’ needs. He demonstrates enthusiasm and commitment on every assignment and his detailed execution and constant communication have assisted in seamless, successful projects on his clients’ behalf. Marco’s knowledge of the product and industry, work ethic and high level of service have made him an expert in the industry. He is happily married to his wife Rebecca and in his free time can be found coaching his 3 children in football, lacrosse and volleyball.

Mr. Smith currently serves as Regional President of United Bank in Southern Virginia.  Prior to United Bank’s acquisition of Essex Bank in 2021,Mr. Smith was the President and Chief Executive Officer of Essex Bank since September 2010. From April 2009 to August 2010, he served as the Bank’s Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer. From 2007 to 2009, he was the Central Virginia President for Gateway Bank and Trust and, from 2000 to 2007, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of The Bank of Richmond. Prior to that Mr. Smith held Executive positions at Guaranty Bank in Charlottesville Virginia and with Central Fidelity Bank in Richmond, Virginia. He has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Richmond where he was an Honors Member of Beta Gamma. He is a published author on many banking topics such as; branch banking, transfer pricing methodologies and retail profitability analysis in the American Banker, ABA Marketing Journal and, the Community Banker. Mr. Smith formally served on the Boards of the March of Dimes and Children’s Hospital of Richmond. He is currently a Board member of Bankers Insurance, LLC.