Guy Shklar

Architect & Development Project Manager

Architect. Development project manager. Twenty-three years of getting buildings permitted and built.

I came up as an architect, then spent the back half of my career on the owner's side: running entitlement, design, bidding, and construction on ground-up residential, urban infill, and complex occupied-site work.

Currently Senior Project Manager at JLL, in Greater Boston and Massachusetts.

Past Projects

  • Modern multi-story apartment building with glass balconies, surrounded by green trees and a well-maintained lawn, under a blue sky with some clouds.
  • Three modern multi-story apartment buildings with balconies, surrounded by palm trees and cars, under a blue sky with some clouds.
  • Modern multi-story residential building with glass balconies and a minimalist design, surrounded by greenery in an urban setting.
  • Multiple modern apartment balconies on a white building against a blue sky.
  • Modern multi-story residential building with balconies and glass railings under a clear blue sky
  • Tall modern building under construction with glass windows and a crane on top, surrounded by trees and parked cars.
  • Modern multi-story apartment building with white and dark gray facades, balconies on each floor, and a landscaped area with small trees and plants in front.
  • Modern building entrance with glass doors, concrete walls, and metal railings.
  • Modern multi-story residential building with glass balconies, surrounded by trees, blue sky, and street lamps.
  • Modern white building with geometric design, large glass windows, and an open framework structure on top, set against a clear blue sky.
  • Modern multi-story apartment building with glass balconies and white exterior walls, with some trees in the foreground.
  • Modern white multi-story apartment building with balconies and glass railings against a clear blue sky.
  • A modern multi-story residential building with white and brown exterior finishes, balconies, and large windows, set against a partly cloudy sky with trees in the foreground.
  • Modern multi-story residential building with brick exterior and a rooftop solar panel system, surrounded by trees and a clear blue sky.
  • Modern white residential building with multiple balconies and windows, surrounded by parked cars and street signs.
  • Modern white single-story building with flat roof, surrounded by green lawn and trees under a partly cloudy sky.
  • An conference room with rows of light wood tables and black chairs, a large purple screen on the front wall.
  • Empty modern office with desks, chairs, computers, and vibrant wall art.

What I Actually Do

I run the messy middle of development: the stretch between a pro forma and a finished building, where the drawings meet the zoning code, the budget meets the bid, and somebody has to make several hundred decisions without breaking either one.

Licensed as an architect (Israel). Which means I can open a drawing set and tell you where it's going to cost you — before it does. I've spent enough years on the owner's side to know that a beautiful building that misses its number isn't a good building.

Two halves of a career, and I need both. The first half was at small firms, where nobody has the luxury of specialists. As development manager I ran zoning analysis, design coordination, permitting, tendering, GC negotiation, and construction oversight — often across four to seven projects at once. Twelve ground-up residential buildings, roughly 650,000 SF, individual projects up to $20M. You learn range fast when there's no one to hand it to. (That work was in Israel, before I moved to the US.)

The second half has been in Massachusetts — the Boston Housing Authority, then JLL — inside large institutions with real process. Capital improvement in occupied multifamily. Ground-up industrial and fleet facilities. $25M+ in active contracts. Eight to twelve concurrent projects. You learn rigor there: forecasting, contract administration, change order discipline, and how to phase work around a building full of people who never asked for it.

Most project managers have one of those. I have both.

How I Think About Buildings

Good buildings rarely cost more than bad ones. The difference is attention, whether someone cared where the light lands, how neighbors cross paths, what the entrance says as you walk up to it. That's what separates a place people love from a place they only tolerate, and almost none of it is a line on the budget.

The housing I admire gives people a reason to be near each other: a courtyard that actually gets used, a stair pleasant enough to take, a shared threshold that's more than a corridor. That kind of connection isn't bought, it's designed. It's the result of decisions made on purpose instead of by default.

That's the lens I bring to a set of drawings: what does this building want to be, and what is it trying to camouflage? Where were the corners cut - and were they the right ones? Every project cuts corners. The skill is knowing which ones matter.

Ella NE Living

I founded Ella NE Living to pursue small-scale multifamily development in Massachusetts' MBTA Communities districts — the towns newly upzoned for density, where a well-read bylaw is the difference between a deal that pencils and one that doesn't.

I did the actual front-end work. Zoning analysis across roughly a dozen towns — reading each overlay district against parcel realities to find where the bonus density could actually be built. Direct-mail campaigns to property owners, and the slower work behind them: soliciting owners, following up, and building real relationships with the few who wanted to talk seriously about what their land could become. And the numbers — deal analysis and proformas built from scratch in Excel, underwriting each site's economics before it earned any more of my time.

It's the sharpest thing I've done for my own understanding of the field: development is a capital business before it's a design business, and the projects that get built are the ones where somebody understood both. I'm on a slower cadence with it now while my focus is at JLL, but I still look at the occasional deal. If you're an owner or operator with a site worth a conversation, I'm glad to have it.

Education & licensure

Bachelor of Architecture, Ariel University · Licensed Architect (Israel) · LEED Green Associate · International Associate AIA

Development & construction Zoning and entitlement analysis · Real estate financial modeling and Excel proformas · Owner's-rep project delivery · Construction management and inspection

Software Procore · MS Project · Revit · AutoCAD · Excel

I'm always glad to talk with developers, architects, and owners working on multifamily and mixed-use in Greater Boston.

Guy@EllaNELiving.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-shklar