Brandon Mendoza’s President Message

On August 4th we will host nearly 800 of the top leaders in the Pittsburgh Commercial Real Estate community at our 28th Annual Awards Banquet. That we can pull this off is a testament to our members’ steadfast support of our chapter. While our banquets are always a celebration of the top CRE projects in the region, this year’s awards are also a celebration of our region’s resiliency in the face of a global pandemic. We will be celebrating our businesses’ resiliency. We will be celebrating our CRE leaders’ professional resiliency. And, lastly, we will be celebrating our community’s resiliency.

Planning this year’s banquet was no small feat. In the fall and winter of 2020, our team had to work with our board of directors, banquet committee, and sponsors to develop a matrix to inform our go/no go decision making. We eventually decided on using vaccination rates as our key metric and decided to move the banquet to Stage AE to take advantage of indoor and outdoor spaces. We are beyond ecstatic that our plans have panned out. I want to thank the members of this year’s Awards Banquet Committee for their time and support in planning of this year’s event.

While we are focused on celebrating the CRE community on August 4th, we know there is much work to do on the business climate. We continue to advance our advocacy agenda to encourage policies that further development. We plan to engage the incoming mayoral administration early in the hopes of building strong relationships with the development community. We are also actively engaged in the policy debate regarding the appropriations of Pennsylvania’s American Rescue Plan funding. As stated earlier, while we celebrate our emergence from COVID-19, we remain vigilant about advancing policies that can unleash development.

I beyond excited to see many of you on August 4th. Let us toast to our resiliency and to the Pittsburgh CRE community. See you all soon.