BGO Promotes Jonathan Epstein to Head of U.S. 

Jonathan Epstein, who has built up real estate investment company BGO’s cold-storage and core-plus platforms since its inception in 2019, has been elevated to lead the firm’s U.S. operations. 

BGO promoted Epstein — an industry veteran who held senior positions at Lehman Brothers before joining BGO in 2011 —  to a lead U.S. role succeeding Chris Niehaus nearly six years after the company was born in 2019 through a merger between Bentall Kennedy and GreenOak Real Estate. Niehaus will remain at BGO as chairman of the U.S. and will also lead the firm’s global investment committees. 

As part of his expanded role, Epstein will maintain his position as senior portfolio manager for BGO’s U.S. Core-Plus fund launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and continue overseeing its temperature-controlled logistics investments. Epstein, who was previously a partner at GreenOak, noted that he hopes to maintain BGO’s momentum with now $85 billion of assets under management globally compared to $47 billion at the time of the merger. 

“Whether it’s our value-add business or whether it’s our credit businesses in the U.S., we’ve got pretty good senior leadership that has a lot of experience,” Epstein told Commercial Observer.  “My goal is not to screw it up and let great people do what they do best,and to be there as a player, coach and continue to help.”

PERE first reported Epstein’s promotion among other senior leadership changes at BGO.

Epstein said BGO remains focused on housing sectors and logistics investments in areas like cold-storage facilities and data centers along with medical office assets. He stressed that BGO has assembled a strong research team to uncover trends in various asset classes, which has proven especially valuable in its decision to target certain multifamily investments.

“We’ve always held the belief that, longer term, more Americans will be renters for longer, so that helps us focus on the types of demographics of the buildings we want to buy,” Epstein said. “A shiny glass and steel, brand-new building in a major city might look great, but the building on the edge of the city, close to transportation, close to highways, that’s much more affordable for workers working in that city might end up being the better, longer-term investment.” 

Epstein will remain based out of BGO’s Los Angeles office, but will spend plenty of time on airplanes in the enlarged role. He plans to spend one week a month in New York and another in one of its other East Coast offices. 

The promotion of Epstein coincides with BGO and Ohio developer Crawford Hoying selling a 179,000-square-foot cold-storage facility in Columbus, Ohio, to an entity known as Aris Charter Street LLC for $75.7 million, the Columbus Business Journal first reported. The development was completed in January 2025.

“We got an off-market price that was well above what we had underwritten in our business plan,” Epstein said. “As a fiduciary, we had to take a hard look at that and realize that that was a great outcome for our investors, and if you can get your price today versus five years from now you’re supposed to do that deal, particularly when we didn’t know what the outcome of a lot of the policy pronouncements out of Washington that were coming, and continuous geopolitical issues.”

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com