Our Services
Our team specializes in providing tailored services to real estate developers, municipal economic development professionals, and small businesses. We help you navigate the complexities of the development process, from refining your vision to building the right team and ensuring the best use of land and resources.
Our approach
We understand the challenges our clients face: understanding market dynamics, navigating entitlement processes, and maximizing incentives. We’re here to guide you through these complexities with confidence and clarity. Our approach is tailored to ensure that your projects not only get off the ground but thrive, contributing positively to the community.
We are problem solvers at heart. Our goal is to save you from projects that waste time, money, and energy, or worse, those that fail to enhance and connect communities. We focus on creating developments that align with your vision and add value to the places people love.
Why choose us?
When you work with Place Associates, you gain a trusted partner dedicated to your success. We provide peace of mind through our thorough, strategic approach and deep understanding of the development landscape. Our clients feel valued, knowing they have a partner who cares about their success as much as they do.
Some of the specific development tasks that Place Associates can help you with are:
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Expertise in Residential, Multi-Family, Mixed Use, Commercial and Office users in both Urban and Rural markets for new construction and redevelopment projects.
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Helping your projects define a vision and their values.
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Setting, managing and communicating the unique project schedules for developments, so they are delivered on time.
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working with local communities and owners to understand the market
potential, needs and how a project can leverage and connect with the right operators and users. -
Creating comprehensive budgets and proformas to understand the feasibility and potential returns.
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Working with local municipalities and codes to understand the project’s needs and the process to entitlement.
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Determining a project’s needs for its Equity and Debt requirements and identifying and leveraging any available incentives ranging from: State and Federal Historic Tax Credits, local municipal incentives for infrastructure and sales tax reductions, Local State and Federal programs that may be utilized, such as New Market Tax Credits, Opportunity Zones and Environmental remediation needs.
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Helping owners connect to and build out their Development, Design, Finance and Construction teams to deliver successful projects.
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Site identification, entitlement analysis and operator identification, to connect people and projects together.
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Assisting owners to see their development’s milestones and successes.
Real Estate Development
Being an integral part of your development team’s success for your project goals; connecting your vision to the market and understanding all of the partnerships, players and processes involved in delivering a successful development.
Ben has been involved with helping to assist owners with accessing millions of dollars in incentives for their projects, along with the management and leasing for dozens of tenants and their spaces for office and commercial uses. Ben has provided help with entitlement and the acquisition of multiple sites and projects, for over 10 million in value. Ben has assisted 100’s of clients with their real estate needs from acquisition and space identification, lease negotiations, project financing and incentive access, entitlement and municipal processes and developing their vision, project narrative and development teams to realize success for their projects.
Design and Planning
Assisting cities, communities, owners and design teams with understanding the places they are developing and how design and planning can create success for them and their projects.
Ben has over 20 years in the fields of Landscape Architecture and Planning. Working on Landscape projects such as:
Walking Trails
Parks
Foundation Plantings
Campus Landscape Plans
Streetscape and sidewalk Designs
Urban Plazas and Courtyards
Ben’s planning work includes:
City Comprehensive Plans
Neighborhood and District Plans
Downtown Plans
Campus Masterplans
Ben’s planning work includes over 30 cities and neighborhoods throughout Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, and also includes all the large universities in Alabama including:
The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama Huntsville
The University of Alabama Birmingham
Auburn University
University of North Alabama
Teaching
Ben is currently an adjunct professor for Auburn University, teaching the Planning and Infrastructure module for the Masters of Real Estate Development program since 2013. Ben has had the privilege of teaching Design, Planning and Real Estate Development to both undergraduate and graduate students at Auburn University, at both the Urban Studio, teaching undergraduate architecture students and le cture series on City Planning and Urban Forms, along with graduate students for the Master of Real Estate Program.
Facilitating
Places need encouragement and understanding. As places, communities, and specific projects cycle through their unique needs and time. Different approaches, ideas, market needs and new life can be breathed into them generation after generation. Throughout these life cycles of a place, there will be moments where it is critical to gather the ideas, needs and wishes under a consensus vision. Place Associates can help identify the process’s that are unique to your needs and lead communities and individuals through them.
Examples of this work include:
Design Alabama – Mayors Summit. Ben has had the honor to facilitate this sessions numerous times for MAyors and communities across the state.
Youth Leadership – For the past 10 years Ben has provided an educational session to the students on design and neighborhoods, to help them engage in community planning and design issues.
Community and Stakeholder sessions, facilitating the public engagement process and meeting with Municipal and organizational leaders – Comprehensive Plans, Downtown and
Neighborhood Master Plans – Ben has worked on dozens of plans for cities, neighborhoods and universities across the State of Alabama, with groups like Place Associates, University of
Alabama Center for Economic Development, KPS Group, Main Street Alabama, Design Alabama, and REV Birmingham and at a variety of scales and scopes, to provide the framework and roadmap for visions to succeed.
