KVIG Informative

Jason LeDell is listed simultaneously as former managing partner of Cherry Development, which builds workforce housing in downtown Las Vegas, and as corporate broker and regional manager of RHOME, a property management company explicitly backed by Associa, the largest HOA management company in the United States. Associa received a private equity investment from Summit Partners in 2008. The people renting from shareDOWNTOWN are one person away from a private equity chain most of them have never heard of.

The pitch for shareDOWNTOWN was always the same. The bartender working in the Arts District shouldn’t have to commute from the suburbs. The person cutting hair or tending bar or hanging work in a gallery deserves to live where they work. Sam Cherry, a Las Vegas native who built the first luxury high-rise condominiums downtown in the mid-2000s, pivoted hard after the financial crisis. When development returned to his portfolio, it came in the form of small, studio apartments for the working people who animate the neighborhoods his earlier projects had helped gentrify.

Cherry Development built shareDOWNTOWN Arts District in 2020. Sixty-three units at Casino Center Boulevard and Colorado Avenue, 480 square feet each, renting for $1,100 to $1,300 a month when they opened, fully leased within six months. A second building, shareDOWNTOWN Fremont East, opened in spring 2023 with 84 units. A third, shareWestside in the Historic Westside, is opening in spring 2026 with 104 units on land Cherry purchased from the City of Las Vegas for $6, as part of a redevelopment agreement that includes city-funded tenant improvements totaling $8.2 million.

In April 2026, Cherry Development announced a Path to Homeownership Program, under which residents can have $200 per month set aside toward a down payment on a future home, up to $4,800 over 24 months, with partner mortgage lenders, title companies, and credit counselors enrolled to help residents transition from renters to owners. The announcement carried a quote from Jason LeDell, identified as Cherry’s managing partner.

LeDell’s other job is corporate broker and regional operations manager for RHOME, a national property management company. RHOME’s own website states: “Backed by Associa, America’s largest HOA management company.” His LinkedIn profile identifies his current role as both positions simultaneously. His BBB of Southern Nevada filing lists him as the broker of record for RHOME’s Las Vegas office at 7670 W. Lake Mead Blvd.

The man who is the public face of Cherry Development’s workforce housing mission is the same man who runs the Las Vegas branch of a property management company that is a subsidiary of the largest HOA management conglomerate in the country, which itself received a private equity investment from a Boston-based growth equity firm in June 2008.

Who Summit Partners Is and What They Did

Summit Partners was founded in 1984 by Roe Stamps and Stephen Woodsum, who had previously worked together at TA Associates. The firm focuses on growth equity investments, typically ranging from $30 million to $500 million, in technology, healthcare, and business services companies. It describes itself as one of the earliest private equity firms to specialize in growth investing. It has made more than 1,200 investments since its founding.

On June 11, 2008, Summit Partners announced a minority investment in Associa. The announcement, published on GlobeNewswire, described Associa as the largest outsourced manager of community associations in the United States, with more than 80 offices across the country. Summit Managing Director John Carroll and Principal Peter Connolly joined Associa’s board as part of the deal. The size of the investment was not disclosed. The timing, weeks before the financial crisis accelerated through the fall of 2008, placed Summit in position to support Associa’s continued acquisition strategy through a period when smaller regional management companies were vulnerable to distressed sales.

Associa remains a privately held company headquartered in Richardson, Texas. Its founder, John Carona, who died in 2020, built the company through decades of acquisitions, reaching more than 300 offices and tens of thousands of managed communities by the time of his death. The company has since continued expanding under subsequent leadership, opening a new headquarters in Richardson in 2025 with room for nearly 1,000 employees.

What RHOME Is and How It Connects

RHOME is Associa’s rental property management division, launched to extend Associa’s existing HOA management infrastructure into the single-family and multifamily rental market. Where Associa’s core business manages homeowner associations on behalf of boards, RHOME manages rental properties on behalf of individual and institutional landlords. Its own website describes its backing by Associa as a central credential, citing Associa’s scale as the basis for RHOME’s ability to offer national resources with local market expertise.

RHOME’s Las Vegas office is headquartered at 7670 W. Lake Mead Blvd., Suite 100. The office was registered with the BBB of Southern Nevada on October 3, 2023. Jason LeDell is listed as both the broker of record and the primary business contact. His professional history, as documented on LinkedIn and professional licensing records, spans more than 25 years in Las Vegas real estate, including an earlier role as managing partner of Cherry Development, during which he directed sales and development of the SoHo Lofts and Newport Lofts luxury condominium projects downtown.

