leadership
Charles McGrath | Co-Founder
Charles (“Charley”) McGrath is a seasoned commercial real estate executive with over two decades of experience across capital markets, development, and acquisitions. As Executive Managing Director at Newmark in Philadelphia, McGrath leads strategic real estate initiatives focused on industrial and office assets. His career includes notable leadership roles such as Head of the Northeast Office at MRP Realty, where he managed over $2.2 billion in real estate investments totaling 6.9 million square feet.
McGrath’s institutional knowledge, extensive deal-making experience, and deep network across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland make him uniquely qualified to serve as Chairman. His background in underwriting, design, construction, and equity structuring, along with his notable transactions for firms like KKR, Goldman Sachs, and Fortress, add tremendous strategic value to Crossroads Development Partners growth objectives.
He has been recognized with honors including Philadelphia Business Journal's "40 Under 40" and Bisnow’s “35 Under 35” in Washington, DC. McGrath holds a Master of Architecture with a concentration in real estate development from the Catholic University of America, graduating magna cum laude.
Declan McGrath is a Co-Founder of Crossroads Real Estate and a member of the next generation of the McGrath investment tradition. Shaped from an early age by the values of institutional capital markets and the demands of elite competition, Declan brings to the firm a temperament built for the long game: patient, rigorous, and oriented toward the kind of compounding conviction that serious real estate investment requires.
Growing up alongside his father — he developed an early and genuine literacy in capital structure, deal underwriting, and the judgment required to deploy institutional capital at scale. Where others encounter these concepts in graduate coursework, Declan encountered them at the dinner table. That head start is not lost on him, and he takes the responsibility of continuing that legacy seriously.
His competitive athletic background has been the proving ground for exactly that quality. Elite athletics teaches what no classroom can: that results are the lagging indicator of habits, that process disciplines outcome, and that the gap between good and exceptional is almost always found in the margins — the preparation, the recovery, the attention to what others overlook. These are the same instincts that distinguish great analysts from adequate ones, and great investors from lucky ones.
Summers spent as a beach patrol lifeguard in Avalon, New Jersey have added another layer — the composure and situational authority that genuine, high-stakes responsibility develops. The ability to remain clear-headed when conditions deteriorate and stakes are real is not a personality trait. It is a practiced skill.
At Crossroads, Declan's role is oriented toward the firm's future: its culture, its relationships, and its long-term continuity as a platform built to outlast any single market cycle. He arrives not as a finished product but as someone who understands what the work requires — and has already begun putting in the hours. That combination of lineage, drive, and long-horizon thinking is precisely what Crossroads was designed to develop and deploy.
Declan McGrath | Co-Founder