Weekend Interview: The Fallon Co. President Brian Awe On Bringing Downtown Back In Boston And Beyond

This series goes deep with some of the most compelling figures in commercial real estate: the dealmakers, the game-changers, the city-shapers and the larger-than-life personalities who keep CRE interesting.

The Fallon Co.'s Fan Pier project in Boston's Seaport District is near and dear to President Brian Awe's heart. After all, he's been working with the company for about as long as the $4B transformational project has been cooking.

“It's all about being responsive to what the needs of the particular city are,” said Boston-based Awe, who is also passionate about the company’s East Bank project in Nashville, Tennessee, a key part of revitalizing the area around the Tennessee Titan's new domed stadium that is slated to open in 2027.

The 39-year-old developer has overseen upward of $6B in projects aimed at remaking cities since joining the company.

Awe began his career as a lawyer at DLA Piper, a global firm with a strong real estate focus, and one of his first clients was The Fallon Co. After working closely with the company over the next 10-plus years, when the chance arose to jump aboard, Awe said it was an opportunity “that was too good to pass up.”

The Fallon Co. focuses on markets like Boston, Nashville, and Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina, with the idea that serving the needs of cities, residents and businesses is essential to making development projects the best they can be, he said. 

Awe spoke with Bisnow about upcoming projects, capital markets and the future of American urban cores. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Bisnow: How did you get into commercial real estate, and what's kept you there?

Awe: It started, really, with my interest during law school. I took a variety of property and real estate-related classes. So I really was looking to try to figure out how to fit that into my legal career [and] ended up summering at a law firm in town that had a really strong real estate program.

I ended up working with the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District and got to work with a fantastic group of local business leaders, real estate leaders, developers, owners, neighborhood folks to really put together this new thing that really served an important need to revitalize downtown Boston. That was quite real estate-focused, as you might imagine, and really reinforced that desire to work in real estate. I worked at that same law firm, DLA Piper, for my entire career up until about two-and-a-half years ago. 

Bisnow: What has the transition been like going from working with The Fallon Co. as a lawyer to now being its president?

Awe: It's been really great, maybe in large part because of my familiarity with the team and the team's familiarity with me. While I was the outside counsel, I really got to know everyone very well, know the business and understand the business pretty well — at least as well as you can in an outside council role.

So when I came in, I feel like I had a pretty good foundation in what the company had going, the projects [and] the value that we were bringing to the communities where we're doing our work. The transition has been great. We've continued the strong growth trajectory that Joe Fallon, our chairman and our founder, and Mike Fallon, our CEO, established and really grown on that platform regionally as well as in Boston over those few years.

Bisnow: What’s the market been like lately? Have things been rocky or have you been faring well?

Awe: It's been a mixed bag. Obviously, the broader economic environment has been really difficult. Covid [was] quite difficult for a variety of reasons, including on a real estate front, particularly as it affects office. [The] life science industry has been hit quite a bit. [It] won't be a surprise to anyone, but Boston, being one of those key life science markets, has had it a little tougher. We've really been able to choose our spots pretty well and pursue projects that have been really productive for us.

In an environment where it's difficult to finance, we were able to actually close a construction financing on our last building at our Fan Pier project. That's a project The Fallon Co., along with our partner [Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.], purchased in 2005. That's been really gratifying to see that project through most of its history.

The quality of the projects we have going really is a testament to the company, and a silver lining for us is being able to move those projects forward in an otherwise fairly difficult environment. 

Bisnow: What are the latest projects you’re working on that you’re most excited about?

Awe: I’m really excited about our project in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a market we went into back in 2018-2019, looking for the right project to implement large mixed-use development. That's really what we specialize in, and we have a project there that's called the East Bank of Nashville. It's where the existing Tennessee Titans football stadium is, and they're in the process of building a new stadium right next to where their existing stadium is, but there's a lot of land right around the stadium that is either there currently or will be made available once the old stadium comes down.

We applied for [it] in 2023, and were awarded the master development rights to 30 acres. That's something we're really, really excited about. We love Nashville. We think it has great things going for it and is a place a lot of people want to be. This is a pretty unique piece of property, like Fan Pier was 20 years ago. It's got all the amenities and other things located right nearby, but it's an opportunity to create a new neighborhood, and that's really what we're focused on doing in Nashville. Now, we're deep into design and trying to get that project started, starting with an affordable housing building as well as another commercial building.

