How Nick Gallardo Is Building a New Kind of Recovery Community in North Carolina

Last updated: July 19, 2026 

Six months ago, Nick Gallardo took on a new role at Neyius Hotel Group (NHG). He became Director of Business Affairs for the hospitality arm of the Neyius family office’s Global Hospitality & Experience Ventures division. At first, he expected to simply learn the hotel business. Instead, he found a project that pulled together two very different halves of his career: institutional finance and community-focused philanthropy.

That project is now taking shape in North Carolina. It’s called The Retreat at Highgrove, a planned rehabilitation and recovery community for patients and families traveling to the state for major medical treatment.

From Portfolio Management to Philanthropy

Before hospitality, Gallardo worked as a portfolio manager for the family office. He handled capital allocation, risk assessment, underwriting, and long-term asset strategy. It was disciplined, numbers-driven work. It also gave him a strong foundation for evaluating opportunity at scale.

Later, he moved into philanthropy. He joined the Courtney Jordan Foundation and helped drive community-focused initiatives there. As a result, the two experiences taught him very different lessons.

“Portfolio management teaches you how to read the market,” Gallardo says. “The Foundation work taught me how to read people. Put those together, and you start looking for investments that actually improve someone’s life, not just the balance sheet.”

Learning the Hotel Business at Neyius Hotel Group

Nick Gallardo, Director of Business Affairs at Neyius Hotel Group, leading the development of The Retreat at Highgrove.

Neyius Hotel Group manages a portfolio of franchised properties. That includes Embassy Suites, Best Western, and several Extended Stay brands. During his first months, Gallardo focused on learning the operational side of that business. He studied brand standards, revenue management, capital improvement planning, and the daily details that keep a hotel property running well.

Much of that education came from watching NHG President and CEO Kellan Cruz work firsthand, he says. He still remembers their first meeting, held on-site at a property . He arrived with spreadsheets and underwriting models, ready for a numbers-first conversation.

“She glanced at the data, then walked the property with me instead. She pointed out the guest flow, the franchise relationships, how all of it actually drives revenue,” Gallardo says. “It changed how I think about this business. She’s not just buying hotels. She’s building places where people want to be.”

A Stalled Project, Reconsidered

A few months into the role, Gallardo found a residential development in North Carolina that had stalled. Construction sat unfinished. Funding had run out. The site sat untouched. Many developers would have written the property off. Instead, Gallardo saw a chance to build something the region didn’t already have.

Neyius Hotel Group acquired the site soon after. Now, the team is in the early planning and development stages of turning it into The Retreat at Highgrove. The community is meant for patients traveling to North Carolina for major medical care, along with the families who accompany them.

“Thousands of people come here every year for the hospitals and specialists,” Gallardo says. “But nobody’s really asked where they’re supposed to stay while they recover. A hotel room or an Airbnb isn’t built for that. We wanted to build something that is.”

Why North Carolina Needs a Dedicated Recovery Community

Nick Gallardo, Director of Business Affairs at Neyius Hotel Group.

North Carolina is home to some of the country’s most respected hospital systems and specialty medical centers. Patients travel from across the region, and beyond, for treatment, surgery, and long-term rehabilitation. For many, though, the medical care itself is only part of the challenge. Extended stays, post-surgical recovery, and outpatient rehabilitation often mean weeks or months away from home. Most patients end up in generic hotel rooms or short-term rentals that were never designed with recovery in mind.

The Retreat at Highgrove aims to close that gap. It combines private, purpose-built accommodations with wellness infrastructure and support services built specifically for people in active recovery.

What’s Planned for The Retreat at Highgrove

Nick Gallardo appears in a second-floor window at The Retreat at Highgrove as a Neyius Media drone captures footage of the site during a video shoot.

The development sits on 22 acres of land. At the center of the plan are eight private cottages, each roughly 6,000 square feet with five bedrooms and en-suite bathrooms. The layout is designed to flex with different needs, whether that’s a full family staying together during a loved one’s treatment, or a single guest recovering independently.

Planned features and amenities include:

• Resistance pools and saltwater swimming pools
• Private spas, steam rooms, and saunas
• Infrared light therapy rooms
• A private chef and on-site registered dietitian, coordinating directly with each guest’s medical team
• Three landscaped gardens, walking trails, and river-adjacent pathways
• Private chauffeured transportation to and from medical appointments

Ultimately, Gallardo wants the physical environment itself to support recovery. The goal isn’t just a place to sleep between appointments.

The Neyius Family of Companies

The Retreat at Highgrove sits within a broader network of ventures under the Neyius umbrella. That network spans hospitality, real estate, tech, communications, energy, textiles, manufactoring, and philanthropy, including Neyius Hotel Group and the Courtney Jordan Foundation. Gallardo’s work connects several of these arms directly. He applies financial discipline from the hospitality side of the business to a project with a distinctly human-centered mission.

Looking Ahead

The project remains in its early planning and development stages. Even so, Gallardo sees it as a natural extension of his career. It brings together the financial discipline of asset management and the mission-driven work he did in philanthropy.

“This is the kind of project where the return isn’t just financial,” he says. “It’s whether someone gets to heal somewhere that actually feels like home.”

Updates on The Retreat at Highgrove’s development timeline will follow as the project progresses. For more on Nick Gallardo’s work, visit nickgallardonc.com.

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