Leon Walker

CEO, DL3 Realty Advisors

From the start, Walker’s firm, DL3, has positioned itself as both a real estate operator and a civic actor, with a focus on Chicago’s South and West sides where capital is hardest to raise and easiest to lose.

Walker founded DL3 Realty Advisors after stints at Jones Lang LaSalle and Citicorp Securities, building a development platform centered on mixed-income housing, transit access and long-disinvested neighborhoods.

DL3’s “Thrive” housing brand has become the firm’s signature, blending market-rate and affordable units with walkable retail and proximity to transit. Walker has advanced several high-profile projects under that banner, including South Side redevelopments backed by public funding tools such as tax-increment financing and city subsidies. In one notable project, DL3 tackled a city-backed $100 million adaptive re-use project in South Shore that repurposed a historic bank and office building into a mixed-use development with ground floor retail, 76 workforce housing units and 24 condos.

That reliance cuts both ways. Affordable and mixed-income projects remain expensive to build, slow to finance and subject to political scrutiny, especially as construction costs rise and the availability of public subsidies tightens.

Walker has also stepped into Loop office conversions, backing office-to-residential projects in partnership with developer John O’Donnell’s Riverside, an effort supported by city subsidies as Chicago looks for ways to repurpose obsolete office stock. His career highlights the balancing act required in mission-driven development where financial and political priorities can be at odds.