William “Bill” Witte is stepping back from day-to-day duties at Related California, where the other shoes are now set to drop on Jan. 1.
Yes, shoes — plural — based on the math laid out behind yesterday’s news that Witte will exit his role as CEO and take the position of chairman emeritus.
Stepping up at the developer, which has more than $11.7 billion in assets and more than 21,000 residential units completed or under construction, will be Related executives Gino Canori and Ann Silverberg, both San Francisco based.
Canori, the company’s president, will retain that title and add the role of CEO for its market-rate and mixed-income division.
Silverberg, who leads affordable housing development in Related California’s Northern California and Northwest divisions as its CEO, will become president and CEO of the firm’s entire affordable division.
Silverberg said she will “look forward to working with” Canori, “as we chart the new path for Related California’s dual divisions into the future,” in a LinkedIn post about the news.
Witte, 74, formed a financial partnership with Steve Ross’ Related Companies to develop affordable housing, creating Related California in 1989. Witte has led the firm since. He will become chairman emeritus of the Irvine-based company, the West Coast affiliate of Related Companies. His brother Matt Witte, executive vice president of acquisitions and development, and Bill’s son, Nick Witte, vice president of development for Related California, will remain at the firm.
Canori heads up Related California’s mixed-use, multifamily and mixed-income residential development and strategy throughout the state. He currently oversees a $10 billion pipeline that includes more than 7,000 multifamily and senior units, along with over 5 million square feet of commercial space across San Francisco, the East Bay, North Bay, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Orange County.
Prominent projects to take shape most recently include the Related Bristol mixed-use project in the Orange County municipality of Santa Ana and a high-rise office-and-hotel development in San Francisco.
In his 24 years at Related California, Canori has helped build the company’s mixed-use and mixed-income developments with project costs exceeding $7 billion.
Canori started at Related California in March 2001 as an executive vice president and was promoted to president in March 2022. His resume includes the development of rental tower 700 Broadway in Santa Monica, unveiled about a month ago. It has 280 apartments, a Von’s and an Equinox. And the company’s plan for San Francisco’s Financial District calls for a 41-story office and hotel that would include a new, privately financed firehouse. The $750 million project won a key city approval in October, per the San Francisco Examiner.
After graduating from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business with a bachelor’s degree in real estate finance and development in 2000, Canori worked as an acquisitions manager for Carmel Partners in Newport Beach for a year.
He serves on the executive committee for the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the
University of Southern California, the policy advisory board for the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, and the National Association of Homebuilders Multifamily Leadership Board.
Silverberg has been CEO of Related California’s Northern California Affordable and Northwest divisions since 2018. Within her purview is California, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Silverberg led the development and redevelopment of more than 8,000 affordable, mixed-income, mixed-use and transit-oriented housing units. She directed the capital aggregation and placement of equity and debt for their Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and non-LIHTC developments and oversaw the negotiation and placement of over $3 billion in project level debt and equity.
She is a faculty lecturer in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches a graduate level methods class in affordable housing finance and development. She holds a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor of arts from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Silverberg spent the bulk of her career — nearly 28 years — at Bridge Housing as executive vice president and CIO for Northern California real estate development and capital markets.
Silverberg started at Related California in August 2018 as CEO of NorCal NW Affordable.
Silverberg is the immediate past chair of the board of directors of the California Housing Consortium and was a co-chair of California State Treasurer Ma’s California Debt Limit Allocation Committee/Tax Credit Allocation Committee Working Group. She serves as the co-chair of the Bay Area Council Housing Policy Committee.
Related has been active across the affordable sector, from its recent deal with the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles to redevelop the Rose Hills Court complex in Montecito Heights to multiple projects within FivePoint Holdings’ Great Park Neighborhoods master-planned community in Irvine.
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