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April 30, 2007
Collaborative effort | For the local developers who comprise the Developers Collaborative, strength in numbers means successfully pushing a smart-growth agenda
By Whit Richardson
In 2005, Richard Berman, a Portland real estate developer, received an honor from the Environmental Protection Agency recognizing him for his success incorporating environmentally sound policies like green building and smart growth into his work. Berman received the award ˆ one of the few real estate developers to be so honored, he says ˆ at a ceremony at Faneuil Hall in Boston.
Berman, now 61, saw the award in part as a pleasant cap to a successful career. But he was nagged by doubt: "I've done a few smart growth projects, but what have I really left behind when I retire?" he remembers asking himself. "They're just projects."
Instead of retiring to a life of sailing Casco Bay, Berman gathered some of his developer buddies with whom he'd collaborated on projects over the years and made them a proposition: What if they formed a collaborative where re-sources were shared, ideas flowed freely and an environment was created where young developers could be mentored and brought up through the ranks, with the idea of carrying on their legacy of smart-growth development?
"I can do one or two more smart-growth projects before I retire," Berman says. "But if I can bring people along to do more of those projects, the impact will be much greater, and I'll have done something much better."
Those ideas became reality late last year when Berman teamed up with fellow real estate developers and past collaborators Dirk Thomas and Jim Hatch. The trio formed the core of the Developers Collaborative, a loose-knit group of like-minded developers who will pool their resources and build on each other's strengths and particular fields of expertise to take on more complex, and perhaps larger, projects, while mentoring younger developers.
As a way of defining what the Developers Collaborative is not, Berman points to the developer teams pitted against each other to develop the high-profile Maine State Pier in Portland. "The collaborative approach we have is quite different than what we're seeing on the waterfront now," Berman says. "I think that's sick, and too bad, because it doesn't put the best light on developers. We need to support each other, not tear each other down."
In December, Berman and Thomas moved into shared office space in an old church administration building that Berman is redeveloping in Portland. (Hatch has his offices in Whitefield, where he resides.) They've all retained their own identities ˆ Berman is still principal in Berman Associates, Thomas at Dirk Thomas Real Estate Development and Hatch at Jim Hatch Associates ˆ but the open office concept offers that free flow of ideas. And it's already paying off. "It just gave me a lot more juice and energy to have all this brainstorming around me," Berman says.
Berman wasted no time looking for a young prospective developer to bring into the fold. Berman heard through the grapevine of a 30-something planning whiz named Kevin Bunker who had attended the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine before transferring to Harvard University Graduate School of Design to study urban planning. Bunker also had heard about Berman, and seen him speak about smart growth. "He was really known in Maine as the planner's developer," Bunker, 32, says of Berman. "He's the one everybody talks about."
Bunker had expected to be a town planner, but Berman had other ideas. Bunker will join the Developers Collaborative full time in June once he's finished his degree at Harvard. "We're really looking forward to having his talent and enthusiasm around," Berman says.
The sum and the parts
Berman, Thomas and Hatch had collaborated extensively in the past. Berman first collaborated with Hatch in 2001 to develop Unity Village in Portland's Bayside Neighborhood into 33 units of affordable and market-rate housing, as well as units for families emerging from homelessness and immigrant families.
Berman and Thomas have collaborated on projects for 10 years, beginning with the TD Banknorth office building and Hannaford complex in West Falmouth. All three are currently working on the mixed-use redevelopment of the former Maine Youth Center in South Portland, now known as Brick Hill.
When tackling projects like Brick Hill, which incorporates several affordable housing projects as well as office buildings, the three developers have found that collaboration makes sense. "We all have talents that together are more powerful than doing it separately," says Thomas.
Berman calls himself "a concept person." He is the ideas guy who likes to scope out potential projects, seal the deals and get involved with the public process. "But I don't like some of the details to make [the projects] happen," he says.
Those details are often left to Thomas, who brings extensive experience in commercial real estate development, and Hatch, who has two decades' experience working on low-income and special needs housing projects.
A fifth member of the group, Peter Bass, joined in early April. Bass, who is known for incorporating progressive ideas into his work, such as the inclusion of communal cars into a Portland residential development he's currently working on, says he was welcomed to the table to broaden everybody's scope a little more. "It all kind of adds up to a lot of skills and resources," Bass says. "We're figuring that teamed up we can take on more than on our own."
