In partnership with The Amidi Group of Companies, Hamid Behdad founded Central City Development Group (CCDG), an urban-infill real estate development company in 2007. Under Hamid’s leadership and in just two years, CCDG managed, entitled, and provided advisory services for several mixed-use development projects in Southern California, totaling over 775 residential units. Most notably, CCDG is the developer of “Icon on Wilshire”, a 376-unit, luxury mixed-use development in downtown Los Angeles, California.

Prior to forming CCDG, Hamid served three Mayoral Administrations for the City of Los Angeles, where he earned the title “Czar” of Adaptive Reuse Projects for the city. In 1999, the City of Los Angeles adopted transformative local legislation that enabled the city to exercise flexibility in certain areas of land use, fire life safety and building standards to the historic office buildings primarily in the downtown city center. Hamid championed the city’s efforts by establishing a citywide Adaptive Reuse Program that facilitated the conversion of dilapidated commercial and industrial buildings into mixed-use developments. The highly publicized program has been responsible for the development of over 14,000 housing units in a city facing a housing crisis. The estimated economic value of the program represented private investments to the city in excess of $6 billion.

In the United States, Hamid started his 37 year career by working as a Civil Engineer with the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works before transferring to the City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety where he was later selected to serve in the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development. Prior to his work experience in the U.S., Hamid worked in Tehran, Iran as a project engineer in four prominent construction and consulting companies. Hamid is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of California and holds undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Civil and Structural Engineering.

Hamid has lectured before a wide variety of academic and professional institutions including the California Building Officials, the California Health Policy Forum, the Center for Creative Land Recycling, the Central City Association, the City of Long Beach, the City of Los Angeles, the City of Oakland, the Downtown (Los Angeles) Center Business Improvement District, the Los Angeles Conservancy, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, The American Planning Association, The Urban Land Institute, the Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Services, the Pacific Coast Builders Conference, the Society for Marketing Professional Services, the Southern California Development Forum (SCDF), the University of Southern California, and the Urban Land Institute, as well as many other individual and collective investors, lenders, international developers and urban planners.