Speaker Spotlight: Pablo Barreiro of Fortec

Pablo Barreiro, chairman of Fortec, was featured as a speaker at Commercial Observer’s South Florida Development & Capital Leadership Forum.

Commercial Observer: You work in a niche market, revitalizing urban neighborhoods with the delivery of purpose-built educational projects. How did this become your focus, and what market changes over the past five years have driven the need and demand for more educational developments?

Pablo Barreiro: It started with a personal realization. During a property tour in Hollywood, I came across a preschool for sale that my daughter once attended. Seeing that school through a father’s eyes reframed how I saw the opportunity. There was a clear demand for quality early education, but almost no developers specialized in it. School operators were struggling with zoning, licensing and construction in buildings never designed for children. That’s why we launched Fortec — to be the dedicated partner education providers were missing by delivering purpose-built schools that meet the unique needs of early learning environments. While we’ve always been driven by purpose, our model also produces strong, consistent returns, proving that doing good and doing well can go hand in hand.

Over the last five years, the need for these projects has only intensified. More than half of Americans now live in “child care deserts,” while about 76 percent of children under 5 have all available parents in the workforce. This imbalance has created urgent demand for new educational developments. What began as a niche idea has become a recognized growth sector. That momentum led us to launch Fortec’s $100 million real estate fund, focused exclusively on educational infrastructure—providing investors a way to participate in an asset class with both strong social purpose and stable performance. Few investment opportunities combine such a clear social need with measurable financial performance. Fortec has completed over $230 million in early education projects, showing that building for the next generation is also building the future of the U.S.

South Florida in particular has experienced a rapid development boom and influx of new residents and tenants. What unique challenges has this growth triggered for South Florida? Are there submarkets within South Florida that you’re especially focused on?

South Florida’s boom has been incredible, but it’s also exposed growing pains. Infrastructure, especially schools, hasn’t kept pace with population growth. Several counties here are among the fastest-growing in the nation yet remain severely underserved in early childhood education, creating one of the highest child care gaps in the U.S. Addressing that gap is a challenge we’re passionate about solving because a community can’t thrive if its educational needs aren’t met. We see education as essential infrastructure — as vital as roads or utilities — and we’ve built a platform to develop it at scale.

South Florida is a priority market for us, with our headquarters in Miami. We’ve delivered new early education centers in Palm Beach Gardens and Hollywood, and one is under development in Hallandale Beach. Each project meets local demand while providing stable, community-anchored assets that generate long-term returns for investors. We’re also pursuing additional sites where growth is strongest and schools are scarce. Our goal is to partner with best-in-class operators and local stakeholders to ensure every new neighborhood includes the schools families need. That’s how we turn growth into opportunity — by building schools where families are growing, helping neighborhoods thrive, and shaping the foundation for stronger communities and the future of America.

In what ways can South Florida be viewed as a microcosm for national trends in urban markets, and what lessons learned and best practices should be applied to ensure sustainable growth? 

South Florida reflects many of the same urban growth trends seen nationwide — rapid population influx, booming real estate and strain on public infrastructure. It’s a microcosm of what’s happening in other high-growth regions like Texas, the Carolinas and the Southwest, showing both the opportunities and growing pains of expansion. The early education sector illustrates this perfectly: the U.S. faces a critical shortage of early childhood centers, and the gap is especially visible here. South Florida highlights that imbalance and the opportunity to bridge it with institutional-quality real estate that delivers both social impact and financial performance.

The key lesson is that growth must include community infrastructure. It’s not enough to build housing and offices; you have to build the schools, parks and transit that make growth sustainable. That means investing in educational facilities early in the development cycle, not as an afterthought. Fortec applies this proactive model in markets from Phoenix to Charlotte to Austin, developing purpose-built schools that meet modern families’ needs. Sustainable growth is about the next generation, not the next quarter. Our success is measured not only by ROI but by community outcomes — are we strengthening families and neighborhoods? When we invest in education infrastructure, we’re investing in the nation’s long-term resilience and prosperity.

How important are public-private partnerships to you advancing these developments? What other market factors have an impact on your ability to successfully deliver purpose-built educational developments?

Public-private partnerships are critical to our work. Expanding educational infrastructure at the speed and scale needed requires close collaboration between the private sector, government entities and the communities we serve. Our model is uniquely positioned for this. As a private developer specializing in essential educational infrastructure, we can move faster and bring institutional capital to projects that otherwise might take years of public budgeting to materialize. We’ve found that when city leaders, school boards or state officials work hand in hand with us, projects can move faster and deliver greater impact. Sometimes it’s as straightforward as working with a local government to repurpose an underutilized public property, turning an abandoned school district building or a vacant lot into a thriving education center. These transformations not only revitalize neighborhoods but also increase property values, create local jobs, and give families access to the kind of high-quality early education that fuels long-term economic growth. Other times, it’s about convincing a community and municipality that our vision for an early education center won’t have negative ripple effects on things like traffic. We back our proposals with data (traffic studies, demographic reports and community engagement sessions) to ensure local governments see the full picture of the positive impact these schools create.

It truly “takes a village” to build the schools our communities need: State-level collaboration, private investment and public-private partnerships all have to work together to expand access and build these facilities. These PPPs are often the bridge between a great idea and a great school on the ground. At the same time, these collaborations unlock scalable opportunities for private capital to do good while doing well — generating stable returns through assets that directly strengthen communities. That’s what “building the future of America” looks like in practice.