Public pension funds’ role in financing major developments presents an opportunity to increase minority-owned businesses’ participation in commercial real estate, a developer proposing a complex hotel and condo project in Back Bay said.

Don Peebles, CEO of New York-based Peebles Corp., said the timing is right to spotlight the role of pension funds in real estate ownership, amid continuing nationwide protests about racial inequity.

“As a Black developer, I know first-hand the number of obstacles, and the number one obstacle continues to be fair access to capital,” Peebles said at an online forum sponsored by the Builders of Color, a coalition of Boston-area minority real estate professionals. “If every worker paying into a pension fund knew their money was being invested predominantly by white males to white-owned businesses, they would demand change.”

Peebles remarks come two weeks after a development group that includes majority ownership by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System announced its plans to acquire one of Boston’s most sought-after parcels, the 19-acre Widett Circle industrial property on Foodmart Road.

Peebles Corp. made its first foray into Boston development in 2013 when it successfully sought development rights for parcel 13, an air rights project at Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street owned by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

The proposed 432,000-square-foot hotel and condo complex on a 1.25-acre air rights parcel is under review by the Boston Planning & Development Agency, and would be the largest minority-owned development in Boston in two decades. Peebles said today his firm allocates 35 percent of all contracts in its $4 billion development pipeline to minority- and women-owned businesses.

The minority developer financing forum is sponsored by The Builders of Color Coalition, an umbrella group that includes the African-American Real Estate Professionals and Minority Developers Association.