Ira Weinstein

Ira Weinstein serves as CohnReznick’s Managing Principal – Real Estate, Cannabis Industries, where he oversees the advisory, assurance, and tax services pertaining to both industries. His role is to develop and execute strategy that grows the capacity and capability of the firm’s resources dedicated to these industries for the benefit of our clients, our people, and our communities. 

The real estate practice includes the community development platform (all tax credits, public finance and affordable housing), commercial real estate, and construction. CohnReznick works with the full spectrum of real estate industry stakeholders including developers, institutional investors, private equity firms, lenders, asset management companies, REITs, and construction companies. The firm provides project finance and consulting, audit and tax regulatory services, and helps many of these companies improve financial processes, implement technologies, and employ best practices in process redesign.

The cannabis practice includes regulatory compliance for audit and tax services, tax structuring and all the advisory services designed to improve the operational effectiveness of many industry participants (plant touching and ancillary companies).

Prior to taking on this role, Ira spent the eight years managing the Baltimore office and over 20 years managing a consulting practice focused on providing strategic advisory services to clients in support of their vision for growth and enhanced enterprise value. He has extensive knowledge of the public-private partnership, specifically leveraging government programs to accomplish the project finance goals of his client base. Such programs include the federal and state New Markets Tax Credit Programs, the federal and state historic tax credit programs, renewable energy tax credits for investment and production, and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. 

Ira is a subject matter expert and firm leader on Opportunity Zones, an economic development provision passed as part of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, providing technical, transaction advisory, and entity formation services related to this provision. In this role, Ira co-authored “The Guide to Making Opportunity Zones Work” in 2020.

Ira speaks at conferences and seminars nationwide on a variety of topics. Before joining CohnReznick, he advised local economic development organizations on strategies to revitalize their geographic footprint. Before that, he spent several years in the corporate finance department of a public company raising capital for corporate and project finance and completing acquisitions and divestitures of company assets. His initial experience just post-college was doing credit analysis for a factor in extending credit nationwide across a variety of industries.