Alan Razak
Senior Advisor
Alan Razak is a principal and co-founder of AR Spruce LLC. Alan’s background in commercial real estate encompasses development and project management, finance, architecture, and feasibility/planning analyses. He has extensive experience managing the development process, both as owner and as a fee developer, and with use types including residential, office, and retail, as well as specialized expertise with highly technical facilities such as data centers. Alan currently manages a sensitive renovation and restacking project for the American Philosophical Society, in addition to providing strategy and planning support for various clients of the firm, and advising on design and construction contracts.
Alan led the development of the 76ers training and headquarters complex, one of the first projects to take advantage of the extraordinary Grow NJ tax credit program. He was Principal in Charge of development management for the Cheslen Visitor Center for Natural Lands Trust, as well as for a strategic facilities plan and team assembly, contracts and initial project setup for Montgomery County, which encompassed approximately $300 million of work on County properties and the downtown core of Norristown, PA. Other projects included a study for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia of its mission-critical data centers which enabled CHOP to avoid creating a new $20 million data center, and transaction management for land at Fulton and Flatbush in Brooklyn, NY, tripling the anticipated proceeds for the seller.
Alan founded Razak Company in 2003, where he developed projects such as Pembroke North Condominium, Main Line Jaguar Land Rover, 5035 Ritter Road for the Administrative Office of PA Courts, and the Curtis Institute of Music’s Lenfest Hall, where he restarted an over-budget project and saved $12 million. He provided early-phase planning or forensic analyses for projects at Swarthmore College, Citadel Investments, the Rock School of Dance, and Vanguard.
Prior to forming Razak Company, Alan was a Principal with Radnor Advisors, which was subsequently purchased by Insignia/ESG. There he was worldwide Director of the Technology Practice Group and managed the Philadelphia office’s real estate consulting group. During the early 1990s, Alan focused on international real estate development, along with technical consulting services for government and domestic financial institutions. For much of the 1980s, he was a Partner at Rouse and Associates (later Liberty Property Trust), where he managed urban development projects in Washington and the Philadelphia region, including work on Philadelphia’s Penn’s Landing.
Selected Affiliations:
- Registered Architect, Pennsylvania
- Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre: Chairman of the Board
- Urban Land Institute, global: Global Governing Trustee; past Chair Responsible Property Investment Council, Chair of multiple Advisory Services Panels, DEI Council working group chair, and for over 20 years author and teacher of ULI Learning professional education workshops on a variety of real estate development topics
- Urban Land Institute, local: Philadelphia District Council: current Governance Committee Chair, past Chair, past Chair of Mission Advancement
- University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design: Lecturer, Design & Development
Education:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology: S.B. in Arts and Design
- University of Washington: Master of Architecture
- Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania: MBA with a concentration in Real Estate