CEO @ Category. A real estate development firm. Affiliates: Category Construction LLC, Category Design Group, Category Management, Inc.
Joined July 2009
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A lot of developer friends ask how we design and build beautiful buildings with budgets that beat far less attractive projects.
There are many levers.
But most deals quietly die in one place:
Structure.
Here are some pro tips, particularly for multifamily podium design:
Column grid
Keep it tight: 24–28 ft max.
Go wider and you trigger thicker PT slabs, drop panels, punching shear steel, and endless MEP conflicts. The last one might be the most painful, but the first two are the most expensive.
Load path
Never shift columns between floors.
Transfers = heavier structure, more rebar, slower schedules, real money burned. Don’t approve a schematic design layout before this is flushed out.
Slabs & soils
Bad soils force thicker slabs, mats, piles. Foundation costs can jump 2–3×. Choose sites carefully. Get good soils. Expansive soils? We’re out.
MEPs
Stack wet walls. Have dedicated plumbing walls with no structural value. Lock sleeves early. Another killer: Bathrooms over columns or even electrical rooms. Late MEP coordination are how “on-budget” jobs blow up in the field.
Shear & hold-downs
Maintain continuous exterior wall zones (~12–16”) from podium to roof.
Clean load paths = less steel, simpler inspections, better seismic performance.
Wood framing
Align shear walls with column grids.
Misalignment adds transfer forces and structural weight you don’t get paid for. Again, don’t even go past schematic phase until this is sorted out. Only exception. Facade area.
Cost effective constructions isn’t about cheap finishes. They’re about disciplined structure, driven by architectural design logic. Get this right, you’re half way there. Get it wrong, no amount of value engineering will save you.
Eerily similar to the Islamic/Socialist/Academic alliance that ushered in the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and descended Iran into a half century of hell
My parents lived this and got out in time, finding refuge and a much better life in this great country 🇺🇸
The West cannot allow this history to repeat
But in Europe, it may be too late
The Islamic Revolution in Europe has begun.
This is France. Today, we see the same scenes in Berlin. Every day, these hordes waving the Arab National Socialist flags of Palestine grow larger.
In Iran, it took roughly two years to go from this stage to complete chaos and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. We saw the same symbolism, the same flags, and heard the exact same slogans.
Brace yourselves.
Woah.
The protracted collapse in enrollment in Los Angeles Unified School District is so profound that schools are now less than half full
Capacity utliization is 49.1%; of the district’s 738 host schools, 481 operate at or below 60% capacity
... but staffing keeps increasing
ALT Facing the Decline: Building A Resilient LAUSD https://gpsnla.org/resilientlausd/
ALT Fiscal Health Risk Analysis Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team
The beginning of the Los Angeles comeback story
What once was the peak, is now just the beginning.
Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren't rewriting history — we're equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first home for bold, quality storytelling.
We chose this name for a few important reasons. First and foremost, as we bring Paramount and Warner Bros. together, we wanted to preserve what has made each of these studios iconic. Both have distinct identities, extraordinary legacies and brands that have resonated with audiences for generations. We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one. Instead, we wanted a name that would give the combined company an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and Warner Bros. — and all our extraordinary brands — to remain in the spotlight.
We have big goals for Skydance, and we intend to pursue them with passion, imagination and a willingness to take smart risks. At the same time, we will honor what makes Paramount and Warner Bros. special — giving both studios the opportunity to grow, tell more great stories and bring those stories to even broader audiences around the world, powered by the scale and capabilities of Skydance.
I couldn’t be more excited about what we’re going to build together.
Re-introducing one of my favorite projects, Gardner by Category.
The idea was simple: build something new that still feels like it belongs in West Hollywood.
We pulled from the older Mediterranean buildings throughout the neighborhood — deep arches, traditional cornices, warm materials — and paired them with curved glass, dark metal, and open breezeways that bring natural light deep into the building.
Very much feels like mission accomplished.
True
One of my biggest mistakes in real estate was not going bigger sooner.
Mentally, you assume bigger deals will be harder.
I learned the opposite.
Bigger deals attract better lenders, better contractors, better management, better tenants.
Some of my smallest properties created my biggest headaches.
The hardest part of doing a big deal is convincing yourself you belong in the room.
Go bigger sooner.
This week we took ~180 piles out of a basement.
Didn’t shrink the building. Didn’t change the program. We just re-ran the capacity instead of accepting the pile schedule as drawn.
Thickened the stair + elevator shaft walls. Picked up the lateral there. Pulled the shear off the perimeter. Took the slab from 24” to 18” (high water table).
Same building. Same performance. Millions less in concrete and steel.
A stamped drawing is a professional’s opinion with a factor of safety wrapped around it.
Most people never go back and ask how big that wrapper is.
Entering Week 3 of delay on our certificate of occupancy for a new apartment building, because copper wire theft took out every street light on the block — including the one we installed and passed inspection on.
People have no idea.
Los Angeles is number #1 in:
Cable & wire thefts
Organized retail theft
Overall volume of hate crimes
Overall volume of catalytic converter theft
But hey, CA will be the first state to legislate automobile tire replacement.
Priorities.
Daniel retweeted
Yes this is why it’s exciting to see people like @DonovanBuilds @molzer @AustinTunnell @DPOURBABA defy the narratives and build
Woah
The 100 year old pipe that just sinkholed Sunset Boulevard was already on LA's replacement list. Construction was scheduled for 2031.
LADWP budgeted $280 million to replace 6.4 miles of this exact 36-inch trunk line. The project is still in the design phase. Work starts in 2031 and finishes in 2035. The pipe burst 5 years before the first crew would have touched it.
The replacement math explains why this keeps happening. Last fiscal year, LADWP's goal was to replace 1.1 miles of trunk pipe. They replaced less than one. LA has roughly 550 miles of trunk line. Even at the department's new target of 3.5 miles a year, each mile gets replaced once every 157 years.
Riveted steel pipe lasts about 100.
And Sunset Boulevard has run this exact experiment before. In 2014, a trunk line from 1921 ruptured under Sunset near UCLA and sent roughly 20 million gallons through campus, submerging Pauley Pavilion. That break is what made LA's aging pipes national news and launched the current replacement program.
Twelve years later: same street, same vintage of pipe, same aerial footage.
Cities schedule pipe replacement on political time. Pipes fail on material time. LA is replacing 100 year pipes on a 157 year cycle, and this morning is what the gap between those two numbers looks like.
84 affordable housing units. Seven floors. Delivered under $165,000 per unit in Los Angeles!
A developer friend came to us looking for a new general contractor to partner with on his workforce housing project. The brief was simple: deliver real quality at a cost that actually pencils.
We did — bringing all 84 units in at a hard cost under $165k each, well below market for a project of this kind (5 levels of Type III over 2 levels of Type I).
That’s the role our GC arm, Category Construction, plays. We partner with a select group of developers serious about affordable and workforce housing, and we treat their budgets and timelines like our own. As a vertically integrated platform, we bring construction with in-house trade execution, design, and an owner-operator’s perspective to every project — so the numbers work in the field, not just on paper.
Feel free to give me a shout if you have a project seeking a killer GC partner that can get the job done. ✅
