LOS ANGELES—AECOM Capital, an affiliate ofL.A.-based AECOM, launched in January 2013 with avision to fund real estate development opportunities using a fundmodel. In a year and a half, the new investment company hascommitted $100 million of capital and launched six developmentprojects worth $2.3 billion. Among those projects, four are locatedin Southern California, including the now famous project on six acres in Downtown LosAngeles' South Park neighborhood. Although AECOM Capital has hadsome major success this year, few know about the still-new companyand its innovative investment model. So, we sat down with the manbehind the model and the investment decisions, AECOM Capital CEO,John Livingston.

GlobeSt.com: How did AECOM Capital cometogether?

John Livingston: I come out of TishmanRealty & Construction. I was with that company for 20 years. Wesold the construction company to AECOM four years ago, and I spentsome time traveling around the globe to create a globalconstruction platform. About 18 months ago, I went to my CEO andthe board to suggest that we create a real estate platform becausewe had such tremendous resources in house, both design andconstruction from Tishman, and with capital and a balance sheet wecould create a real estate platform in a fund model. I put togethera business plan and said why don't you commit $150 million to meand I'll put up a small share of that, and we'll be joint venturepartners to invest in real estate projects. In doing so, we bothcontrol our destiny more and we will get yield over time on ourinvestments and we will also get short-term service revenue.

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Kelsi Maree Borland

Kelsi Maree Borland is a freelance journalist and magazine writer based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 5 years, she has extensively reported on the commercial real estate industry, covering major deals across all commercial asset classes, investment strategy and capital markets trends, market commentary, economic trends and new technologies disrupting and revolutionizing the industry. Her work appears daily on GlobeSt.com and regularly in Real Estate Forum Magazine. As a magazine writer, she covers lifestyle and travel trends. Her work has appeared in Angeleno, Los Angeles Magazine, Travel and Leisure and more.