# Harrison Street

Harrison Street is an Asset Manager based in Chicago, United States.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Asset Manager
- **Headquarters:** Chicago, United States
- **Region:** North America
- **Address:** Chicago, IL, United States
- **Founded:** 2005
- **Assets under management:** $55B–$60B (Altss estimate)
- **Website:** harrisonst.com
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/harrison-street

## Regulatory record

- **CRD number:** 157983
- **SEC file number:** 801-72727
- **Registration status:** Registered
- **Reports private funds:** Yes
- **IAPD record:** https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/157983

## About

Harrison Street is an SEC-registered investment adviser in Chicago, IL, registered since 2011. The firm manages approximately $20.2 billion in regulatory assets. It has 321 employees and 225 investment advisers.

## Sectors

- Real Estate
- Infrastructure
- Digital Health
- Education
- Energy Transition & Renewables
- Life Sciences

## Offices

- London
- Toronto
- San Francisco
- Washington, D.C.

## People

- Christopher Merrill — Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO
- Michael Galper — Co-Founder and Vice Chairman
- Christopher Galvin — Executive Chairman

## Questions

### Who runs investment decisions at Harrison Street?

Investment decisions sit with the firm's sector-focused investment committees, which are overseen by co-founders Christopher Merrill and Michael Galper alongside senior managing directors leading each vertical — student housing, senior living, medical office, life sciences, and infrastructure. Merrill, as CEO, holds ultimate approval authority for large commitments. Executive Chairman Christopher Galvin advises on governance and strategic direction but does not lead day-to-day deployment.

### How does Harrison Street source proprietary deal flow?

Harrison Street sources most deals through programmatic joint ventures with specialist operating partners — student-housing operators like The Scion Group, senior-living managers like Merrill Gardens, and university or health-system affiliates. Because the firm often provides development capital or structured take-out financing directly to these partners, it enters transactions off-market rather than competing in broker-led auctions. This partnership model accounts for a majority of its annual deployment.

### Does Harrison Street participate in fund commitments or only direct deals?

Harrison Street originates and manages direct investments in operating companies and physical assets. It does not operate as a fund-of-funds and does not allocate capital to third-party fund managers. LPs access its strategies through closed-end commingled funds, separate accounts, and co-investment structures, all deployed directly into property and infrastructure assets or development platforms.

### Which sectors does Harrison Street explicitly avoid?

The firm does not invest in traditional office, retail, industrial, or hospitality unless the asset is ancillary to a demographic theme — a café in a medical office building, for example. It also avoids single-family residential, self-storage, and data centers, concentrating instead on sectors with observable demographic demand drivers: student housing, senior living, medical office, life science labs, digital-health infrastructure, and energy-transition assets.

### How is Harrison Street's leadership structured for succession?

Harrison Street has built a vertical leadership structure in which senior managing directors run each sector group with significant autonomy, while co-founders Merrill and Galper remain active in risk and capital-allocation decisions. Executive Chairman Christopher Galvin provides additional governance oversight. The firm has not publicly announced a specific CEO succession plan, but the investment pods and multi-generational managing-director layer reduce key-person dependency relative to other founder-led real estate managers.

## Related profiles

- [RockRidge Capital Partners](https://altss.com/profile/rockridge-capital-partners)
- [Hastings Funds Management](https://altss.com/profile/hastings-funds-management)

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Last updated: 2026-06-03T20:00:00.000Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/harrison-street

Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology