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Welcome to the real estate shop. Today we are privileged to have Dr. Gina Merritt, CEO of Northern real estate Urban Ventures and founder of Project Community Capital.
Dr. Merritt, how are you doing today?
I am wonderful. How are you doing?
Doing great. I appreciate you stopping by. It's been a minute. We wanted to kind of get caught up.
We took a look at your professional background, which is just off the charts.
Can you tell us about your background and lead us through your education years coming out of high school into college?
Sure. Actually, I went to high school in the Bronx. Harry is Truman and left the Bronx to go to Howard University.
And at Howard, I did, I got a BBA and I was focused on MIS, right? So now they, I guess they called that IT, but back then it was management information systems.
I went back then to New York after that and I wound up actually working on Wall Street, managing different computer systems.
Okay.
Now, I said, I know you're from the Boogie Down.
Yes, the one and only.
I already learned something new.
I thought you were the B and V girl. Okay. Come on now. Y'all ain't heard me talk. Y'all gots to know I'm from the Boogie Down.
I love the flavor.
So why affordable housing though? You're Wall Street doing your thing then decide I'm going to change gear. What happened?
Yeah. So what's interesting is I left my Wall Street gig to go to business school and I went to the University of Virginia Stardin School to get my MBA.
And while I was there, went back to work on Wall Street during the summer between my first and second year. And then I realized I just didn't want to do that anymore.
I just didn't want to make all of those folks a lot more money. And I felt like there was something else I was supposed to do.
I actually didn't know what that was. And I wound up in my second year when applying or looking for a permanent job.
I wound up looking at this job description for construction manager with Clark, and then it was called Omni, the Clark organization, essentially here in the DMV.
So it's a construction management position. I applied for it. At that point, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I just threw my resume at it and it stuck. And they called me and said, this is not a construction management position.
This is actually a development management position. And, you know, it's real estate development. You know, would you consider that. So I met with those folks interviewed with a whole bunch of them and realized, you know, what they were doing was affordable housing.
And I said, you know, I just wanted to do this one group at Clark. When I started only had six people right now that group has hundreds and they're all over the country.
But they were just starting their affordable housing business. Tax credits were just a new thing. And they wound up getting a lot of tax credits in the state of Virginia.
And, you know, they asked me when they made me the offer what would give me an affinity for doing real estate development. I said, if I could develop projects like in neighborhoods like the one I grew up in, it would make me happy about getting up in the morning.
And so I took that job and oddly enough, there's a story out there.
People have asked me this question many times how I wound up in real estate. And so that's the story but sort of the linchpin is when I went my first day of work I went to my job site in Virginia.
It was a 12 acre site it was about 300 units of development I was responsible for first job out of business school had no real estate background.
But when I got to the job site there was a bulldozer sitting there. It was just dirt and a bulldozer and I started crying and trembling in my car because from the time I was like seven or eight to the time I was like 15 or 16.
I used to have a recurring nightmare of a bulldozer chasing me. Sometimes it would get me sometimes it wouldn't, but I would wake up crying, right trembling as a kid.
And so, and then, you know, again, I went to school for MIS. In fact, before I went to Howard I wanted to be a psychologist. So I went to this whole like circuitous route to get to real estate development.
And then the first day on the job, I see this bulldozer that has been chasing me my whole life. And that's when I knew, oh my gosh, this is what I was supposed to do.
Wow.
Very crazy, very crazy, very crazy, very true, very crazy.
Yeah, yeah. So kind of walk us through, I guess you read Omni, that's your first development job.
Take us from that point, I guess there was maybe a few other positions you might have had professionally to the point that you decided to kind of strike out on your own.
So it's interesting. I left Omni to go to and I guess when I was at Omni though it changed into Clark Realty Capital is split Clark Realty Capital was a development arm then Clark Realty Capital.
And then Clark Realty Builders was the construction arm. I was very well trained in both construction and real estate development.
I then went to the West Coast, actually, with my now ex husband, but we went to the West Coast so he could go to business school.
And while we were out there, he decided towards the end of business school that he didn't want to work for anyone that he wanted to go into business for himself.
I really had a lot more experience than he did and he was like, well, do you want to do this thing together?
And he convinced me to do it. He convinced me to leave the cushy job I had. I was working for, to your point, when I moved out there I was working for a developer, a black developer actually who did very well in the state of California,
won lots of tax credits. I worked for him, had a car allowance, had an apartment on the beach, had two apartments, the one I lived in with my now ex husband and one that the company got me on the beach because they wanted to see me once a month.
So I was living an amazing life until this guy is like, yeah, why don't we start our own company.
Then I was like dirt poor and in pain, right, because you know, trying to pay your bills, trying to make the next dollar was very difficult. We were focused on communities helping or consulting with nonprofits, so that big bad developers wouldn't come in and sort of take over their projects.
Right, because we know how developers can be. And so we did very much work around protecting the interests of local community groups and real estate projects, but that didn't pay us anything, right.
Very hard to live off of. Then we wound up getting a consultant contracts with some planning consultants who leveraged our financial modeling skills. So we did a lot of financial modeling for basically consultants in the Bay Area.
So we did projects like in the city of Vacaville on the city of Richmond and the city of Oakland and the city of South San Francisco, all financial modeling for these consultants that had these humongous projects. That was actually kind of fun and different.
But you know, our heart was really in community development work. So what wound up happening actually to bring me back to the East Coast from California is CPD C who was absorbed, I guess recently by enterprise.
We chased a project together, basically CPD C because I was here with Clark, I knew the folks at CPD C.
I was on the West Coast, they reached out to me and they said, Gina, would you like to run chase after this RFP with us to develop a project in Annapolis, it was a school that was created by an African American man in the 1930s to serve black people because the schools in the
rural county wouldn't serve black people so he created his own school called Wiley Bates. And so that school served people from the 30s probably to the 80s and then felt in disrepair.
And CPD C was chasing this RP that the county put out to redevelop it. So I said, sure, of course, you know, as a developer you throw your hat in the ring somebody invites you to the table, you know you join you throw your hat in the ring, because you know who knows.
And we actually won, which I was freaked out about. So, then I said, Oh, well, I got to go to the East Coast now and develop the project.
And it was really an amazing experience because CPD C was really the first sort of means a nonprofit but it was large, you know, very large, had a lot of, you know, projects in their portfolio.
And I feel like the first organization to really support me, you know, on my own. They allowed me to do the development management for that project.
So, and they actually also paid me some in advance advanced developer fee, which was important right I mean it's all I had essentially so I moved back to the East Coast, I did the development management for that, then what wound up happening is, I was taking
my daughter and I actually had, by that time left my husband of the time, and was on my own, I had my daughter's family helping us out, but I couldn't do business development was very hard to keep my business afloat right to be an entrepreneur black female with a baby was very
very challenging. So the first round of financing for Wally Bates, we did not get the QAP, you know, our favorite book, like the Bible, the QAP that year only scored projects that were very small.
So that year projects that were 30 units or less got tax credits. So my project was 71 units and it did not get tax credits. So I wound up getting tax credits the next year, but it was very difficult.
Because I wasn't working that much on the project just waiting for the next round of financing. So I wasn't making any money. And it was too difficult for me I could not be in the street, like the boys in the evening, doing deals, you know, getting new business I couldn't do that had to had a baby to pick up
the baby care of. So I wound up getting a job actually at the Streever Brothers. I got a job with Streever Brothers for like nine months I was still consulting. In fact, I was still consulting for colleagues in California, because, you know, because of my financial modeling skills so
I was still in I was making money on the side but I had to get a full time job in order to care my child. You know, again, it is it is much more difficult in my opinion for women in this space right especially women who are the primary you know, childcare person or and or breadwinner.
So I did, I took care of Dakota we live my baby, we lived in Towson worked for Streever Brothers for nine months then I got an opportunity to work for NDC, and I was recruited to NDC. And when I was at NDC Asian Washington also allowed me to continue doing my business
especially this this project the project had slowed down in in Annapolis like I said, but then the CPDC basically said because I took a little bit of time off from the project, while I was working Streever Brothers, but not much was happening.
CPDC came back and said, Gina, we want you to take over the construction of this project. I was like happy to I mean I was that's that was really one of my strengths. Again, because I was trained by Clark, and they they actually pit, pit us against each other.
And so I was not necessarily the bad way but as a developer you were a profit center and as a GC they were profit centers. So we would fight all the time right trying to keep all the money on on, you know, either side of the table.
In the project and keeping it on my side of the table. So, so they handed the project to me during construction. I did that. While I was at NDC I actually hired Bua Benita of Dante's partners.
And, you know, we did worked on setting up tax credit deals we helped with the NDCs first tax credit deal actually I structured that deal got the money from DHC D for that project.
And then shortly after that I I wound up with a huge consultant contract with Marshall Heights Marshall Heights had like 10 deals, and they had to junior real estate people, and you really needed this, they really needed a seasoned person to help them manage those 10 deals.
So they essentially brought me on nearly full time to train their two developers and to help them transact, you know structure these projects. And after that, that's when I really started leveling out in terms of the sustainability of my business right again, because
my daughter was little and I just couldn't do business development. I can't remember now how I got connected with Marshall Heights but somebody connected me with them. And that was it they needed so much help it allowed me to leave NDC and do my own thing again.
And after that it's like history then you know I made enough money that I could then you know look for new clients and build my business so I spent my whole career through 2020 developing other people's projects. I did.
John and Jill Kerr Conway residences for McCormick Baron Salazar on on North Capitol. I did a 348 unit project for McCormick Baron Salazar in Pittsburgh right I did the beacon center on Georgia Avenue.
So I did, you know, I did the entitlements for a project in Atlanta for a hunt companies. And that was 700 units. I believe that was also 12 acre public housing authority and secure the entitlements, and I structured the financing, and I crafted the master development
agreement and master plan for the project. My company was really known as a development manager. And I would sort of short term capacity issues for national developers, just like McCormick Baron, one of their project managers retired, they handed me her project and asked me to
get all the financing and close it, which I did. So I wound up doing that kind of work for a lot of people developing other people's projects for 20 years, and then George Floyd was murdered and then that's when I really began to take off in terms of being an owner.
So now I have about $600 million worth of ownership projects in my pipeline. But that is, because George Floyd was murdered, banks, lenders investors were all looking for developers of color that they could support, right and unfortunately I am somewhat of a unicorn, and that I have nearly 30 years of experience.
Now 23 years in my own business, and I have built very large projects, right. And so, so developer, I mean so lenders and investors were looking for somebody to invest in.
I guess that was somewhat low risk, because I had so much experience. And so I know I've decided in every project that I own and or control that I'm going to name a space after George Floyd because honestly, I have been fighting uphill, my whole career and not until he was murdered did, was I able to borrow any money to do my projects.
Right, if I could build projects for national developers, why wouldn't anybody lend to me. They wouldn't, you know, they were always looking for collateral. I was like, I'm sorry, but my collateral was given to somebody else right I mean I know for a fact that my family, my white family settled North Carolina and was given
thousands of acres from the king. Right those those are my people I got the papers approve it, but none of that land and newer to me you know so I don't have the generational wealth to do projects like my counterparts.
So I was unable I didn't have the collateral to put up for my projects, but now people are willing to lend on my experience and not my balance sheet.
And I think that's huge for black developers, you know, especially people like me who have been in the trenches for decades, and who have been building other people's projects.
It's really a, a profound, a profoundly meaningful experience to, to now be someone, a company that lenders and investors are interested in investing in.
And I think that's amazing because now so we had boo and Adrian on here as past guests. I had no idea the connection this is the first time I'm hearing that.
And the George Floyd thing is for sure I mean first of all, I'm in Philadelphia from Philadelphia.
Philadelphia was 10 times more ass backwards than DC in terms of I mean, the way it worked prior to George Floyd was the contractors and subcontractors and the unions, you know, basically said hey here's the problems black folks you fight over that at the
contractor level. We didn't even have an ownership there was no 20% CBE requirement that a DC had, you know, so when I bought the pan bundy in town, they were astonished like wait a minute she's a developer.
So, yeah, George Floyd opened a lot a lot of doors.
And what point did you, is that the same time that Project Community Capital came into play.
The interesting about Project Community Capital is that I started this thing without a name.
In fact, my, my daughter, believe it or not, is the one who came up with the name.
And, and that was 10 years ago so she was very young. So right 10 years ago she was like 1213 years old she came up with the name.
And I started it on a project that I was developing for Anthony Wash. And we, he wanted to make sure that the community got some real impact from his project right.
I helped him put together a 70 unit project that was one third public housing replacement units and two thirds tax credit units did an RFP for city land I helped him acquire landlocked lot behind his headquarters.
And I had a 70 units and as a developer and a subcontractor, I would always run into the problem where the general contractor for one was not able to keep people employed right during construction it was like two or three days or two or three weeks.
They'd hire people from the community and they wouldn't last right two to three days or two three that's as long as they would last.
Then as a subcontractor when I had hiring requirements, I would struggle. I remember I was on a contract for six months and it took me four months to find somebody qualified to do the work and when I mean when I mean qualified I don't mean technical qualifications
qualified meaning that they can hold a job that I thought they were capable of holding a job.
So I was frustrated with all of that so when I got to Tony's project, and he had all these outcomes that he was trying to achieve I created a new system.
I did not know it was an intervention. I learned that it was called an intervention when I went to my doctoral program because I went to get my doctorate in social innovation, and the School of Social Work at USC, but I essentially create a system by which I vetted people way in advance of construction, because I was looking for the people who were ready to work and that could keep a job.
So in Tony's project we wound up with a 94% retention rate.
And these were section three, mainly section three folks, as well as some community folks.
We wound up with 93, 94% retention rate unheard of right for hiring and keeping those folks in place during construction. Then I replicated this model on the beacon center.
The beacon center had a 98% retention rate in each of those projects we lost one person. And that's it, which is huge for these projects right it's usually a revolving door.
So between Anthony's project and the beacon center, a coined it project community capital, and project community capital has won 19 awards now in the last 20 months.
And it's really because we do two things right for construction projects. We have this vetting system. We make sure people are employed on construction projects.
And if they have any challenges, whether the employer has a challenge or the employee has a challenge during that time, we are there to support both.
And we've supported people in such meaningful ways that we've changed the trajectory of their lives right. So between construction employment we also now do general employment and I'll give you one quick story.
We helped a guy get a job. And for three weeks, his brother was trying to get him to sell drugs he is a returning citizen, and he used to make $5,000 a week now he makes 500.
So for three weeks his brother was trying to get him to sell drugs and he refused. So his brother stopped taking him to work.
Basically his brother said I'm not going to take it to work anymore. If you're not going to do this.
So we gave him a few hundred dollars in transportation passes to ensure that he could adjust to take getting himself to work two weeks later he he calls and says the Department of Child Support took all of his money out of his account.
And so I mean, you know, what's to stop him from acidivating right. It's like, you're trying to do the right thing and you just can't win.
So we sent the $1350 back to his father says father's bank account, and we called the head of child support. And we said, Listen, you know we explain the situation child support department agreed.
Sometimes the systems on talk to each other. So, then the head of child support made sure that the local office called this gentleman, and I actually know that it happened because my team recorded it.
And they talked so they could work that out so it wouldn't happen again. But what would have happened to this gentleman if we had not sent him the money for transportation and put that money back in his bank account and actually shortly thereafter he saved more some more money for the next
two months and bought himself a car. Now he has no transportation issues.
Now, you know, so we act as a safety net in this, you know, if you're a PCC network member, we help you with whatever it is and the other interesting thing about that gentleman is he's never asked us for anything else.
Right. Some people think that if you help someone out financially, once or twice that they're going to keep coming back to you. It's just not true.
A lot of people in our platform have asked for financial help, just a little bit because of some extenuating circumstance, and we help them, and it changes the trajectory of their life.
So project community capital has just made tremendous impact. And really the whole idea of what we do is that we unlock economic opportunity for the overlooked and underestimated.
We all know there are so many people in our communities that just lack access to opportunity. But if they had it, it would change their lives.
And that's what we do. We essentially leverage our social capital to support communities, right? We have friends in high places, CEOs, COOs, SVPs, presidents of universities, governors, mayors, right?
I have a relationship with all those kinds of folks. The people that I serve where I do affordable housing, they don't have access to the same kind of people.
Like you and I, when we want something access to a resource or you want a job or you're looking for a contract, what don't you just call your friends?
The communities we serve don't have access to those kinds of opportunities. So I bring my social capital to the communities I serve.
And I figure what it is people are interested in and I hook them up.
That's what I do.
That's excellent. What a backdrop.
A lot of what you do can probably be applied to your, your own infrastructure, your own company.
So how have you kind of taken some of these things to build out your company culture and you're doing stuff across the country. So how do you manage all that?
That's a good question. Well, I tell you, I have a colleague who's, who's worked with my team because we're working on a bunch of projects.
And one project she's involved in, she basically said to me, I just think this is sort of the epitome of how we're structured or how we can make it happen.
She said she's never worked with a company with so many self directed individuals.
And that really is at this point, our secret sauce.
We have been, you know, we've been through growing pains, right? We went from four people to 20 people inside of a year.
And so that's very painful. And we did have to sort of suss out, you know, who, who, who was the right fit for our culture.
We have a very diverse group of people, right? We probably need some more diversity when it comes to men or males.
We've got a lot of women, women of all colors.
But these, these, these, these team members really are able to execute without a lot of oversight.
So they're, some of them are still young in their careers, right? Young in their development experience. So they still have a lot to learn, but very assertive and self directed.
And as a small real estate development company, that's, that's what you need. If I've got to help everybody do their jobs, we can't grow, right?
And these folks do whatever it takes. They're working weekends. They're, you know, working on their financing applications and meeting their deadlines and moving their projects forward.
And so the other thing that we've implemented is quarterly in person meetings.
Last year, we didn't get to do as many as we hoped we did one in person. We did another sort of in person event because we had a groundbreaking last June, Mary's house.
The first LGBTQ senior communal housing project of its kind in the country.
So we got together for that. But really it's these folks are really just very good at what they do and very good at managing their own workload.
So we try to get together, you know, every quarter in person because everyone is virtual. My whole team is virtual. I have people that live in Philly. I have a woman who lives in Egypt.
Okay. She used to live stateside. She's in Egypt now. We're trying to get her back to the States. So that is, that is challenging, right? I mean, we are in a new world in terms of, you know, virtual versus in person.
I remember that right after COVID and the vaccinations came out. I was talking to some of the team members and I was like, okay, well, you know, I'm going to have in office hours probably part time.
I had a near mutiny on my hands. They were like, listen, we don't want to spend all our time in the car. Right. I mean DC traffic is nuts.
I don't want to spend all my time in the car was so efficient and effective the way we are. And it was the truth. I mean, I didn't have to, I didn't have to worry about people like getting their work done.
They're working on their own all the time. So what was the point of having everybody come to the office and satisfy. I don't know what. So I just said, as long as you guys are continuing to be productive, then I'll leave virtual in place.
But we still to your point need to have some kind of company culture and that's why we are doing these in person meetings. So in fact, we're planning right now. It's been a crazy start of the year.
Typically we like to have it our first meeting kickoff meeting in January, which we did last year, but things are so crazy right now that we're going to do it in March.
And we're going to Annapolis. So we're going to, you know, rent a bunch of rooms in Annapolis and have two three day sessions of sort of rolling out we're rolling out a new operating system for our company called EOS slash traction.
And my leadership team is already working on that. That's a new thing too. I created a leadership team. We're all operating under EOS. We're going to roll it out to the rest of the company, at least introduce it to the company at our meeting in March.
Then hopefully the whole company will be on the system by September.
But I think the in person things are important. And then I had one of my teammates come up with something that we have yet to implement. We were creating a social committee. And even if we're not doing sort of that four times a year in person meetings, we're going to have like virtual happy hours.
Right. So now we're putting together committee so we're doing, you know, events virtually. So at least we can build some, you know, relationships that way.
Wow. Now you just, I mean, I had a prepared question and I might just going to ask it, but you just hit something along with the virtual.
A lot of times we talk to folks, they ask us well how did you get into not just affordable housing but straight up light tech is such a niche industry.
So you have all these folks working on applications from a virtual perspective. Is it because you're hiring seasoned professionals or you have a robust training program because in light tech and QAP as you alluded to, is not just your ordinarily, you know, nobody just picks that up off the show.
No, it's what's interesting is the like our senior development manager hired her from MIT. And she was just gifted in terms of financial modeling. So she actually picked it up. I taught her.
And she picked it up very quickly.
The, my development manager actually had experience in light tech, believe it or not. And so, so I hired her with experience. I have one assistant development manager. She also had exposure to light tech.
So she understands, you know, sort of the basics now she's more junior so we have to train her some more.
And then the rest of our team knows enough about real estate so you know if the if they don't quite get the financial modeling, they understand enough about real estate that they can do the other parts.
And to your point, the goal is to train them up on on financial modeling. In fact, we as part of our EOS system. One of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to do like short snippet videos on various subject matter and put it in our library.
We use an online project management software platform called Reich.
And we're creating a library in like, we're going to cover all kinds of subject matter. It might be like, what to look for in a title report. I'm going to record that and put that in our library.
So anytime we have a new person that comes on board, there'll be a whole host of things that they can listen to in terms of, you know, the different components of real estate.
Now I did do a lunch and learn last year on the capital budget.
And we've recorded we recorded that so that'll be in the library. This year I'm doing a lunch and learn that this year I want to try to do it multiple times a year last year was crazy so I didn't get to do it.
But I'm doing one on Friday in fact, which will record and add to the library this one will be on joint ventures finding deals and design and construction best practices.
And I have about 20 to 25 maybe developers who have reached out to me over the last two or three years. Some of them are mentees and various programs that I participate like in capital impacts.
Heath program capital impacts EDI program.
And I will be training on those three subject math that three subject matters and one of them will be in the future tax credit calculations and debt calculations and how you get to that.
Like I said I've done the capital stack, but my goal is to break down each tab in my pro forma which has about 10 tabs and review that. And I'm doing that for free for black developers. I mean, developers of color.
If you're interested in, you know, participating with lunch and learn, then, then that's open I have people again DM me all the time. The interested in chatting with me I wind up inviting them to the lunch and learn. And I feel like, you know, being in business for
100 years. Obviously I have a lot of knowledge. And I want to give that away certainly for free. Yeah, I get a lot of that myself funny. The way you've talked you actually answered a lot of our questions.
And then we always talk to the folks coming in, talk about, hey, you know, and I think curving should we advance to one of the current questions about, you know, just having hard time with access to capital and early capital being pre development.
You touched on the experience sometimes you know, when you have that experience and majority firms they look at you aware you're, you know, Mr entrepreneur where's your 40 unit senior building.
So you kind of touched it how you overcame a lot of that. A lot of our past guests, they end up having to joint venture just to kind of scale or get into the game. Did you do a lot of joint ventures early on. Are you still doing joint ventures or more so now doing your own projects but how did that work work for you.
Well, what's interesting is that I wound up in joint ventures with people who had, who had the money to your point. They had the money and I had the experience. So I was the lead developer.
And they were the money partner. That was my first couple of joint ventures. And that was also painful. Right. Because when you're the money partner you get to make decisions, even if you're not the most experienced and that can create conflicts right.
And that council is not always taken, you know, even though I'm the one with 30 years of development experience. So then the other interesting thing about joint venturing is that I didn't get a lot of phone calls, you know, over the last 10 years from majority developers wanting to partner with me.
Not at all.
You know, part of what would happen is when I would talk to majority developers and I'd talk about the role I wanted to play, none of them are interested in me playing that role, which is, you know, I'm like, okay, if we're partnering, all I need is your money, I can manage the whole deal.
That way you can use your resources for other projects, right. You can leave this project with me. That's how I'll earn in my interest. I will manage the deal from soup to nuts. They did not want to relinquish that kind of control.
Right. In joint ventures. Now, national developers would hire me to, you know, pay me a fee to build their projects, but they wouldn't partner with me and give me a share of the ownership and then allow me to manage a project is weird.
Many developers just weren't interested. They're like, Gina, you know, we'll put your name on the deal, but we don't want you to do anything.
I'm like, okay, well, y'all don't know who I am. Obviously, y'all don't know who I am. So, because I'm not the one. Okay. So, so what wound up happening is that one or two developers actually were very supportive of me and I'm going to just tell you who they are because I think they're amazing and I want to give them that recognition.
Now, I have not won anything with them yet, but I continue to chase things with them. And when I do, they basically have me at the table in all the conversations. They take my input. I've made comments on design where I didn't like things about the design and I would give them my two cents and they would change it.
I've, they've sent me their internal financial models, these two companies, so that I can look at the models for real and understand what what the math is and I'd made recommendations and they would, they would change the numbers and change things about the deal because, because I gave them that
recommendation. That is Hoffman and associates Monty Hoffman and and Brent shore development, Richard Sharon Tino.
And these, these two companies really appreciate the value that I add to the transaction. So whenever I'm chasing something with them, I'm invited to every single meeting.
They ask me my opinion about every part of the deal. And when I give them my opinion, they listen and they will actually change. They will augment parts of the deal, because I've made my comments. And to me, that is huge.
Because I, you know, most of the time I don't get that level of respect by a majority developers. So now I'm in Cleveland, for example, I have a one project that I'm closing in May, my development partner in that deal was also amazing.
He is not an affordable housing developer. He's a general contractor, his company, they bought a building that was in that was a foreclosed on that had a HUD covenant on it.
Once they bought the building, their consultant was trying to help them find a development partner, somebody who had tax credit experience. And, and she basically said her words not mine. Jean is the best developer I know.
I met with them. They fell in love with me. I fell in love with them. I'm the 51% owner of that project and it has been an easy project to do. They have allowed me to do what I do to develop the whole project and do what I know how to do, which is great because it's their money.
They bought the building. They fronted all the pre development, but they're letting me run the deal, which I'm just so grateful for because again, it's not very typical.
And then finally I'll say the next set of projects that I'm doing in Cleveland, I do own 100%. So I bought a disinvested shopping center that was owned by a black pastor, and I'm redeveloping it into four phases of development.
And I'm doing that on my own. So that's the one deal that I'm doing on my own now. You know, joint venturing can be good and bad, right? I'm in some joint venture deals where my partners don't respect me.
I'm in other joint venture deals where my partners very much respect me. I'm not going to do any more deals where I don't get that respect from my partner up front.
I think I did some bad deals early on because I felt like I didn't have a choice that was before people would lend me money. But now that I can borrow my own money, you know, I don't, I can, I can be very selective about the deals I JV in.
And I don't think anything's wrong with JV, right? JV helps you scale and grow quickly, which is what's happening to us. But at the end of the day, I also want to control my own destiny.
So, you know, I need to be in relationships or joint ventures with partners that respect the fact that I have 30 years experience, sometimes much more than they do, right?
It's like a personality conflict that made it a bad deal or?
Yeah, well, I think personality challenges are part of it. I think that, you know, when you have money in a deal, you might think more highly of yourself than you should.
I mean, you know, thank you. I'm great, great, good for you that you have all this money. But you know, I'm a subject matter expert at this point, right?
So if I'm counseling you on components of the deal, you should really listen. And I mean, even my, my partners who are, I have partners that have that are worth a lot of money.
And even those partners listen to me. Like I said, even Monty Hoffman, you know, Rick, Rich, Sharon Tino, I mean, these people listen to me.
Right. These are majority developers. And if I have something to say, they value me and my experience and they listen.
And so, yeah. And then, and then again, there are some partnerships where they don't listen. And so, you know, again, and those are partnerships that I probably knew from the door.
We're in a good fit, but I felt like I had no choice at that time in my career. But now that my career has evolved and, you know, I am creating success for myself and my company, my own right.
Again, I can be selective about who I partner with. And, and I've learned a lot of lessons, you know, joint venturing with people, you know, things that I need to ensure that I save having my joint venture agreements, things like that.
I tell you, like, the Mary's House project is a really great partnership. It's with a nonprofit, right? Mary's House. And they came to me by a referral and we very much respected each other's experience.
Right. I mean, they represent an LGBTQ senior community. Right.
And I had to learn and had to learn about what's important to that community. And I had to listen. Right. I mean, even me, I came with preconceived notions because I just didn't know, right.
And they're the subject matter experts, right, in serving senior LGBTQ people. So at times I had to shut the hell up and listen to what they were saying because they're the damn experts.
Right. I'm the expert in real estate development. So they definitely demonstrated respect and definitely gave me deference on real estate issues. Right. Whenever we showed up to a meeting, right. And I said, this is the way it works.
It's real estate. They would hear me and every time they would show up to meeting and say, this is this is the way you need to serve LGBTQ seniors.
I listened. And to me, that is probably one of the most powerful and really most satisfying joint venture relationships I've ever been in.
Where, you know, you can come together and understand that you're learning from the other person as you go. So my hope is that I get to do more projects with with Mary's House because they make beautiful partners.
What's your business development strategy like now I know when you first started that was that was difficult, right. You know, because of the circumstances, but now you've got infrastructure and play. So what's your business development approach.
Well, what's interesting is that people bring me deals all the time. Now people have always brought me deals.
The trouble with 10 years ago is that I couldn't do I couldn't do anything about them because no one would let me money.
Right. People would look at me like, yeah, Gina, you've been in business X number of years, you should be able to help me with this deal.
I'd be like, technically, yes, I can help you all day. I can help you structure it. I can help you make it make sense. I can help you package it up to make it perfect to get money.
But I can't, I can't get it, you know, but now that I can, I certainly am.
I'm discerning to a different level now in terms of what deals I get involved in, but I will tell you a colleague of mine said to me once he said, Gina, when you show up to a city, looking for gap money for your project, they just need to write you a check,
because you do some of the most difficult projects, you know, any anywhere, like, you know, no, you do projects that no one else wants to do.
So I will say that like, I love challenging projects. So when I, when people bring me projects, you know, if it's like a simple, simple project, it's probably not going to excite me, but if it's complicated and challenging, it is going to excite me.
I mean, I haven't done a deal that hasn't been complicated. Right. And that's what my brain needs. I'm just one of those people who needs to be challenged at every turn that that keeps my juices flowing.
I will say though, I'm working on two deals right now in Baltimore, and I'll just call them pretty boring, because, because the way they're structured, because they're the financing structures like debt and equity, right.
And I am doing those boring projects because of where the market is right. I mean, my, my affordable housing projects now need twice as much as subsidy as they needed my prior to the interest rate changes right.
So luckily I have $600 million worth of projects in my pipeline already.
And I'm working on those, although those are slow. I mean, it's, you know, I have one project that I'm trying to get closed that I'm going to close in May that's set for two years because I couldn't close the gap.
I went from a fully funded project to a $6 million gap and I've had lenders and investors actually help me close that $6 million gap because they believe in me. Thank God.
But in terms of business development, still people are still bringing me projects or inviting me to participate in RFPs.
So it's, it's great to at least people to recognize me and the value I can add to a team.
And if you are a development partner who wants somebody who can actually do a whole project from soup to nuts and get the money for it.
Then you're a partner that I'd like to partner with, you know, otherwise I am continuing to look for the right deals for my company, which are challenging and very impactful.
So one more example is the shopping center that I bought the project that I'm closing in May.
They're eight minutes from each other. And there's another site that my partners own that they bought with the with the Cleveland project, the one that was foreclosed. That's right across from the shopping center.
So in fact, the way I did BD there is when my partner was looking at the smaller site and he said, well, I want to develop this smaller site at some point, but it's across the street from this disinvested shopping center.
That's just not going to be a good look to write to build 50 new units here across from that.
So then people in town started, you know, talking to me about this asset. I met the pastor.
The pastor actually could possibly be related to me. Our families come from the same town in Alabama, which is crazy, right.
And so and he looks very much like one of my uncles. So we say, okay, so somehow our families must be connected.
So I bought the shopping center from him, right. So how did I do BD? I came to Cleveland people were happy to see a black female developer with as much experience as I had.
And people just started making connections for me to people who had real estate that wanted to be redeveloped. And that's frequently what happens right. It is word of mouth.
My projects in Baltimore, word of mouth. I was referred to a developer partnered with him. We're doing a project at the University of Baltimore.
He's got another project that I'm also helping him place financing on my projects in Maryland. You know, also relationships that I've had for years.
My large project in DC.
That came to me also through a relationship. There's a guy that I did some mentoring for in capital impacts, EDI program.
And this guy got psych control and brought it to me to help him develop. So really a lot of it has been word of mouth. Thank goodness. Yeah.
You hit something that I preached to folks all the time with your shopping center project and kind of divvied that out into a multi phase development.
It's instant pipeline basically, you know, people don't understand their chase and stuff. You've created something.
Now you have a pipeline through, I think you said four phases potentially. So that that's something I always look at.
I appreciate your honesty of sometimes you get disrespected in your joint ventures. We've seen this happen before. I've actually seen it firsthand.
The emerging emerging developers for whatever reason, when I talk to me like, oh, we want to wrap our project up in a bow for the majority developer. And then even though I warn them, they get mad when they see that that's significantly increased their spit on the developer fee.
So you can run and bang your head to get all the pre-development money in the world and do all these, you know, RPs and rezoning, which it was great. But all I'm trying to tell you is the developer is not going to give you appreciably more than that developer fees split.
And to your point, they're going to come in and unwrap your bow because they want control. Well, where exactly where are these numbers coming from. So those are the type of pain discussions that I'm having with folks.
And you're hitting the nail on the head.
Over the last few years, we've had quite a few curveballs thrown at us. I mean, we've had the pandemic. We had the crazy increase in interest rates in one year.
The lumber construction costs is off the hook. You talked about it a little bit. But how have you fared, you know, just in these times.
