55: Melissa Burch - The Midwest New Yorker

Welcome. This is Real Estate Investing Live from New York with James Nelson, the principal and head of Avis and Young's Tri State investment sales group. In this program, you'll learn about the world of commercial real estate and find out why it is one of the largest investment opportunities in New York and around the world. Now here is your host, James Nelson.

Welcome to show number 55 of real.

Estate Investing Live from New York.

This is your host, James Nelson. And just want to start off by giving a quick thanks to our production team, Matt Meyer, who is our director of marketing from Avis and Young and Gail Donovan, as well as the Voice America team. We've got a new show card. We're working on a new intro and a lot of exciting things going on. So just want to give a big shout out for all the help that they do to make this show look and sound great. And thank you to all of you for continuing to tune in. It's now been a week or two since we have surged past 100,000 downloads, so please keep your ratings coming. Please subscribe to the show on itunes or Spotify if you haven't done that lately. That helps spread the word and helps other aspiring investors become successful. That is what this show is all about. So if you did not hear last show where I interviewed David Cronman from Cape Advisors, really great story of his development experience and also accessing foreign capital. And we've got another incredible show for you today, which is I'm going to be interviewing Melissa Burch who is with Lend Lease. And they have just purchased One Java street, an entire city block in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, along the waterfront. And Melissa and her team have a really unique perspective in that they are general contractors who have gone into the development business as well. So they really have an interesting competitive advantage in that they can really understand the construction costs and aspects to a development. And so for those of you who are looking to develop, do anything ground up, I mean, that's a real big piece of the equation. In many cases, the land acquisition is just a fraction of it. So I think you're going to get a lot from hearing Melissa's story. So we're going to have a brief word from our sponsor and we'll be right back.

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And now it's time for our investor spotlight. And with us today, thrilled to have Melissa Burch from Lend Lease. Melissa is the Executive General Manager of New York Development for Lend Lease. Previously she was EVP at Forest City Ratners. And for those of you real estate investing fans out there, you know that our first show ever was with Bruce Ratner and then our second was with Marianne Gilmartin, so. But we'll definitely be able to hear some more about those stories. But what I really like about Melissa, and we were just talking before the show of how active she is out there for the community. She gives a lot of time both to Columbia, Fordham helping students. She's also on the local advisory board of uli. She's on the board of the Citizens Budget Commission as well as wx. So we're going to get into a lot of that, but wanted to thank you again, Melissa, and it's great to see you.

Thanks, James. Great to be here today.

Perfect. So why don't we start from the beginning? Tell us where you grew up.

Well, I hail from Columbus, Ohio. I feel like every election year, people all across America connect with Ohio and really follow the goings on in Ohio very closely. So I'm a Midwestern girl and came east for college and never went back. But I have very fond memories of Columbus. It's a great place to grow up and my parents and my family are still there.

Perfect. Are you an Ohio State fan? Is that a requirement if you.

Yes, that is. You know, Buckeye football is religion, as I like to explain to my husband, who grew up in New York City and when I first took him back to Ohio made it very clear that this is not an average football game. This is everything. And both my parents went to Ohio State, so it's a family tradition to watch the games, in particular around Thanksgiving time when we all get together to watch the game, which of course is Ohio State Michigan. And there's a lot of rivalry there and it's a great way to spend time with family.

Absolutely. Yeah. Gotta love the fans and yeah, the whole environment There. So what ended up you went to Harvard undergrad. Did you always know that you wanted to go to an Ivy East Coast? I mean, it sounds like that you said once you went there, you never turned back. So what was kind of the impetus?

Well, growing up. The one thing I did know growing up is people would ask, you know, I was 12, 13 years old, what do you want to be when you grow up, Melissa? And I would say, I want to be a New Yorker.

Wow.

