Partners

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 shopping center development firm, in 1982.

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 Registry magazine and is the author of the critically acclaimed book, “Making it in Real Estate: Starting out as a Developer”, a primer on the fundamentals of running a development company that 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.

Beth Walter, a co-founder of McNellis Partners has been engaged in commercial retail real estate for over 35 years. Beth directs the Partnership’s construction projects working directly with local government, property owners and tenants. She also directs the property management activities and scholarship program. Beth holds a California broker’s license and has earned a Certified Shopping Center Manager designation from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).

Actively involved in many philanthropic organizations including Rotary International, Beth is currently serving as a board member and is a past National Chair of the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration based in Philadelphia. She is also the founder of the Walter Charitable Fund, Inc., a family-based nonprofit organization formed to raise funds for medical research as well as the Robert G. Foote educational scholarship awarded annually to a Vacaville, CA high school senior in honor of her father.

Mike Powers has served as the company’s CFO since joining McNellis Partners in 1984. In addition to overseeing McNellis’ operations and finances, his responsibilities include managing all investment, sale and financial transactions. Prior to joining McNellis, he was an investment banker with Warburg Paribas Becker.

Mike is a member of the Small Scale Development Council (SSDC) of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), Lambda Alpha International's Golden Gate Chapter and the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). In addition to having served as part of SSDC’s leadership team, he has taught real estate development classes for the ULI's Real Estate School and has been a repeated guest lecturer for Wells Fargo Bank's Wholesale University.

Mike holds a MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics/Political Science from Claremont McKenna College.