John A. Ritter
Focus Property Group
With more than 24 years of experience in the real estate industry, Focus Property Group Chairman and CEO John A. Ritter has made a national name for himself and his company as one of the most effective property investment companies and creator of financially successful master planned communities in the Southwest region. Ritter has led the accumulation of a portfolio with a valuation of approximately $2 billion. The company’s current projects total more than 13,500 acres in Las Vegas and throughout the Southwest, and his company has been involved in transactions exceeding $6 billion since its inception.
Through Ritter’s leadership, Focus Property Group has dominated the BLM land auction process established by the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, winning four straight auctions of major land parcels from 2002 to 2005. These master planned communities in Southern Nevada include the 3,500-acre Mountain’s Edge in the southwest part of the valley, the 1,200-acre Providence in the northwest, the 1,953-acre Inspirada development in Henderson (purchased and developed with a consortium of seven leading homebuilders) and most recently the 1,710-acre Kyle Gateway Project (purchased and developed with a consortium of eight national and local homebuilders). All of these communities have become reality through Ritter’s successful bidding strategy at the BLM land auctions. Additionally, the company is creating The Crossings, a 450-acre master plan in the city of Victorville, Calif., a 950-acre master plan with a working title of The Gateway at the entrance to Pahrump Valley, Nev., and a 70-acre commercial site in Denver. In total, the company’s portfolio includes approximately 30,000 residential lots, along with commercial and mixed use property.
Both a master planner and an environmentalist, Ritter’s goals are to create environmentally sensitive communities that provide a high quality of life for the residents. Focus has researched and provided both residents and builder partners with an extensive palette of desert flora that creates lush, appealing landscapes without wasting water. This, combined with the company's continuous evaluation of eco-friendly technological innovations and design techniques, enables Focus to create sustainable communities that will continue to thrive for generations to come.
Each Focus community will continue to become more environmentally sensitive and further increase water efficiency, which is evidenced by the company’s latest master planned communities, Inspirada and Kyle Canyon. Under Ritter’s direction, Focus has completely redesigned the traditional single-family subdivision. These new design concepts will eliminate water-wasting front yards by moving the homes closer to the sidewalks and bringing back the concept of the front porch for usable recreation space in the front of each home. Much of the individual outdoor recreation space will be provided in a central neighborhood park within each village, further increasing water efficiency. These new communities will use an estimated 35 percent less water than a conventional master plan. The vast majority of those savings occur in outdoor water use, which is the only use that is not reusable.
Ritter brings to all Focus Property Group ventures extensive and comprehensive knowledge in investment, finance, government relations, development trends, municipal zoning, planning and development. Through his years of developing land in Southern Nevada, Ritter has created strong working relationships with federal, state and local governmental entities from staff through elected officials.
Ritter has served on a number of local planning boards, including the Southern Nevada Water Authority Integrated Water Planning Advisory Committee and the Financial Subcommittee, the Northwest General Plan Update Steering Committee, the Spring Valley Land Use Guide Focus Group, the Enterprise Land Use Plan Advisory Group, and the Beltway Taskforce.
Additionally, Ritter serves on the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s Water Conservation Coalition, the board of the Lied Children’s Discovery Museum, the Las Vegas Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, is a member of the UNLV Foundation Board of Trustees and is a member of the inaugural Nevada Cancer Institute Foundation Board.
Ritter and his significant other, Hilary Westrom, are active philanthropists and established the Ritter Charitable Trust in 2002, a supporting organization to the Nevada Community Foundation, for the support of children and families in need in Southern Nevada. He has donated time, money and resources to many organizations and it is his belief that it is the duty and privilege of those who have been afforded great success to give back to the community. In addition to the long list of charitable organizations that Ritter has donated to, he strongly believes in encouraging and motivating others to get involved and take a leadership role in the community. He has encouraged each team member in his company to give what they can back to the community whether it is a monetary gift or the gift of their time. In 2006 alone, the company of more than 100 team members donated more than 1,000 hours of their personal time to local non-profit organizations.
For more information on the Ritter Charitable Trust or a list of charities the trust supports, please visit rittertrust.com Web site.