Brian Reilly

Brian Reilly is an economic development and urban implementation strategist who has spent nearly three decades turning public priorities and community ambitions into visible results. His work connects economic opportunity, environmental improvement, and social equity by aligning the institutions, disciplines, and people needed to move complex place-based initiatives from vision to implementation.
Reilly has led economic development for Cleveland and Buffalo and directed Milwaukee’s award-winning Menomonee River Valley redevelopment. Across these Great Lakes cities, he created the country’s first industrial land bank to place jobs closer to workers, initiated what was then New York State’s largest citywide rezoning in 50 years, and helped set a national record for central-city job creation.
He has consistently linked development to benefits for local residents. At Living Cities, he supported the nation’s largest cross-sector collective-impact cohort, helping nine cities pursue locally defined economic opportunity agendas through a common framework he co-designed and coached them in applying. In Albuquerque, he led a transit-oriented development process that paired real estate investment goals with lower living costs for existing residents.
For nearly a decade, Reilly has championed small-scale and incremental development, helping local governments reform regulations, strengthen development ecosystems, and expand the capacity of homegrown developers to produce missing-middle housing and mixed-use buildings. More recently, he organized a New York City initiative focused on the future of storefront small businesses and launched ToyBox.NYC, a five-borough pilot connecting neighborhood toy stores with holiday toy drives to generate local sales and community benefit.
Across these roles, Reilly has worked as both strategist and implementer: translating technical analysis into practical decisions, turning institutional resistance into ownership, and building the partnerships and operating systems needed to move promising ideas into lasting results.