While the members of the collaborative may all have their specialties, they share a common belief that current development trends are not moving in the right direction. More specifically, they believe developers should be making efforts to adhere to the ideas inherent in smart growth ˆ among them, redeveloping urban cores and older suburbs rather than building on undeveloped land; preserving open space; offering a range of housing and transportation options for people; creating distinctive communities with a strong sense of place; and involving communities in the development process ˆ which Berman describes as the "antithesis to sprawl."
In other words, don't expect to see the Developers Collaborative erecting strip malls on green fields. In fact, they're more likely to build on a brownfield site, as was the case with Unity Village, which was built on a former city-owned parking lot with hazardous waste issues.
Unity Village is an example of a project that involved collaboration not just between Berman and Hatch, but also between the developers and the city of Portland. These public-private partnerships in developing properties are becoming more common, Berman says. "This isn't new, but as the state and local governments are short on resources and manpower, there are still needs in the community and opportunities for the private sector to be involved," Berman says.
To develop surplus or undervalued properties, government officials see joining forces with private developers, who can bring private equity and a certain creativity to the process, as increasingly attractive. And since the city or state often continues to own the land the projects are built on, they can leverage that ownership to complete projects that bring some benefit to the community. "Then the vision isn't driven by the ego of the developer, but by the community," says Hatch.
Public-private critical mass
That dedication to getting the community involved has been a staple in projects that
Berman, Thomas and Hatch have collaborated on, such as Unity Village.
Hatch comes from the nonprofit world. He worked 20 years as a consultant for nonprofits on affordable and special needs housing. But when Berman brought Hatch into the Unity Village project, Hatch saw how much impact the private, for-profit world could have on such efforts. "That project has had more public purpose come out of it than did most of the projects I did in the nonprofit world," he says.
These public-private partnerships are where Berman and the other members of the Developers Collaborative see a growing number of opportunities. They see it as their niche, Thomas says.
"I do get a sense that it's happening a bit more around the state than it has in the past," Tex Haeuser, South Portland's planning and development director, says of public-private partnerships on development projects. Haeuser and the city of South Portland have been working for several years now with Berman, Hatch and Thomas on the multi-phase, mixed-use Brick Hill development. "Creativity and financing and finding ways to get project funding is the name of the game these days," he says.
The project also offers a good example of why collaboration is important for Berman. For the affordable housing pieces, Berman worked with Hatch. For "The Castle," the youth center's former administrative building, Berman worked with Thomas to turn it into roughly 54,000 sq. ft. of office space. Now all three developers are working on another office building on the property. "Each of those projects in Brick Hill put people together to make it happen," Berman says. "If it's just me, there's no way I'd do affordable housing because I don't know enough about it."
Many private developers shy away from public-private partnerships because it takes a large amount of the control out of their hands and could mean less financial return on investment. "It's not your regular 'I'll build this and see if I can get it approved,'" Berman says. "It's serving the community rather than having the community serve us. It's a whole other way of thinking about development."
Despite their philosophical overlaps, the Developers Collaborative means different things to different members. Berman says it's about sharing ideas, supporting each other and carrying on the smart-growth ideology. Bass, who's worked on his own for 20 years, says the Collaborative will offer him new opportunities. "This gives me the opportunity, with more manpower resources and financial resources, to look at more than one project at a time," he says.
And for Bunker, who's scheduled to graduate from Harvard in June, working with Berman and the Developers Collaborative offers him a place to grow as a young developer. "It's a great environment for me," Bunker says.
He also doesn't shy away from the role of a mentee, or the burden of being the one to bring the smart-growth ideology into the future. "I want to be the one who carries it on to the next level and make it not the exception but the rule in Maine," Bunker says.
The freedom of the collaborative also will offer the developers opportunities to continue to be involved in projects on their own and collaborate on a pick-and-choose basis. They considered forming one company, but felt this loose-knit organization would offer more flexibility in how they tackle particular projects. "The interesting thing is we may mix and match," Bass says. "We're going to be selective and keep our own identities."
Though several of them are currently collaborating on developments right now ˆ Berman and Hatch recently won a bid to work with the town of Thomaston to develop the site of the former Maine State Prison ˆ the group still hasn't taken on a project under the umbrella of the Developers Collaborative. Thomas estimates that will happen "within a calendar year."
