More than a year after losing his bid to be California’s governor, former State Treasurer Phil Angelides has found a home in the private sector. Last month he joined Canyon Capital Realty Advisors as a principal and the chairman of a new fund that is a partnership with former basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson. The $2 billion Canyon-Johnson Urban Communities Fund will buy and upgrade more than 10,000 apartment units in inner-city neighborhoods across the nation. “We want to have quality rental housing for working families — teachers, firemen, police — and green these properties” by using sustainable materials and practices and improving energy efficiency, says Angelides, 54. As state treasurer from 1999 to 2007, Angelides was a trustee of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and promoted inner-city and environmental technology investments. “Both plans invested in Canyon funds,” says Canyon Capital managing partner Bobby Turner. In the 1980s, Angelides’s real estate firm, River West Developments, built a community near Sacramento based on the principles of New Urbanism, which stresses walkable neighborhoods of mixed-income residents. “This is a big leap for me,” says Angelides.
