L+M Companies promotes Ellertson to CEO, Van Syckel to president

L+M Companies filled its top two jobs from within, Commercial Observer reported, promoting Eben Ellertson, a partner at L+M Development Partners, to chief executive of the umbrella company and Carrie Van Syckel, the development arm's chief investment officer, to president and chief investment officer of the parent.

The structure puts development and capital formation under one pair. L+M Companies spans L+M Development Partners, the mixed-income and mixed-use developer LMXD, and L+M Fund Management, and Ellertson and Van Syckel, who have worked together for more than a decade, will oversee affordable and mixed-income development and preservation across all of it, working alongside David Dishy, chief executive of LMXD. Lisa Gomez, currently chief executive of L+M Development Partners, will transition to executive chair of the overall firm, where L+M says she will focus on expanding affordable housing opportunities, a mandate that reads as origination work sitting above the operating businesses rather than inside one of them.

Scale is what the promotions have to carry. The platform has developed or invested in more than 60,000 homes across affordable and mixed-income developments, and Ellertson's first statement in the job pairs a 40-year track record with a push past the firm's current 15-state footprint, naming Texas, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the Southeast and California as expansion targets while repeating L+M's commitment to New York City. He said the need for quality affordable and mixed-income housing "has never been higher" and that the firm intends to deliver for its "partners in government." Sixth Street, identified in the coverage only as a global investor, made a sizable investment in the firm last summer; no figure is given.

The two resumes line up with the two halves of the business. Ellertson joined L+M in 2010 after roles at New York affordable housing and investment firms and a stretch in the Bloomberg administration, structuring real estate partnerships for the city's Department of Education. Van Syckel arrived in 2016 from Goldman Sachs, where she was a managing director and chief operating officer of its Urban Investment Group. For a company whose inputs are public programs and institutional capital, a chief executive who has worked the government side of the table and a president who has run institutional money is a coherent pairing.

What the appointments do not settle is the fund side. The president and chief investment officer title Van Syckel takes is a parent-level post, and the coverage does not name a leader for L+M Fund Management under the new structure. Nor does it say whether the five expansion markets have capital committed behind them or only appetite; the first project L+M names outside New York will say more about the pair than the titles do.