Commonwealth Development Partners

Commonwealth Development Partners is a Connecticut-based real estate developer working on institutional and mixed-use projects, with a growing practice in converting obsolete office buildings into housing. The firm broke ground in July 2026 on the $162 million conversion of 500 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, turning 21 vacant floors of a 1968 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill office tower into 320 apartments with a new 25th-floor amenity level. Sixty-four of the units are affordable, delivered with support from the City of Chicago’s planning department, and the project is one of the larger conversions to reach construction in a market that has struggled to close the gap between office value and conversion cost.

Commonwealth Development Partners buys what other developers cannot easily underwrite. The firm targets off-market assets in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic submarkets where zoning is complicated and housing supply is structurally short, then executes ground-up multifamily and office-to-residential conversions. Chicago sits alongside the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic on its list of target markets.

Matthew Faris and Justin Shaw co-founded CDP in early 2017. Faris runs acquisition, development and financing and works with strategic partners and investors. He spent twelve years as a partner and managing director at Greenfield Partners, a real estate private equity firm that raised more than $5 billion across several funds, where he acquired and managed a portfolio exceeding $2.2 billion including Riverside Center in New York, a 3,000-unit residential project, and The Batch Yard in Boston. Shaw oversees development and construction along with firm operations, financial reporting and marketing. He founded JCS Construction Group in 2005 and has since completed more than $200 million of construction across over a million square feet of varied product types.

That construction background is the structural argument for the firm. CDP keeps building in-house rather than contracting it out. The firm’s position is that vertical integration eliminates the friction between developer and contractor, which in turn tightens budget control, reduces execution risk across the development lifecycle, and preserves margin on projects with difficult entitlement paths.

Jeffrey Quinn, partner and managing director for construction, anchors that capability with roughly thirty years of experience. He graduated from Penn State with a degree in architectural engineering and worked at Whiting-Turner on commercial projects across the Northeast before moving into development in 2007. His project list runs from the Freedom Tower and the Good Morning America studios in Times Square to recent Brooklyn residential towers of 507 and 570 units, with work on both coasts and in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

Alex Ching joined in 2021 to lead new investment opportunities and portfolio management. He came from fifteen years at Greenfield Partners, where he acquired and managed a million square feet of urban office, two million square feet of suburban office and 1,750 multifamily units. He holds a BS from the University of Southern California, an MBA from Wharton, and is a CFA charterholder.

Taken together, the principals count more than 40 years of combined experience, over $250 million of equity deployed, and more than 1,800 units delivered. Investor communications run through a login portal on the firm’s site.