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.
Some of the specific development tasks that Place Associates can help you with are:
- Market Segments – expertise in Residential, Multi-Family, Mixed Use, Commercial and Office users in both Urban and Rural markets for new construction and redevelopment projects.
- Context and Vision Casting – Helping your projects define a vision and their values.
- Development Schedules – Setting, managing and communicating the unique project schedules for developments, so they are delivered on time.
- Market Research – 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. - Proformas – Creating comprehensive budgets and proformas to understand the feasibility and potential returns.
- Entitlement Process – Working with local municipalities and codes to understand the project’s needs and the process to entitlement.
- Financing and Capital Stacks – 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.
- Team Development – Helping owners connect to and build out their Development, Design, Finance and Construction teams to deliver successful projects.
- Acquisition and LOI – Site identification, entitlement analysis and operator identification, to connect people and projects together.
- Project Management – Assisting owners to see their development’s milestones and successes.
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
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.