Bisnow: Do you have a vision for where American cities are going? I know downtown office space generally isn’t doing well across the country. Can big urban projects combat that and bring it back? 

Awe: I think so. It's all about being responsive to what the needs of the particular city are. It's one of those where it gets a little difficult to generalize, saying what's going to work really well for Boston is going to work well for Phoenix is going to work well for Seattle. Each one of them has such different dynamics.

But the idea of investing in downtowns and really creating something where people want to be, where they want to live, where they want to work, those are really laudable goals and something we try to bring into all of our developments.

We believe strongly in urban cores. We think that the advantages are really strong. There's lots of things to think about affordable housing, transportation, traffic, all of those sorts of things. But a thoughtfully-designed city with thoughtfully-designed projects really has that potential to help with either revitalization or emphasis on urban cores, depending on the particular city.

Bisnow: What are the ingredients needed for a project to be something you’re excited about?

Awe: The opportunity to spend a lot of time in a city, so multiphased projects, mixed uses that really complement one another. And the opportunity to engage with stakeholders, whether it's elected officials, residents, businesses, other community organizations, [and] really understanding what is important to all those folks. Often, the same thing is not important to different stakeholder groups. [We're] really trying to treat that as a bit of a challenge and understand those different perspectives, and how do we try to bring all those perspectives together into something that we and the city and all of those stakeholder groups could be proud of?

Bisnow: Tell me about a project that you worked on that meant a lot to you. What did you learn from it and why was it important?

Awe: The Fan Pier project here in Boston is really important to me. It was the first project I worked on as a lawyer, and we just closed the financing and started construction on the final phase. It's been really great just to see the life cycle of a large, mixed-use project like that over the course of a decade-plus and just getting to realize the vision that folks had years and years ago. Also trying to adapt it to ongoing issues that arise — electrification of buildings, EV spaces, climate change, resiliency — all of those different features that perhaps folks just didn't think as much about 20-25 years ago when the project was being permitted but are critical needs now. Figuring out how to make accommodations and adaptations for those different factors has been really exciting, and it's really fantastic to see this project come to completion right as we start another project that's similar in a lot of ways in Nashville. 

Bisnow: What does the future hold for The Fallon Co.?

Awe: The future is projects a lot like the East Bank, hopefully on the same scale but in the markets where we really like to focus. We do see life science coming back in key markets. Demand is about where it was in Boston in 2019 — there's still a lot of capacity, but I think the really well-located projects will be ones that will be quite successful. We have a couple in Boston right now that are either just permitted or are nearing the end of permitting that we're really excited to move forward as the market continues to improve.

Then, really continuing our projects in Charlotte and Nashville and Raleigh as well, continuing to increase the presence there.

Bisnow: Is there a white whale project that you'd love to tackle someday? 

Awe: I think we have it. The East Bank project now is really that hugely complicated, but therefore hugely satisfying, project that we're spending quite a bit of time on. [We're] thinking really hard about how to make that Nashville's newest neighborhood, which is really something that's quite exciting to say. Starting now, we're really underway on that, but continuing for a number of years until we're able to fully build out that same space.

Bisnow: Give us a bold prediction for the rest of the year.  

Awe: We're going to see a lot more movement in the real estate equity markets. There's been a lot of folks that, I believe, have been sitting on a lot of capacity and waiting for the uncertainty in the world to settle down a little bit. Market uncertainty, interest rate uncertainty, presidential election uncertainty. As some of those start to come into a bit more clarity, I think the equity players on the market will start to make some more investments, and that'll be good all the way around for the real estate community.

Bisnow: What is your weekend routine or favorite weekend activity? 

Awe: Weekends alway end up with a long run or a long swim in some way. I like to dabble in ultramarathons … so I always end up waking up early [and] getting the exercise done. Then I spend a lot of time with my wife and my two daughters, just getting out and around Boston and New England. There's so much to do here, and my daughters are at a really fun age for that.