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Bio
As President and CEO of Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners, Mr. Lynch assumes primary responsibility for firm management and project coordination, with a commitment to developing a quality product and superior service. That commitment has produced distinctive urban mixed-use projects for investors and a distinguished list of public, private and non-profit clients.
Mr. Lynch has over twenty years’ experience in public and private real estate as an investor and advisor, including projects in Silicon Valley, CA and Washington, DC. He founded Jair Lynch in 1998 and has completed more than 65 projects totaling almost 4.3 million square feet of development in DC, with an additional 1.7 million square feet in his development pipeline. He is a driving force for urban regeneration, working to create walkable urban places to empower people, develop place and create prosperity.
Jair grew up in Washington, DC and attended Sidwell Friends where he was an excellent student and became a world class gymnast. He subsequently attended Stanford University and became Captain of their Gymnastics team. While there he competed in the 1992 Olympic Games. After graduation from Stanford he joined Silicon Graphics in their real estate department and trained for the 1996 Olympics where he earned a Silver Medal in the parallel bars event. He subsequently returned to Washington DC to begin his company.
Show Notes
- Jair Lynch Company- Less than 10MM s.f., so he is involved with portfolio often, but most of his time is with strategic planning. (3:20)
- Has CEO perspective now (4:40)
- Pandemic influences on business- Shaken everyone to their core (5:30)
- Affected people first
- Team has been resilient enough to execute on plans from 2019
- Able to keep all projects moving forward and accelerate business
Origins
- Parents are immigrants and met at Johns Hopkins Center of International Studies in an academic environment (7:30)
- Father is a Professor at Howard University
- Mother is an academic and with the Organization of American States)
- Grew up in Washington DC and parents opened him up to museums (8:50)
- U Street history
- 3 Levels- Local, Federal and International perspectives of Washington DC (10:30)
Education and Athletic Career
- Sidwell Friends– Value structure aligned with parents (12:00)
- Connections gained helped even beyond high school as an alumnus
- It shaped his world view (13:10)
- Gymnastics career
- YMCA was origin of sports (13:40)
- He was always there and most interested in gymnastics consistently (14:15)
- Stanford
- As a gymnastics star, he had only a few choices and Stanford was his best choice and was recruiting from the East Coast (16:00)
- National Champion- Tim Ryan was attractive (17:15)
- Only West Coast and Big Ten were choices
- Grounding leadership skills (18:30)
- Need to work hard both athletically and academically (19:00)
- Rules Committees (19:30)
- Risk, Originality, and Virtuosity were ranking variables (20:00)
- His academics were “associated” with his athletic performance (21:30)
- Captain of Gymnastics team
- Honors student (23:15)
- Expand knowledge and ability to think…looking to leverage that into his future (23:30)
- Olympic experience (24:00)
- 1992 Olympics- he was 20 yrs. old and was not as “mature” (24:30)
- 1996 Olympics- gained considerable experience and maturity and had a different perspective (25:15)
- Reference to Muhammed Ali (26:30)
- Inspirations- Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Jackie Robinson (27:00)
- Benefit of sitting on USOC board in 2004-2012 and learned the business of sports (28:20)
- Dream of getting on a Wheaties box in 1980s and 90s (29:20)
- Athletes are more aware now and more mature (avg. age now 28) (30:00)
- Transition of sports to business has improved dramatically (31:30)
- 1992 was first year that professionals were allowed to participate- The Dream Team (31:50)
- Engineering and Urban Design were the inspiration for his real estate career (32:50)
- Engineering- Micro and Urban Design- Macro
Career Arc
- Silicon Graphics– first employment (34:40)
- Still training for the Olympics when started there
- Ken Coleman
- Helped them with a campus relocation (35:50)
- Part of a team (Don Young was boss)
- Google’s campus was one of his projects (Silicon Graphics at the time) (36:15)
- Was looked upon to provide perspective for incoming employees’ environments (36:45)
- Felt compelled to come back to Washington, DC and create new environments (38:30)
- Started company to serve demographic changes in real estate opportunities and deliver great projects (39:30)
- Rebuild neighborhood assets that shown disinvestment over years (40:30)
- Worked on public infrastructure on a fee basis- parks, libraries, recreational facilities (41:00)
- 2001- Dept. of Parks and Recreation contract for new opportunities to build…creating “place” (41:40)