Well, it's interesting. It's been very, very painful. I had one of my majority development partners say to me, Gina was so happy that people of color now have this opportunity to do work for their own account.
He said, but, you know, I expected this to happen, right? What's going to happen to you when when the bottom drops out?
He said developers of color are going to be the first ones to get hurt. Right. And it's true because we don't have the generational wealth. We don't have, you know, we haven't created.
We haven't had the opportunity to create wealth or generational wealth for ourselves because we have been, you know, for lack of a better term, discriminated against.
Right. We've been we've been oppressed in a way that didn't allow us to compete with our majority counterparts in the field.
We did not have access to capital, right? Both generational wealth and bank money, right? We can't get that money.
And so, so for us, when the market changes like this, the interest rates go up, your project slowed down. Again, I told you had a project that I've been trying to close for two years, but I still had to operate my company for two years.
Right. So how did I pay for that? You know, you still got you still need as a developer, right? You need you need overhead money to carry you until you can close your projects.
And with this market being so slow.
That's a problem for for developers of color. And my, my, my development partner said just that he's like, you know, you guys are going to get really hurt.
And he ain't lying. You know, I got to borrow money to borrow money to borrow money to keep my company afloat. Now I'm responsible for all these people's lives and their families.
And because he because I don't have a, you know, rack and stack of cash in the bank, I'll never forget one.
A few developers said, yeah, well, Gina, we can wait. We'll wait for the market to to self correct. We can put our projects on the shelf and just wait it out.
Because I got money to do that. I don't. So then I had to kind of pivot.
So my first 20 years of my career, I was consulting, right, developing other people's projects. Then after George Floyd, I focused on building my pipeline, right?
So I got $600 million now worth of work, but this my projects aren't closing.
But now I have to go out and find some more fee for service business so I can keep my damn company in business so I can reap the $600 million asset, you know, in terms of development.
So I've had to start new business lines. I started an HVAC company with a with a partner because I have great business acumen and the ability to secure capital.
We got our first $2 million contract in November.
Good money. Yeah. Yeah. And so and and then I'm doing some healthcare consulting with another partner or bringing project community capital to the healthcare space.
Then what else have I done? Oh, then I chased a airport concessions management, which is really like real estate development because it's like construction development retail.
And then I was also doing some kind of marketing, you know, which is a real estate function. I was introduced to a global company called Freyport, and they asked me to partner with them.
In fact, they asked what did I want to do as part of the partnership and what I wanted to do was project community capital work.
I want to do hiring and entrepreneurship, small business consulting for airport concessions.
I'm like, you know, I have enough development in the shop. I don't necessarily need to do construction management and managing retail tenants, but I would love to have some impact on small businesses and getting new businesses to the airport and providing technical assistance to businesses to get them ready to go into the airport.
And they thought that was an awesome idea. And we won and we started January 1st.
I wound up in all these other fee for service businesses to help keep the lights on at my company while the while the market has slowed down and I'm waiting to get my projects into the ground or to secure the subsidy now that I need twice as much subsidy. It's going to take that much longer to get those projects in the ground.
And I have to make money to eat and live take care of my family and the other families I'm responsible for.
I really appreciate you saying that. I mean, it's a phase that gets thrown around a lot, even included by me, particularly not just development but what we do is if it was so damn easy, everybody would do it and the example you just gave.
And really appreciate it you had to reestablish the fee for services and you actually went into new businesses.
And not so much to, I mean, absolutely went into your pocket, but basically the fun details that aren't moving. So, a lot of folks just don't hear that. And yeah, for those that are going to be listening, really, really take heed.
I mean, you really got to have it in your soul to make these things work. Absolutely.
Yeah, you juggle in your court your work life balance.
I really a question. Well, it's funny. Well, one, I have a very understanding husband right. Like he gets it. He knows who he married.
And, and this is my second husband right, right that should have been my first but he's my second husband. Actually, I dated him when I was 15 so he really should have been the first, but
he knew. Yeah, here I knew. Yeah, so he knew exactly who I was so it's important to have a supportive family right so my daughter and my husband, very much have always supported my hustle and my grind, and have not asked me to do anything that then they knew I was not capable of doing
like I was very focused on building this business but also taking care of them right I mean, all everything that I'm doing at the end of the day I'm doing for them. I'm also doing for my community.
And they know those things are important to me. And I will say now that my company has grown into a place where I'm not doing the day to day I'm not doing the project management, which listen it's taken 22 years to get to the point where I'm not a project manager, which is huge.
Right.
So now I am taking more time for myself, you know, I might just take two days off to go hang out with my husband somewhere. You're right to give my mind some rest, but I haven't been able to do anything like that for 22 years.
Right, I just I didn't you know I had my summer vacation, but even for 20 years on summer vacation. I worked the whole time.
Right. So I think last year was probably the first time that I did very little work on my vacation.
So it is important to take time for yourself to rest and repair your mind. Right and it's funny because my mind is always going. I mean I never stopped thinking about the next thing I'm going to do or the next idea.
But I think it really is important for your mental health. And that's where it got to the point I was like, listen, I have to take time off now.
Right. My mental health needs space and time to just think about Gina and having fun in life. So I try to take.
You know, a day off now at least once a month.
So I can just decompress, which is again something I haven't done in 22 years.
Even though you have several businesses, they're all within real estate.
Well, see to your point, thank you and I appreciate you saying that because the other thing that's been very challenging, for example, is getting financing for those businesses.
Right. And what people are looking at me, they're looking at me and saying, you know, you're a startup for those new businesses. And I have to keep telling them.
No, I'm not. I'm not doing anything new. I'm putting it into a new, a separate entity, but it's not new. Like I've been doing ACVC contracting for 10 years.
Right. I mean, I've been in partnerships to execute that we're very good at logistics. We have, we have people that are licensed on our team that go into the field and manage the work.
