What Makes a Great Development? Lessons from Amy Bonitz of MCB

Um, so what do you see, like practically speaking, talking about some of these developments that you've done, where do you see developments succeed versus some of the other ones we're locally? I'm sure the listeners may be familiar talking about Under Armour where, you know, what they were focusing on poor Covington or some other similar projects.

What do you find to be the fundamentals of being able to make a development work?

to solving a challenge or to meet an opportunity.

So, for example, I just finished last year a project called the Anolia.

It is a 473-bed student housing project for Morgan State University.

It was built on a four acre site that had been vacant for over ten years.

It had a lot of challenges to it.

It was a brownfield.

It had a major power line running through the middle of it.

We had to reacquire kind of the front of the property.

But, you know, Morgan State has been growing You know, their enrollment every year, they break a new record.

They had chronically been under invested in in terms of housing.

So this was a really unique opportunity where we could take something that was a community liability.

And meet a pressing need of a growing institution by building housing on this vacant site.

And then really help to bolster the neighborhood around it.

Four new businesses have opened on the same block since we opened our building.

So it's really...

Thinking about how do we take our expertise as a company? You know, I think Northwood Commons is another great example where, you know, MCB has people that have been in the retail business for 30, 40 years, and they just have a deep set of connections, relationships, and understanding of how to bring retail and grocery stores to communities.

Working with Morgan State and other development partners, we were able to make that a thriving new center for the community in Morgan.

So looking at, how did you even say like, well, this site's going to be great for the Enolia based on all those problems? Like, how did you assess that? Okay, this on Harford Road will be the spot.

Well, I think one thing that has really been critical ever since I was a baby developer is to have an excellent team, whether that's your environmental engineer, your architect, your civil engineer, contractor, real estate attorney, branding, graphics, interior design.

I really strongly believe that you need to assemble the best folks.

And I think Baltimore has a great collection of talent in that regard.

Like we're really lucky we have people who are really smart about how to take, you know, challenging projects and make, you know, assemble a team of people that have expertise in different areas.

You're going to be more successful.