Your publisher snapped this yesterday of perhaps the most popular and influential figure in NY commercial real estate. No, he’s not a mogul, but a workaday man who has been critical in uniting and leading the industry for nearly 30 years—Steve Spinola, president of REBNY, the hugely influential Real Estate Board of New York. He represents every part of the industry and every geography. And is the one who hosts by far the biggest real estate dinner we’ve ever seen—though everyone stands up and schmoozes through it, all 2,500 of them, every January.

Anyway, Steve’s got two grown daughters, one of whom went to Catholic University in DC and lives in Silver Spring. So Steve knows that area. And so when we asked him what impresses him most about the built environment in DC, he said that, after the memorials, he is stunned by the redevelopment and “180-degree transformation” of Silver Spring. Before, he and his wife hesitated to stay there. Now, they love to. And when we told him about the changes Bozzuto, Abdo, and Pritzker are making in Brookland, he said he’d love to see that. Although what he perhaps most likes to see in DC are his... grandkids.