Dan Sernovitz
It's not uncommon for seasoned developers in Greater Washington to talk about that getting together some day to work on a mutual project, a notion that extends to even such a seemingly unlikely pairing as Douglas Development Corp.'s Douglas Jemal venturing with Boston Properties' Ray Ritchey.
So it shouldn't come as much surprise that Bruce Baschuk and Mike Balaban have floated similar notions from time to time without anything ever coming of it. Until now. Balaban has accepted a post as development executive at Baschuk's Georgetown-based J Street Cos. He started there April 29, roughly a month after the two renewed discussions about going in together on a handful of prospective projects.
"Bruce and I have talked about investment opportunities in developing markets for a long time, and we have stayed in touch about projects that could have been of mutual interest on many occasions," Balaban said in a phone interview joined by Baschuk. "I recently reached back out to Bruce to consider some things that I've been working on that could perhaps be of mutual interest, and one thing led to another, and before we knew it we had a handshake and I walked in the door."
Balaban had emptied the pipeline of active projects he had under msb Urban LLC, a company he formed in 2015 after leaving his SB Urban partnership with Frank Saul III, and found himself at a point where he was ready for a fresh start. Baschuk had his own set of active projects, including a 64-unit apartment project on Congress Street NE in NoMa, where J Street was one of the initial developers to help stimulate development interest in the neighborhood north of Massachusetts Avenue.
Balaban comes to J Street having worked on more than $1.5 billion in mixed-use projects in the D.C. area, including Ballston Metro Center and the AirRights Center in Bethesda. He led the eastern region for Lowe Enterprises for nearly two decades before joining Saul in a short-lived partnership that lasted about two years and included projects such as the Patterson Mansion remake in Dupont Circle. Saul's new company, Saul Urban, is wrapping up construction on that 92-unit micro-unit apartment project.
The union could prove to be a powerful one. Both men are accomplished in their fields, and Baschuk said both have a common interest in seeking out projects in emerging markets and those markets that haven't yet emerged but have the potential. What's more, he said, Balaban has a background for financing large and complex deals that could help take on more ambitious projects than it might have been able to do on its own.
"What Mike brings to the table is the capability to look at a lot of different types of opportunities," Baschuk said. "There are some very large projects that we have not had enough bandwidth to manage but want to get after."
What specifically are they working on? Baschuk and Balaban declined to tip their hand too much at this point, but said they already have a list of things of interest already, including a meeting that was scheduled for Friday morning on a residential project in an undisclosed location. The company isn't just focused on emerging areas, as it plans to explore a wide range of prospects, in downtown D.C. and outside of it, and from small condos to mixed-use properties.
"We are just starting our relationship and working together, and I think that over the next couple of months we'll have a better-refined sense for the types of things we'll be working on," Baschuk said.
Click here to link to the Washington Business Journal article.
Karen Widmayer
KW Communications LLC
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