Matthew Kwatinetz

Professor Kwatinetz is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Real Estate Economics and the Director of the NYU Urban Lab. Previously, "Professor K" was the Executive Vice President of Asset Management for the New York City Economic Development Corporation. In that role he was in charge of managing the largest real estate portfolio in the five boroughs at over 65M square feet and encompassing such assets as the 42nd Street Development Project, Hunts Point Food Distribution Center and Brooklyn Army Terminal. For EDC, Professor K also ran PortNYC, the third largest port in the US, and also managed the team behind the launch and operations of the NYC Ferry, which is the largest expansion of commuter ferry service in US history. Kwatinetz was the lead on the Mayor's Affordable Real Estate for Artists (AREA) program, which is the largest affordable artist work-space initiative in the country.

Before NYCEDC, Professor K ran QBL Partners, a double bottom line public/private advisory firm. Selected clients included U.S. Department of Energy, Wharton’s Geo-Spatial Laboratory, Real Capital Analytics, Denny Hill Capital, Penn Institute for Urban Research, City of Shoreline, Kinzer Real Estate Services, City of Austin, Citiscope/Ford Foundation. Before QBL, Kwatinetz worked as the VP of Finance and Economics for Kinzer Real Estate Services where he supported real estate investment decision-making and site selection for such clients as the University of Washington, Alaska Airlines, and Starbucks Corporation. For Starbucks and with Kinzer Real Estate, he led a team to negotiate the creation of a $150M manufacturing plant in Augusta, GA. Following that project, he was recruited by the Mayor of Augusta to create Augusta Regional Collaboration Project (ARC), a public development corporation which worked with the City and State to consolidate several higher ed anchors into Georgia’s third research university into the downtown, causing $150M+ of investment in the urban core. With ARC, Kwatinetz also worked with Paine College (an HBCU) and the Housing and Community Development Department to help equitably develop historic Laney-Walker Bethlehem. 

Kwatinetz is a former consulting economist for the Penn Institute for Urban Research. In 2018, he published Thriving In Place: Supporting Austin’s Cultural Vitality Through Place-Based Economic Development, sponsored by the NEA, City of Austin and ArtPlace America. He is a co-author of "Introduction to the Big Data Era" with Stephan Kudyba in Kudyba's Big Data, Mining and Analytics.  While in Seattle, Kwatinetz served as the founding Vice President of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, co-founded the Seattle Cultural Overlay District Advisory Committee, and sat on King County's Cultural Real Estate Task Force.

Matthew is the Chair of the ULI NY District Technical Assistance Program and serves on the NY District Management Committee and the national Public/Private Council. He is the Board Chair for the Augusta Regional Collaboration Corporation. He is a Board Member of the Burning Man Project, as well as their interim head of Real Estate. He has been a featured speaker for Wharton, Harvard GSD, NYU, the University of Washington, Columbia, The New School, the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), Americans for the Arts, NAIOP, Net Impact, and the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities. Matthew received his MBA in Real Estate at The Wharton School, where he was named a Martin Bucksbaum scholar. He is a graduate of Deep Springs College and Harvard University, with honors.