Dan Almquist

Founder, CEO, President, Almquist

Almquist is the up-and-coming rising star of specialty retail, and he’s coming off some major project completions to prove it. 

His namesake development company in Orange County’s San Juan Capistrano owns roughly 750,000 square feet of retail and first turned heads in the OC city of Stanton with the 41,000-square-foot Rodeo 39, creating a public market in a center that was originally eyeing something more expected: a discount grocer anchor. 

Almquist’s focuses on retail projects that are “referential” to their site history and filled with “soul,” he told The Real Deal in an interview last year. More recent projects have quickened in completion pace. Late December saw the unveiling of the 60,000-square-foot River Street Marketplace in San Juan Capistrano, an ambitious boutique retail center with references to the area’s agrarian history that go back to the late 18th century with the Mission San Juan Capistrano. The following year, Almquist revealed the Rodeo 72 public market in Whittier, drawing many of its cues from what made Stanton successful, and built on the site of a former 19-century reform school for boys. 

In 2025, he broke ground on the over 80,000-square-foot retail and restaurant experience called The Canopy at Great Park, which is expected to open in later this year. Next year, he expects to finish a 25,000-square-foot restaurant-anchored space next to the Fox Theatre in downtown Fullerton.