Investing in Relationships

Community investment is at the core of our development approach. For us, the idea of fostering community involves not just the physical spaces, but an understanding of the people who live and work within those spaces. To that extent, we diligently seek investment partnerships that share this philosophy. 

In this current era of market uncertainty, we believe that the success of a project can be positively influenced by a strong relationship between investor and developer. In its narrowest definition, an investor is an individual or group with available capital and is looking for the best opportunity to apply those funds. Digging a little deeper, each individual investor typically has a unique perspective or motivation intertwined with how they operate. As developers, motivated by our own ideology of community-focus and sustainable partnerships, the ideological profile of potential investors is something we pay close attention to. This principle is a fundamental part of who we are, and we are prepared to turn down equity proposals if our philosophies don’t align. In fact, this has happened a handful of times recently.

Even in volatile markets, there will always be capital floating around, with investors attached, looking for the best home for their investment. The more common industry practice is a tendency to secure the capital first, without looking at the personal profile of the investor behind that capital. From our inception, we have diverged from that pattern. For us, an investing partnership should be financially sustainable while simultaneously aligning with our values. 

Once an investor is brought into a project, we, in turn, invest our full support into that relationship. We spend a significant amount of time on the front end of a project to establish that trust. Taking the time to build that foundation contributes directly to the “resilience currency” needed to see a project through to completion. While we can’t control the volatility of the financial waters, we can choose with whom to ride out the storm.