In my head and in my heart, that I wanted to be in New York, and I wanted to be a part of this stage here in the city. I was always very drawn to cities and to urban environments. And, you know, what did Columbus, Ohio, have to do with that? I mean, I look back at my life growing up, and the one thing that is a constant backdrop for me is that my years in Columbus were really marked by rapid growth and expansion of the city. And it was, you know, a way that my family spent time together was to drive around new subdivisions, to go to downtown and talk about the latest happenings and the latest goings on. And the one thing that always left a deep impression on me about Columbus was the role of Columbus as the head of the state government. So it's the capital, and as we just touched on it, also is the location of the Ohio State University. And so always really appreciating the importance of a diverse economy and a really diverse ecosystem, which Columbus had and was really leaning into as it talked about its growth and expansion. So the things, though, that didn't resonate so well with me were like, grassy backyards, you know, mowing the lawn. Those were all things I would say to my dad, you know, why do you even bother with the lawn? Just pave it over. And he would say, but what about the trees? And I would say, well, you could cut holes into the pavement for the trees. So you can only imagine when I first came to New York City at the age of 16, that I, you know, arrived and found the exact physical geography that really resonated with me. And I knew that even though I spent some time up in Cambridge, that I would eventually find my way to New York City, and I would for sure be calling it home, which it is to this day.

Fantastic. I'm reading Guy Raz's book right now, based on his podcast, How I Built this, and he talks about, when choosing a place to do business, go straight to the top, go to the top market. And, you know, no doubt that that was my story also for New York, if you're going to do this anywhere you want to do it in the number one market in the world. So tell us about your undergrad experience and then master's at Harvard. Did you do this back to back? What were you studying?

Sure. So my undergraduate degree is in government. And I have always been very interested in politics and the role of government. And you know, to this day I'm involved in a lot of civic issues. Civic, not for profits. So I studied that work and for a while I thought that I might pursue some sort of a career in government. But a brief stint on Wall street back in 1996 gave me the exposure to the markets and an opportunity to move and live as a summer intern in New York City. Again, this is back when I was about 20, well, I guess 19 years old. And I was certain then that I wanted to come to the city. And I got really switched on and turned on to business and spent that summer working on Wall street. And eventually when I graduated from Harvard undergrad, went to work at Merrill lynch in their investment banking division where, as I like to say, I got my second undergraduate degree in finance. That was a real boot camp experience working in the trenches of an investment bank as an investment banking analyst. I learned about how to evaluate companies, how to look at balance sheets, really the nuts and bolts of corporate finance. That has really been the foundation of my entire understanding of both the private and the public markets since then. So that sort of gave me the bug about business and. And I worked at Merrill lynch for a couple of years and then had a brief stint at a dot com. This is back in the early days of the first dot com boom back in the year 2000. And I worked for an Internet delivery service called Urban Fetch. Today we know that service as Amazon now. I mean, Amazon now does this thing that we attempted to do all the way back in the year 2000. We were clearly prescient ahead of our time. But timing is everything, as we know in business. So you can't be 20 years ahead of a business opportunity. You have to hit it when people are ready for it and when the business model makes sense. So as with that, wasn't one of.

Those stories where they sold it for $100 million and it's probably worth billions of dollars today. Did at least work out. Maybe some of the founders got some shares or something in Amazon. Do you remember how that played out?

I do. And unfortunately it is not a happy ending. It was a ranked trip. So, you know, I think that we raised about, if memory serves, and you Know, this was a while back, we raised probably around 50, $75 million. And when I left, I was helping the company to unwind itself. You know, this was really back in 2000, the first wave, you know, the boom and the bust of the dot coms. And you know, a lot of V was first coming into these areas within New York, first starting to think about some of these business models. And I think there was a lot of experimentation that I think probably paved the way for some of these later successes, but not for Urban Fetch. When I helped to wind down things, I was there literally for one year.

What are you doing there? What was your role?