The RHOME Las Vegas resident benefits package, as listed on the company’s website, charges tenants $39.95 per month for enrollment in a bundle including renters insurance, HVAC filter delivery, credit building services, identity protection, and a move-in concierge. Enrollment is described as automatic for all RHOME Las Vegas residents. An upgraded package is offered at $54.95 per month. The insurance policy lists RHOME Las Vegas as an additional interest, with a correspondence address at PO Box 660121, Dallas, TX 75266, an Associa corporate mailing address.

The City’s Role

Cherry Development’s relationship with the City of Las Vegas is extensive and publicly documented. For the Historic Westside shareWestside project, Cherry acquired the land for $6 and received city-funded tenant improvements of $8.2 million through the Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency. The Redevelopment Agency is also leasing the ground-floor retail space in the building and separately leasing the adjacent Good Word Social Club commercial space, which Cherry built for nearly $9 million with a February 2026 groundbreaking attended by Mayor Shelley Berkley and City Councilwoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong.

For the shareDOWNTOWN Fremont East project, the City Council approved an agreement in 2022 that provided Cherry a roughly one-acre plot of city-owned land for the nominal sum of $6. The shareDOWNTOWN Westside project includes a rent covenant with the city, described by Cherry as a mechanism to prevent rental rates from fluctuating excessively from year to year. The specific terms of that covenant are not publicly available.

City officials across multiple administrations have praised Cherry’s projects. Former Mayor Carolyn Goodman, Councilwoman Olivia Diaz, Councilman Cedric Crear, and current Mayor Shelley Berkley have all made public statements supporting the shareDOWNTOWN developments. The City of Las Vegas has a direct financial interest in the success of Cherry’s projects through the Redevelopment Agency’s lease agreements, which require the properties to attract and retain commercial tenants.

Cherry Development has also forged a partnership with the Las Vegas Housing Authority, under which residents on the authority’s waitlist who have jobs but cannot find units may be placed in shareDOWNTOWN properties. LeDell confirmed this arrangement to local press in 2024.

What It Means for Tenants

The workers who rent from shareDOWNTOWN occupy a specific structural position. They pay rent to Cherry Development, which owns the properties. They are managed, in at least some cases, by RHOME, the Associa-backed property management division whose Las Vegas broker is Cherry Development’s own managing partner. They pay a mandatory monthly fee to RHOME for the resident benefits package. Their rental history and credit data flow through systems controlled by Associa’s national infrastructure.

That infrastructure connects, through Summit Partners’ minority investment, to a private equity firm with more than 1,200 investments across the technology, healthcare, and business services sectors. Summit Partners does not manage or operate Cherry Development or shareDOWNTOWN. It is a minority investor in Associa. The chain is long. But for a bartender or gallery worker paying $1,300 a month for 480 square feet in the Arts District, the chain ends at their lease and their mandatory monthly fee.

Whether the management relationship between RHOME and the specific shareDOWNTOWN properties is formal, informal, or covers all three buildings is a question that neither Cherry Development nor RHOME has addressed publicly. The terms of any management agreement between them are not part of the public record. What is public is that the same individual holds leadership positions in both organizations simultaneously, that both organizations share Dallas, Texas as an operational hub, and that RHOME’s Associa parent has a presence in Nevada through Associa Nevada South, which has operated in the Las Vegas market since 2008.

The Larger Pattern

This investigation began with a specific question: who ultimately benefits from the private equity chain that runs through the property management of workforce housing in downtown Las Vegas. The answer is layered. Cherry Development is a local developer with genuine community investment, a documented history in downtown Las Vegas spanning more than two decades, and a stated mission of creating attainable workforce housing in neighborhoods that larger developers have ignored. The Path to Homeownership Program, launched in April 2026, is a concrete financial commitment to tenant mobility.

At the same time, the company’s managing partner runs the Las Vegas branch of a property management operation backed by the largest HOA management company in the country, which itself was capitalized in part by a growth equity firm in 2008. The City of Las Vegas has invested more than $8 million in tenant improvements in Cherry’s projects and leased land to the developer for nominal sums. The tenants who fill those units pay mandatory monthly fees to a management infrastructure they did not choose and whose institutional ownership they are unlikely to know.

This is not the story of obvious predation. It is the story of how private equity normalizes its presence in everyday life: through professional relationships between people who hold multiple roles, through mandatory fees embedded in lease agreements, through management companies that carry local faces and national balance sheets. The downtown Las Vegas worker who cannot afford to live anywhere else is not being extracted from in the way a predatory landlord would extract. But they are, without knowing it, a revenue stream in a corporate structure that traces back to a private equity firm’s portfolio page.

That is worth knowing.