- Pulling demographics & show what makes sense in that location (42:40)
- Example of swimming pool where there were good swimmers (43:00)
- Providing clarity of the “customer” experience and needs (43:30)
- Capital generated from other developers in partnership to look at business (44:30)
- Ernie Marcus and Donald Tucker (45:00)
- Eventually led to institutional relationships (45:30)
- 2005- Went to Harvard for a year to learn about management and gained perspective about private equity (45:45)
- Found MacFarlane Partners to help him grow his business via an entity level investment for $120MM (47:15)
- Was deployed in 2010-2011
- Sales of the projects since then
- Catapulted company’s growth
- Found MacFarlane Partners to help him grow his business via an entity level investment for $120MM (47:15)
- Committed to long term ownership as well as development
- Formed a venture with Nuveen to grow portfolio of existing properties (49:15)
- Thread for acquisition criteria (50:00)
- Philosophical approach- Place based strategy about building or buying looking at the place and use a customer needs approach over time. (50:40)
- Example of Woodbridge project- connection with mass transit (VRE) (51:25)
- Green Line opening in late 90s influenced his interest in that area (52:00)
- Balances of owned and fee based projects (53:00)
- Fee business is the “give back” to the community- providing “intellectual capital” to the community (53:40)
- Saw this in underperforming neighborhoods when he returned to DC
- Projects (54:45)
- 600 block of H St. NW was a “hub” for corridor- Anthology project (55:00)
- Addressed the Gallaudet University community with a Starbucks for deaf people (55:50)
- Martin Luther King Library- commitment from Mayor Bowser to reimagine the property (59:00)
- Jair Lynch Co. has redeveloped it to include many more amenities than just a library
- Hope is that 3,000-5,000 people per day go there
- Chief Librarian Ginny Cooper came up with visions for library renovations with a bold course (1:01:25)
- Inspired by Chris Leinberger (1:02:00)
- Developers of the past were “race car drivers” -drive fast and turn left
- Now they are more like “fighter pilots”- with diversity of product and vision (1:02:50)
- Retail needs to be reconsidered (1:05:00)
- 600 block of H St. NW was a “hub” for corridor- Anthology project (55:00)
Market Perspective and Philosophy
- Post Pandemic strategy (1:05:15)
- Integrated thinking to customizing projects to markets (1:05:45)
- Unheard of to change covers of magazines, newspapers, and other situations historically (1:06:15)
- Anticipate change for inflection points (1:07:00)
- Looks forward to reimagining office and residential uses (1:07:30)
- Now looks outside DC for opportunities that have the walkable urban spaces (1:07:45)
- Unfortunate that we are having a “K” shaped recovery (1:09:00)
- Real estate community needs to address this (1:09:20)
- Government may need to provide incentives to private sector (1:09:45)
- Planning needs to be more responsive to what’s happening on the ground (1:10:00)
- Addressing affordable housing in a public/private lens (1:10:30)
- Subsidies toward housing not enough (1:10:50)
- Nimbyism and Gentrification (1:11:30)
- Paralyzed Comp Plans- woefully behind in production (1:13:20)
- What is the public will? (1:13:55)
- Passing on generational wealth (1:14:20)
- Rent is too expensive to justify development for affordable or workforce residents (1:15:10)
- Hiring teachers at just above AMI limits for “affordable” housing opportunities (1:16:00)
- Education toward the community (1:16:45)
- Distinction of homeowners and renters for growth (1:18:00)
- Trends of people moving out of urban areas and suburban growth (1:18:50)
- Demographics will have impact
- Urban areas will come back
- Innovation will address pulling people back into the pre-pandemic environment (1:20:50)
- Hiring criteria (1:22:00)
- Four pillars- Leadership potential, specific skillsets, work well in a team, and diversity of thought
- Expect that employees will protect the team in the house (1:22:30)
- Layered approach to hiring (1:23:00)
- Mission Statement and Core Values with a North Star (1:23:40)
- Relies on this to retain employees (15+ year employees) (1:24:00)
- 25 Yr. Old Self- Balance between Independence and Interdependence (1:24:30)
- Cultivate relationships (1:25:15)
- Need multilayered team to help (1:25:40)
- Remain curious (1:26:00)
- Keeping risk, originality and virtuosity as his mantra (1:26:30)
- Billboard response- “Shared Responsibility” (1:26:45)
Postscript
- Martin Luther King Library Project
- Nimbyism- “Not in my backyard”
- Bird nesting analogy
- Jair’s Olympic performance
- Study about winners of medals- “Silver Medal winners more unhappy than Bronze Medal winners”
- Perspective of competition
- Comparison is a difficult
- Appreciate accomplishment
