Casa Rusca / About
Nicolo Rusconi
I build places and companies at the intersection of real estate, hospitality, culture, technology, and human behavior. For fifteen years, the work has moved across categories while the discipline has remained the same: align vision, capital, design, and operations around something worth building.
Today, I am the founder and CEO of Superform, a partner and owner of The Georgian Hotel, a board member of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, and the founder of Casa Rusca, my selective advisory practice.
The path here
In 2013, I joined Jon Blanchard as a partner in BLVD Hospitality, the independent real estate development and operating platform he founded. As managing partner, I worked across land use, capital, design, construction, and operations on more than $500 million in project value, including Soho Warehouse, The Hoxton Downtown LA, citizenM, NeueHouse Venice, and The Georgian Hotel.
In 2023, we reopened The Georgian, a 1933 Art Deco landmark on Ocean Avenue that we restored from concept through operations and continue to own with our partners.
Since 2024, my primary operating focus has been Superform: a human performance company building a proprietary intelligence engine and a flagship assessment facility. The category is different, but the work is familiar—assemble the right people, make the capital and operating model honest, and protect the central idea through execution.
Musashi’s final precepts contain a severe instruction: do nothing without purpose. It is both a rule of strategy and a theory of taste.
Miyamoto Musashi · Dokkōdō · 1645
What I try to bring into a room is not more content. It is clearer judgment: identify what is load-bearing, say the uncomfortable number aloud, and leave the people who run the company enough room to finish the work.
Civic
Cities are the longest-dated assets we inherit. This is the work I do without an economic interest.
Board Member · Current · 10+ years
Los Angeles Conservation Corps
One of California’s largest service-based nonprofit organizations, creating paid work, education, and career pathways for young people while delivering conservation and community projects across Los Angeles.
Advisory · Past
Bringing Back Broadway
A $40M city-led revitalisation of Downtown's Broadway corridor that catalysed close to $1B of investment and reactivated more than one million square feet of historic space.
Council Member · Current
ULI Los Angeles — HEDC
A cross-sector council focused on hospitality, entertainment, sports, and destination-driven development. I currently co-lead a committee examining the state and future of Los Angeles’ visitor economy.
Advisory Committee · Current
Santa Monica Conservancy
The organisation that protects the architecture and stories giving Santa Monica its continuity. I sit on its Advisory Committee. Its archival research informed the Georgian’s restoration and helped us understand the building on its own terms.
Previously: the Third Street Promenade Re-Envisioning Committee — an ad-hoc group convened during downtown Santa Monica's 40% vacancy, whose recovery went on to drive 16%+ foot-traffic growth in 2023 and a $1B+ investment pipeline.
Straight answers
The questions I am actually asked, answered without ceremony.
Who is Nicolo Rusconi?
A founder, operator, board director and investor based in Los Angeles. I am the founder and CEO of Superform, a partner and owner of The Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica, and from 2013 to 2024 I was a partner and then managing partner of BLVD Hospitality, where I developed more than $500 million of hospitality and real estate. I have served on the board of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps for over a decade. I am a graduate of Loyola Marymount University.
What is Casa Rusca?
My practice, and this website. It is where the advisory work, board service and select investments live under one name, rather than a firm with staff and a fund. If you are engaging me, you are engaging me.
What is Superform?
A human performance company I founded in 2024 and run as chief executive. It pairs a proprietary intelligence engine—laboratory diagnostics, wearable data, physical assessment and daily behaviour—with a flagship assessment facility, the first of which opens in Thousand Oaks, California. I founded it with my brother Jagger Rusconi and Tommy Costello, and it is my primary operating focus.
What did you do at BLVD Hospitality?
Jon founded BLVD; I joined him as a partner in 2013. As managing partner through 2024 I worked across land use, capital, design, construction and operations on Soho Warehouse, The Hoxton Downtown LA, citizenM Downtown LA, NeueHouse Venice and The Georgian Hotel. The project record is here.
Who restored The Georgian Hotel?
Jon Blanchard and I envisioned it together and led the restoration from concept through opening, in partnership with ESI Ventures, with interiors by Fettle. The 1933 Art Deco building on Ocean Avenue reopened in April 2023 and now holds one MICHELIN Key. We continue to own it alongside a small group of partners and investors—there are several owners, not one.
What makes citizenM Downtown LA notable?
It was Los Angeles’ first modular high-rise, and the first on the West Coast. Opened in 2021 at 4th and Spring: 315 rooms, eleven storeys, a two-level concrete base carrying nine storeys of steel-framed guest-room modules built off-site and stacked by crane. The engineering was hard; permitting the method at that height in a severe seismic zone, where it had never been done, was harder.
Are you taking board seats?
Selectively. Independent director and board observer roles at venture- and private equity-backed companies, typically Series B and later; hospitality, real estate and consumer boards; and civic institutions, particularly in Los Angeles. What I bring to a board is set out here. Board service and investment stay separate decisions.
Contact
Get in touch.
nico@casarusca.comBoard opportunities, advisory engagements, select investments, and press inquiries all arrive in the same place. Tell me what you are working on and what you would want from me.