I mean, we've been doing that for a long time.
So, spinning it off into a separate company with this new joint venture partner is that's not new, right to your point. It's already related and we specifically do right. We're doing multifamily and mostly affordable.
The same thing with the healthcare work.
What we're really doing is trying to impact communities that have healthcare challenges. We're actually working with a healthcare company that is a Medicaid, right that does Medicaid and Medicare.
Right. That serves the same people that we serve in the community all the time. Nothing new there.
The airport work to your point. We're doing entrepreneurship and employment work. We've been doing that through PCC for more than a decade. Nothing new there.
We're separating these businesses. One trying to mitigate the risk and separated from our core development business.
I also started right. I also pulled out my advisory company and review the advisors is now where we do the consulting. We used to do all the consulting out of Northern real estate, urban ventures.
But now this is going to be the development company proper and review the advisors is going to be the consultant.
You know, and an review the M. Y. is doing the airport concessions and review the mechanical is doing the HVAC all separate companies, but we are by no means none of those are separate.
None of those are startups right because I've been in business 23 years doing the same work.
But Lennards and investors even still they're like, Oh, that's a new company. So I have to fight with them every day for that.
And thankfully we are about to close and you'll see this online soon here because I'm not going to say who it is until until they fund it.
But we just got funding for the HVAC company. So you talk about bootstraps we've been bootstrapping we got the contract in November and been bootstrapping, trying to get this financing in place but trying to convince these lenders that we're not a startup.
And that you know I have 23 years in business I've done HVAC contract before I have so much to lose if I don't do this right or if I try to do something inappropriate with this funding that you're providing for my business.
I have a lot at stake a lot. I'm not going to screw up this money for this HVAC company and risk my 23 years in business. And what I like to remind them of is like for example my project that I closed Mary's house Goldman Sachs is the investor in that.
I said listen if I do something stupid with your money.
Goldman Sachs will have my head.
They don't mess around like you can't you can't do anything slightly wrong. You know and they'll they'll they'll pull that deal they'll they'll you know they will I said so you don't have to worry about that.
But it is a challenge to be.
You know what I think about is if I didn't look like this. Would it be so difficult to get money for my new businesses. I mean how many people majority people start new businesses every day and people are just stroking checks. Why is it.
Why do I have to be put through the ringer. I've been in business 23 years.
Y'all should be writing me checks anytime I started a business because you should know if I've been around for 23 years.
I ain't going anywhere.
Absolutely. Yeah it's it's amazing man to the benefit of our guests.
You know as you as you started telling your story a lot of our questions got answered.
You know we always ask the question about networking and relationships you've already touched how that played a big part of your business development with answering Curvin's question.
But in addition to that and your role as CEO do you have time to even serve one other professional organizations or outside activities or positions that you may hold outside of your leadership position in the company.
Well, I am I am just getting into the space where I'll be able to do that again because I'm not really managing projects anymore although I am the lead right now in the Baltimore projects because I'm securing the financing but I'm going to turn it over to a development manager here shortly.
I am on the board of Project Numa, which is a an organization in Baltimore that serves a black youth.
And I am hopefully I'm about to participate in another in a women's organization, just as a member it's a membership group where there are women business owners that have achieved a certain level of revenue, and they get together and support each other multiple times a year.
I'm also part of another women's group women business collaborative.
And so right now I'm a member of different organizations I'm on the board of Project Numa, but also hoping to get a another type of board seat I would love to be on the board of a bank, for example, to bring a voice like mine.
In terms of looking at growing businesses of color in in banking right, making sure that businesses of color get access to bank products and CDF eyes do a really good job of that already like, I don't know I have probably 678 CDF eyes already prevented providing funding to me.
But it's much more challenging for traditional banks to support businesses of color, so I would love to be on a board, helping a conventional traditional bank, evaluate businesses of color and provide access to capital that way.
But right now, yes, it's a few women's organizations that I'm a member of.
And, oh, including I'm also also part of a women's. I'm sorry, two more women's leadership groups.
One is through the Washington Business Journal.
I was a women who mean business winner last year and they created a women's business advisory council on part of that.
And then I'm also on the control of Maryland's women's economic development advisory council.
So I am a member say a four women's organizations, nice, and then, and then a board member and co chair of the finance committee for on for project Numa in Baltimore.
Next one.
Where do you see yourself in no other real estate ventures in five years.
Five years as interesting. I'm, we are just getting underway this operating system eos and traction. And one of the things they meet make you do is think about where you're going to be in what's your one year plan your three year picture and your 10 year target.
So I'm going to start thinking about my, instead of five years if you don't mind I'm going to, because I'm thinking like this, because of my new operating system so forgive me. My 10 year target is to have $1 billion worth of assets developed and under ownership.
So that's where I said so maybe in five years, I'll have the $600 million in my portfolio.
Halfway done maybe.
I'll say with this market, you know, who knows.
But yes, I mean I need to get the $600 million in my pipeline executed on so I hope in five years. I'm at least halfway done if not three quarters done.
And then again in 10 years I want to have one billion of assets.
Excellent.
Well I think we're going to wrap up you hit on all our points some of them.
Hit on them before we even got to it.
That's life man. And that's why, you know, actually I want to even highlight that what you were talking about folks in case you didn't notice this institutionalized racism that I didn't really experience until after the George Floyd situation and started
working with many emerging black developers.
And I'm on an institutional level. I mean, I've done, you know, we've probably done due diligence for majority developers we see how that due diligence goes. But then I see how to do diligence goes for someone of folks to look like us.
And I know there's a difference between due diligence and okay this is a little bit more than due diligence so yeah this is a very candid conversation we certainly appreciate it.
Thanks for stopping by the shop. And we look forward to pressing this out and getting it over to you and dropping it in about a week or so.