David Simon ’90 MSRED joins the 2025 LA500, recognized for shaping how media production inhabits Los Angeles. As founder of Bardas Investment Group, Simon is developing over 1.6 million square feet of architecture for the city’s content industries, redefining studio campuses and production sites. Founded in 2018, Bardas approaches development as the spatial scaffolding of storytelling—spaces that respond to the shifting ecologies of media and the urgency of keeping narrative labor rooted in the city.

Through its Echelon platform, the firm is assembling a portfolio of purpose-built campuses—studio lots, soundstages, and hybrid workspaces—that operate at the scale of global distribution while remaining locally embedded. Projects like the $500 million Echelon Studios Hollywood and the $600 million transformation of the historic Television Center reflect an investment in architecture as a medium for future cultural logistics. Simon’s inclusion in the LA500 acknowledges both his spatial agency and his role in positioning Los Angeles as a continuously evolving node for global cultural production.

Leading up to the annual All Alumni Party, MSRED alumni from the classes of 2010 and 2015 came together over lunch—sharing stories, updates, and reflections on a decade of shaping the built environment. The afternoon offered not only a moment of reunion, but a space to revisit the role of real estate in an ever-shifting urban landscape.