Development: All Finance or Down and Dirty?

Background: I’ve been in RE development for 5 years as an “analyst”. I work for a developer with a corporate headquarter office and satellite offices throughout the country whereby the satellite offices use corporate as seed capital for pursuit/GP equity and satellite offices do the rest essentially living and dying by their own projects. I work directly with two MDs and our development managers are on site. Our projects range between $50M-$500M in size located in international destinations.

As an “analyst” I do a little of everything as most of you know at smaller shops. I am in every meeting with the MD’s in regard to acquisitions, capital raising, structuring, design, construction management, sales & marketing and dispositions. I’ve had fantastic experience so far but now it’s time to move to the next step in my career. I have the fortunate opportunity to basically choose between moving up to a VP role within the organization through our expansion plan or move to a development manager role on a newly acquired site.

My question: to those who are further along in their careers, what do you find more beneficial in terms of career progression and experience: staying strictly on the finance/deal structuring side and managing the development managers or learning the intricacies of the development process by being on site and in the weeds? I work very close with the development managers also and know from a high level all the issues that arise and help to solve the problems but cannot say I’ve “built” something.

Long term goal: CEO of Development (we completely bifurcate ops & dev.) of the entire company in 10-15 years OR go off on my own in 7-10 years developing similar product types. In a perfect world I would become a development manager for 4-5 years and go back to acquisitions/deal structuring/capital raising for the company.

I ask this, because my DM’s are both nearing retirement age and have mentioned this cycle is their last rodeo. I am trying to decide which route would be more beneficial for (i) keeping this satellite office open and moving up in the company and/or (ii) gaining the experience required to go off on my own.

Any insights would be helpful.

Thanks