About
Built for the sites that are too small for institutional capital.
Aurelian works across the full arc of a project: finding the site, testing whether it can carry a building, confirming what is actually there, capitalizing it, and delivering it. The same principal stays on it from the first parcel screen through the last punch item.
The company was built around a specific frustration.
David Armstrong studied mechanical engineering, finance, and real estate at Purdue, then worked at an early-stage development company and at a national REIT. The two jobs showed opposite ends of the industry, and the same gap from both directions. Institutional capital has a minimum efficient scale — large developers have to deploy large amounts at once, which quietly determines what gets built. Big buildings, for big tenants, on big sites. What falls below that line falls to whoever will build it cheapest.
So Aurelian is built to operate below that line deliberately. Each building is capitalized on its own rather than through a fund, because a fund with a deployment mandate structurally cannot chase a nine-million-dollar project. Raising deal by deal means the company can pursue the small infill site that makes sense and decline the large one that does not — and it means an investor is underwriting a specific building rather than a promise about future ones.
The discipline runs in two places. In the buildings: electrical capacity, bay module, circulation, and expansion flexibility are underwritten as decisions that have to earn their cost back, not resolved later by a consultant. And in the process: five stages, each ending at a decision point, and a project that fails one gets dropped rather than carried forward on momentum. That is the standard every project here is measured against, and it is the one the company asks to be judged on.
Where things stand.
- 2Target submarkets
- 1,200–5,000 SFTarget bay sizes
- 1 : 1Partnerships per building
- 1Principal, on every project through delivery
The person accountable for it.
One principal, on every project from the first parcel screen through the last punch item. There is no account team, no handoff after closing, and no one else to escalate to.
David Armstrong
Founder & Principal
David founded Aurelian to develop small-bay industrial and flex space to a standard the segment is rarely held to. He holds degrees in mechanical engineering, finance, and real estate from Purdue University, and has worked at both ends of the development industry — an early-stage development company, where projects get assembled from nothing, and a national REIT, where underwriting and asset management are held to institutional discipline. The engineering training is not incidental to how the company works. Building layout, electrical capacity, mechanical systems, and site circulation are treated as underwriting inputs rather than as details to be resolved later. The finance and real estate training is what keeps that honest: a design decision at Aurelian has to defend itself in rent, absorption, retention, or exit value, or it gets cut. He is on every project from the first parcel screen through delivery.
Who we work with.
The firms engaged to deliver the current pipeline — capital, legal, design, construction, and brokerage.
- [PARTNER 01]Capital
- [PARTNER 02]Legal
- [PARTNER 03]Design
- [PARTNER 04]Construction
- [PARTNER 05]Brokerage
- [PARTNER 06]Capital