One property the group would consider taking on is the former Augusta Mental Health Institute, 264,000 sq. ft. of space itching to be redeveloped, Thomas says. It would be a complex project, but one Thomas says the collaborative would be able to carry through. "I would never take on AMHI myself, but would feel willing to be a partner in the project," Bass says. "We really do foresee that we can get involved in bigger and more complex projects than we could on our own."
Berman, now 61, saw the award in part as a pleasant cap to a successful career. But he was nagged by doubt: "I've done a few smart growth projects, but what have I really left behind when I retire?" he remembers asking himself. "They're just projects."
Instead of retiring to a life of sailing Casco Bay, Berman gathered some of his developer buddies with whom he'd collaborated on projects over the years and made them a proposition: What if they formed a collaborative where re-sources were shared, ideas flowed freely and an environment was created where young developers could be mentored and brought up through the ranks, with the idea of carrying on their legacy of smart-growth development?
"I can do one or two more smart-growth projects before I retire," Berman says. "But if I can bring people along to do more of those projects, the impact will be much greater, and I'll have done something much better."
Those ideas became reality late last year when Berman teamed up with fellow real estate developers and past collaborators Dirk Thomas and Jim Hatch. The trio formed the core of the Developers Collaborative, a loose-knit group of like-minded developers who will pool their resources and build on each other's strengths and particular fields of expertise to take on more complex, and perhaps larger, projects, while mentoring younger developers.
As a way of defining what the Developers Collaborative is not, Berman points to the developer teams pitted against each other to develop the high-profile Maine State Pier in Portland. "The collaborative approach we have is quite different than what we're seeing on the waterfront now," Berman says. "I think that's sick, and too bad, because it doesn't put the best light on developers. We need to support each other, not tear each other down."
In December, Berman and Thomas moved into shared office space in an old church administration building that Berman is redeveloping in Portland. (Hatch has his offices in Whitefield, where he resides.) They've all retained their own identities ˆ Berman is still principal in Berman Associates, Thomas at Dirk Thomas Real Estate Development and Hatch at Jim Hatch Associates ˆ but the open office concept offers that free flow of ideas. And it's already paying off. "It just gave me a lot more juice and energy to have all this brainstorming around me," Berman says.
Berman wasted no time looking for a young prospective developer to bring into the fold. Berman heard through the grapevine of a 30-something planning whiz named Kevin Bunker who had attended the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine before transferring to Harvard University Graduate School of Design to study urban planning. Bunker also had heard about Berman, and seen him speak about smart growth. "He was really known in Maine as the planner's developer," Bunker, 32, says of Berman. "He's the one everybody talks about."
Bunker had expected to be a town planner, but Berman had other ideas. Bunker will join the Developers Collaborative full time in June once he's finished his degree at Harvard. "We're really looking forward to having his talent and enthusiasm around," Berman says.
The sum and the parts
Berman, Thomas and Hatch had collaborated extensively in the past. Berman first collaborated with Hatch in 2001 to develop Unity Village in Portland's Bayside Neighborhood into 33 units of affordable and market-rate housing, as well as units for families emerging from homelessness and immigrant families.
Berman and Thomas have collaborated on projects for 10 years, beginning with the TD Banknorth office building and Hannaford complex in West Falmouth. All three are currently working on the mixed-use redevelopment of the former Maine Youth Center in South Portland, now known as Brick Hill.
When tackling projects like Brick Hill, which incorporates several affordable housing projects as well as office buildings, the three developers have found that collaboration makes sense. "We all have talents that together are more powerful than doing it separately," says Thomas.
Berman calls himself "a concept person." He is the ideas guy who likes to scope out potential projects, seal the deals and get involved with the public process. "But I don't like some of the details to make [the projects] happen," he says.
Those details are often left to Thomas, who brings extensive experience in commercial real estate development, and Hatch, who has two decades' experience working on low-income and special needs housing projects.
A fifth member of the group, Peter Bass, joined in early April. Bass, who is known for incorporating progressive ideas into his work, such as the inclusion of communal cars into a Portland residential development he's currently working on, says he was welcomed to the table to broaden everybody's scope a little more. "It all kind of adds up to a lot of skills and resources," Bass says. "We're figuring that teamed up we can take on more than on our own."
While the members of the collaborative may all have their specialties, they share a common belief that current development trends are not moving in the right direction. More specifically, they believe developers should be making efforts to adhere to the ideas inherent in smart growth ˆ among them, redeveloping urban cores and older suburbs rather than building on undeveloped land; preserving open space; offering a range of housing and transportation options for people; creating distinctive communities with a strong sense of place; and involving communities in the development process ˆ which Berman describes as the "antithesis to sprawl."
