From the laptop of JJK Places’ President:
Today we reach a new juncture in the history of JJK Places, PBC.
In mid-2018, I officially founded what was then Denver’s newest social impact enterprise, a real estate development and consulting company with a unique pedigree and evolutionary story. Some who know me well might actually say the nexus for this company has been growing since the beginning of my professional real estate career. But it certainly began to especially germinate when I moved to Denver from my hometown of Chicago in January of 2003. Then the roots especially started to rapidly spread and begin to poke their stems above the surface when, in the middle of my professional career, I made the decision to take four years off from the work-a-day-world to return to graduate school for my dual master’s degrees in city planning and in urban design.
It was at that point I diverged into a new direction of my career, and albeit, even in my personal life. A significant metamorphosis occurred.
I shed the chrysalis of my former financial yield focused real estate mindset, and entered into the realm of “socially-conscious” real estate.
I returned to graduate school not because I needed a second and third masters. Hardly! But I returned out of personal interest, and with a burning internal quest to determine, as I told many a friend, “To how to create human scaled, community-oriented, well-designed real estate development projects that are also economically feasible.”
Many real estate developer friends merely chuckled when I would relate my idealistic quest of why I was returning to grad school. Each would utter back to me nearly the same retort, “Good luck with that” as they rolled their eyes and smirked.
And so I have spent the last 17 years on a certain “vision quest,” that has landed me here today.
Today is a new stage in the birth, growth, and eventual maturity of this “social impact real estate” company (what refer to as “SIRE”). It is one of the few for-profit real estate entities in the country with a 100 percent focus on mission-driven real estate; and certainly one of the few real estate companies nationwide legally structured as a “benefit corporation” (or “public benefit corporation” (PBC) as we call them in Colorado (not to be confused with a Certified B-Corp). We did not take on the moniker of being a social impact company merely as the newest marketing ploy. Rather, social impact has been embedded in our company’s very DNA from the first day that the idea for this company was conceived. One can read more about JJK Places social impact DNA within this new website.
Today, yes, we unveil a new JJK Places website. As we inaugurate the launch of this new website, we hope that this signals yet a new rapid growth phase for this unique mission-drive organization. Within just over a year we currently are involved as Co-Developer or Project Manager helping to create over 65 future affordable housing units in four projects in the Denver metro area, as well as too helping to produce future economically accessible commercial spaces that will be specifically targeted for community-serving uses in historically underserved neighborhoods.
Yes, JJK Places is going places!
Stay tuned for what’s yet to come. Enjoy the new website (some sections are still under construction, so check back often as new sections get unveiled!).
My best to everyone,
Will Kralovec
President and Founder