Fractional Development Lead
Senior, owner-minded development judgment for sponsors and operators. Brought in before mistakes harden into structure. Not a GP. Not day-to-day execution. Not a model that tells you what you want to hear.
About
Conor Keilty
Licensed architect and real estate developer with over fifteen years spanning active construction sites, design coordination, estimating, and full-cycle sponsor-side development: from land acquisition and master planning through entitlement, financing, construction, and disposition.
That path is the point. Development judgment doesn't come from a spreadsheet. It comes from having built budgets from field conditions, defended entitlements in front of planning boards, structured deals across multiple capital sources, and watched assumptions fail in real time. The work starts with constructability and constraint integration because that's where the real risk lives.
Conor has held Development Manager, Senior Development Manager, and Principal-level responsibilities within a merchant-build development platform, progressing from the field to the investment committee.
The Work
What has to be true for this deal to work, and what breaks first if it doesn't.
CBKDI provides fractional development leadership at the moments that define whether a project succeeds or fails: feasibility, structuring, financing, and the decisions that connect them. The focus is on getting the underwriting right, reconciling competing constraints, and making sure the deal can survive real scrutiny.
- Build, repair, and pressure-test development underwriting
- Identify missing assumptions, false precision, and circular logic
- Reconcile lender, investor, tenant, and municipal constraints
- Translate those constraints back into honest numbers and structure
- Help decide whether a deal should exist, and if so, how
- Support capital structuring and financing without taking a GP position
Judgment, Not Modeling
The difference between a model and a decision is development judgment.
Anyone can build a proforma. The value is in knowing which assumptions deserve trust, which constraints will actually bind, and whether the structure survives contact with the capital stack.
CBKDI challenges assumptions rather than confirms them. The work is about decision clarity: feasibility, risk, and structure. Not formatted outputs.
In the Room
Credibility comes from having sat on the same side of the table as sponsors, and across from everyone else. CBKDI brings direct experience facing:
Engagement
Tightly scoped. Senior-led. Usable outputs.
- Intake & triage Understand the deal, the stakeholders, the capital context, and the decision at hand.
- Build or repair the core underwriting Stand up the proforma, capitalization, and returns framework, or fix what's there.
- Pressure-test assumptions and structure Stress scenarios, reconcile lender and equity constraints, identify breakpoints.
- Deliver defensible outputs Models, memos, and a framework you can stand behind in the room.
Get in Touch
If you have a deal that needs senior development judgment, start here.
Or email a brief with the basics. Include whatever you have, even if it's early, that's usually the right time.
- Project type
- Multifamily, mixed-use, industrial, etc.
- Location
- City, state, or neighborhood
- Stage
- Concept, LOI, under contract, diligence
- Program
- Unit count, SF, key uses
- Key unknowns
- What you're trying to figure out
- Help needed
- What you need from CBKDI
- Attachments
- Model, budget, site plan, whatever exists