I was working with our CFO and I was doing everything from capital raising to. At that period of time before the markets fell away from us, we were looking at potentially accessing the public markets and taking the company public. So we had been looking at IPO opportunities, meeting with various underwriters. I had just come from an investment bank, so obviously understood the underwriting process really well.

What about the capital raising? Was that new for you or to be part of a company that was looking to ipo?

Well, you know, I had sort of seen it from the other side when I was at Merrill lynch. And you know, when I was there, I took a company public, which was a fantastic and really fascinating thing to be a part of, you know, as a, as a 22 year old. But that process of how you go about communicating a story and how you, you know, storytelling and really helping people understand, you know, the model, why they should invest, what the trajectory looks like, is something that I had first touch points at Merrill lynch and then could apply obviously to my time at Urban Fetch. And then now as I, you know, think about my world squarely in real estate development, capital aggregation and tapping the capital markets is essential. You know, it is the essential ingredient. It's not the only ingr, but it.

Isn'T happen without it, that's for sure. So after that, was it straight to Forest City?

Not. Not yet. I went to business school. So I went to attend business school and had arrived up at the Harvard campus. And two weeks later, 911 happened. So it was a very challenging time to have just left New York to go start school and to have left the city in this very, you know, shocking and traumatic moment. There were a lot of New Yorkers at school with me and you know, certainly that major moment for our country, it was really a national moment. It wasn't just a New York moment, really defined that, you know, those two years up at business School. And I think also really as I thought about what do I want to do with this degree, it was a very pivotal experience in thinking about how can I start to blend my interests in government and in business and to think about where those two intersect and where partnership can occur and be transformational. And, and it was really that inquiry that brought me to discover for myself real estate development and how I feel it sits squarely at the intersection of business and government, of the private and the public sector. And when it's done most impactfully, it is really done in partnership with those two elements. So that realization, James, is really what led me to seek out Bruce Ratner and Forest City Ratner companies as an internship between my first and second year of business school.

So you just cold called them. And again, whatever research you did, I mean, thinking of you could not have picked a better developer who is really that public private partnership. And I remember asking Bruce about this on the first show ever because I heard him speak very early in my career and he said any good public private partnership takes at least 10 years. And I was just amazed with the dedication, the patience and ultimately, I mean these were very large scale projects. So you just reached out to them or did you know people there? How did that go, James?

I knew no one. I mean I'm a girl from Columbus, Ohio. I mean I knew no one. But I cold called Bruce Ratner and I had been, you know, I had been looking around at all of the development firms, thinking about which firm I wanted to try to be a part of. And to be honest at the time. So this is back in 2002, this is before Atlantic Yards. This is really Bruce Ratner in his mode of downtown Brooklyn and Metro Tech. So this is the story of academic and business partnership to create a new office campus in Metro Tech. And when I had learned about him, he was not the high profile developer that he became. With the introduction of the Atlantic Yards project, I first learned about his work and then personally he's from Cleveland, Ohio. And there was something there where I said maybe, maybe he will answer my call if I tell him, you know, I'm from Columbus, Ohio, you know, this is my background, I'm really interested in the type of work that you're doing. And I really solely sought out his firm in particular because at the time, really Bruce Ratner was one of the only developers doing this style of public private partnership. In the years since then, many more developers have started to develop this capability and take on this style of approach. But at the time he was really quite unique in that regard. So if you wanted to do this type of work, I mean, I felt like I had struck gold when I had the opportunity to work and intern for Bruce Ratner, because I felt like this was truly the type of work that I wanted to be doing. This is what brought me into real estate. And. And I always felt very fortunate to be able to link these interests and passions in public private work and to really think of myself, and I've always thought of myself as a civic developer and a civic builder.

Wow, that is amazing. So I've got to ask, did you get through to him the first time? Did you have to call him multiple times? I mean, you must have been pretty nervous, right? I mean, that's a pretty bold move, right? Just go straight to the top. So how you got to tell me a little bit more about how that call went? I mean, what did he say to all this?

