The POWER 30: Josh Brandsted, Greco Properties

In his six years as president of Greco Properties in Minneapolis, Josh Brandsted hasn’t come to see buildings as piles of bricks and mortar that sit passively. He sees them as conduits toward connecting the people who live and work in them while providing the most efficient way through for the folks who run the buildings.

“Overall, we’re programming projects to be more efficient from an operations standpoint,” said Brandsted. “These are highly active resident-based and social-based developments. We want to give residents what they want while also staying efficient.”

Greco covers a gamut of working with properties: development, acquisition, management, asset management and more.

As far as Brandsted’s own professional development is concerned, he points to the Variant luxury apartments in the North Loop as a touchstone.

“That was the first one where I led the charge from the beginning,” he said. “We co-developed it with Opus, and it was very successful project. It achieved some of the highest rents in the marketplace.”

Like many other developers, Brandsted has kept a close eye on our unprecedented times as he considers future projects.

“COVID and work-from-home,” he said. “We’ve been checking the pulse on that and trying to understand both the short-term and long-term effects of that. How does it change how we program, design, staff and manage our new developments?”

Sometimes, that means reconsidering projects that were begun pre-COVID.

“We had two projects that were beginning construction in the summer of 2020,” Brandsted said. “We did some modifications in the building to better accommodate folks working from home — private office space, etc.

“The question now is what will the permanent effect of the pandemic be in settings like that?”

Source: Finance & Commerce: https://finance-commerce.com/2021/12/the-power-30-josh-brandsted-greco-properties/