Garden City Equity

Adam Arrieta grew up as the son of Puerto Rican parents who worked blue collar jobs in a system that rewarded hard work without always rewarding the people doing it. That biography is not background color in the Garden City Equity story. It is the investment thesis. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Charlotte, Garden City describes itself as a "people-first holding company" — an institution built not to acquire businesses and sell them, but to acquire businesses and keep them. Permanently. The capital structure is evergreen by design. The holding period is indefinite by intention. The difference between what Garden City offers founders and what traditional private equity offers founders is not a matter of degree. It is categorical.

The firm targets lower middle market service businesses in the South and Southwest United States with up to $25 million in EBITDA — the companies that are, in Arrieta's formulation, too large for individual sponsors and too small for institutional PE funds, and that face a succession crisis as their founders age without successors or liquidity plans. Garden City provides both: majority acquisition, flexible deal structures, a commitment to retaining the existing management team and culture, and a set of post-acquisition investments in employees that are genuinely unusual in the private capital market. Company chaplains focused on team member wellbeing, financial literacy and language classes, no-interest loans for short-term employee financial challenges, and funding for therapy and marital counseling are not incidental benefits at Garden City portfolio companies. They are the firm's expression of a value creation theory that measures outcomes for people, not just for capital.

In February 2026, Garden City closed a $255 million raise from approximately 200 mission-aligned shareholders — a list that included Drew Brees, Tim Tebow, Horst Schulze (founder of the Ritz-Carlton), the CEO of Ace Hardware, and Grammy-winning artists — people who, whatever their fame, share a belief that there is a way to build and hold businesses that creates genuine value for everyone inside them. The capital is not patient because it lacks conviction. It is patient because the conviction runs deeper than the exit timeline.