In other words, don't expect to see the Developers Collaborative erecting strip malls on green fields. In fact, they're more likely to build on a brownfield site, as was the case with Unity Village, which was built on a former city-owned parking lot with hazardous waste issues.
Unity Village is an example of a project that involved collaboration not just between Berman and Hatch, but also between the developers and the city of Portland. These public-private partnerships in developing properties are becoming more common, Berman says. "This isn't new, but as the state and local governments are short on resources and manpower, there are still needs in the community and opportunities for the private sector to be involved," Berman says.
To develop surplus or undervalued properties, government officials see joining forces with private developers, who can bring private equity and a certain creativity to the process, as increasingly attractive. And since the city or state often continues to own the land the projects are built on, they can leverage that ownership to complete projects that bring some benefit to the community. "Then the vision isn't driven by the ego of the developer, but by the community," says Hatch.
Public-private critical mass
That dedication to getting the community involved has been a staple in projects that
Berman, Thomas and Hatch have collaborated on, such as Unity Village.
Hatch comes from the nonprofit world. He worked 20 years as a consultant for nonprofits on affordable and special needs housing. But when Berman brought Hatch into the Unity Village project, Hatch saw how much impact the private, for-profit world could have on such efforts. "That project has had more public purpose come out of it than did most of the projects I did in the nonprofit world," he says.
These public-private partnerships are where Berman and the other members of the Developers Collaborative see a growing number of opportunities. They see it as their niche, Thomas says.
"I do get a sense that it's happening a bit more around the state than it has in the past," Tex Haeuser, South Portland's planning and development director, says of public-private partnerships on development projects. Haeuser and the city of South Portland have been working for several years now with Berman, Hatch and Thomas on the multi-phase, mixed-use Brick Hill development. "Creativity and financing and finding ways to get project funding is the name of the game these days," he says.
The project also offers a good example of why collaboration is important for Berman. For the affordable housing pieces, Berman worked with Hatch. For "The Castle," the youth center's former administrative building, Berman worked with Thomas to turn it into roughly 54,000 sq. ft. of office space. Now all three developers are working on another office building on the property. "Each of those projects in Brick Hill put people together to make it happen," Berman says. "If it's just me, there's no way I'd do affordable housing because I don't know enough about it."
Many private developers shy away from public-private partnerships because it takes a large amount of the control out of their hands and could mean less financial return on investment. "It's not your regular 'I'll build this and see if I can get it approved,'" Berman says. "It's serving the community rather than having the community serve us. It's a whole other way of thinking about development."
Despite their philosophical overlaps, the Developers Collaborative means different things to different members. Berman says it's about sharing ideas, supporting each other and carrying on the smart-growth ideology. Bass, who's worked on his own for 20 years, says the Collaborative will offer him new opportunities. "This gives me the opportunity, with more manpower resources and financial resources, to look at more than one project at a time," he says.
And for Bunker, who's scheduled to graduate from Harvard in June, working with Berman and the Developers Collaborative offers him a place to grow as a young developer. "It's a great environment for me," Bunker says.
He also doesn't shy away from the role of a mentee, or the burden of being the one to bring the smart-growth ideology into the future. "I want to be the one who carries it on to the next level and make it not the exception but the rule in Maine," Bunker says.
The freedom of the collaborative also will offer the developers opportunities to continue to be involved in projects on their own and collaborate on a pick-and-choose basis. They considered forming one company, but felt this loose-knit organization would offer more flexibility in how they tackle particular projects. "The interesting thing is we may mix and match," Bass says. "We're going to be selective and keep our own identities."
Though several of them are currently collaborating on developments right now ˆ Berman and Hatch recently won a bid to work with the town of Thomaston to develop the site of the former Maine State Prison ˆ the group still hasn't taken on a project under the umbrella of the Developers Collaborative. Thomas estimates that will happen "within a calendar year."
One property the group would consider taking on is the former Augusta Mental Health Institute, 264,000 sq. ft. of space itching to be redeveloped, Thomas says. It would be a complex project, but one Thomas says the collaborative would be able to carry through. "I would never take on AMHI myself, but would feel willing to be a partner in the project," Bass says. "We really do foresee that we can get involved in bigger and more complex projects than we could on our own."
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