Mr. John McNellis
Principal McNellis Partners, LLC
A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Hastings College of The Law, John practiced law until he co-founded McNellis Partners, a Northern California retail development firm, in 1982. Since its inception, the company and its affiliates have completed approximately one hundred projects, primarily supermarket-anchored neighborhood shopping centers, and maintains a retail portfolio in excess of two million square feet. In addition, the company owns three mixed-use projects, three office buildings and a smattering of residential units.
John was a principal shareholder of ClosingCorp, a tech company servicing the home mortgage industry, and was a member of its board of directors from 2008 until the company was successfully sold in 2021.
John is a principal shareholder of GovX, an e-commerce retailer, and has served on its board of directors since 2022.
John is a decades’ long member of the Urban Land Institute—a founding member of its Environmental Task Force—and the ICSC. He is a ULI Governor, has chaired two separate ULI Councils and served as both a Trustee and Council Councilor. He has also served on the board of directors for Lambda Alpha International (Golden Gate Chapter).
A frequent lecturer on real estate topics, John writes a monthly column for the San Francisco Business Times and is the author of the critically acclaimed book, “Making it in Real Estate: Starting out as a Developer”, a primer on running a development company. In its 2nd edition, the book is now an industry standard and taught in universities nationwide. His lecture series on YouTube is the most widely viewed of all of the ULI’s video presentations.
John is actively involved with Outward Bound USA, having served on its national board of directors and now on its advisory board. He is a past president of the board of directors of Rebuilding Together Peninsula and is a board member emeritus. He has also served on the board of directors for the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center and was a seventeen-year volunteer at the Palo Alto Downtown Streets Team’s Food Closet.