I mean, James, I was not nervous. I had nothing to lose. I had no inside connection. So I just brought, you know, Melissa. And yes, I mean, I called multiple times. I sent multiple letters of introduction to Bruce and to his other top lieutenants, including, by the way, Marian Gilmartin, who was a very senior woman there at the time, one of the only senior women. And the long and the short of it is that Bruce was still pretty under the radar then. He did not have a lot of people seeking him out. I think that my tenacity caught his attention. And that summer when I was ultimately hired, I. I had the perfect opportunity that summer to experience real estate development because Bruce was in the process of trying to launch a new commercial office building on top of the Atlantic Terminal, which is a retail mall in downtown Brooklyn that he had built. And he had the rights to develop an office tower on top of the mall, but he needed a tenant. And in the heels of 9 11, one of the major themes that was underway in New York City in 2002, 2003, 2004, were banks needing to diversify their business operations and to not be so concentrated in the, you know, in the, you know, in their operations. So they. So. So there was a whole movement to try to deconsolidate. And for some banks, that meant opening up a back office operation in Brooklyn. And for the bank of New York, which was the lease that I got to work on that summer, I was able to understand, really, through the lens of a major civic event, 911 Decentralization of commercial banking operations. And then how that linked to the opportunity to construct a new office tower. So that was an 80% lease. So 80% of the building was occupied through that lease. And that lease, which, I'll tell you, my area of responsibility that summer was I was in charge of the exhibits. And anyone who has ever done a office or, you know, major lease knows that the exhibits are like a treasure trove of every important detail that really matters in a transaction. And no one focuses on the exhibits until you're, you know, minutes from closing. And it's always a scramble to get the exhibits papered and penciled, you know, with pencils down. So with that area of responsibility, as my summer internship, I got to interact with operations, with construction, with development, with every part of the. Of the real estate, you know, chain and cycle through trying to get all of these exhibits put together for the lease. And I will tell you, after that experience and after that summer, I was completely hooked. And I knew not only that I want to do real estate development in New York City, but I wanted to do it for Bruce Ratner and join his firm when I graduated from the Harvard Business School, which is exactly what I did.

Amazing. Amazing. You know, we have so many listeners to this show, the colleges, or even those who are a couple of years into the business, and they're looking for the next great opportunity. And I mean, you such a great power of example, especially for the women out there looking. And, you know, I think, you know, for you to pick up that call and just, you know, it wasn't, you know, just make one call, leave a message, you didn't get back to you, and you give up. I mean, it was countless tries. And the fact that you actually called, I think today people get too reliant on emails. I mean, when we get, you know, hundreds of resumes a year, and I would say 99% of them come in by email. And look, I'm generally pretty responsive the emails or someone on the team will follow up with them. But then once I get the email, it goes to my hr, and then I'm not really. I mean, maybe all the way at the end of the process, I'm interviewing that candidate. But, you know, like I said, there's one out of 100 people out there who pick up the phone and just say, hey, I think you've got an amazing company. I'd love to become a part of it. You know, I'm happy to come, intern, do whatever it takes to get in there. And, you know, for those of you listening out there, you would be surprised how rare that is. So, you know, definitely follow Melissa's lead. It's okay to pick up the phone. Especially, you know, in this day and age. People want to hear from you, so. Well, this is fantastic. Okay, so you finish off your mba, and now you're at Forest City Ratner. And are you still on the. The commercial side? Are you still dealing with the office leasing portfolio? Are you starting to get your hands and get some experience on the development side?

Sure. So I accepted a role in their development business and worked for the head of development, who reported to Bruce Ratner at the time and had a lot of interaction with Bruce and also with Marianne, who was spending a lot more of her time on the commercial side. Though that changed in the duration of time that I was there. You know, she obviously came to run development and then run the entire company. And, you know, she's a huge inspiration for myself and for many other women inside and outside of the firm. So I joined the development business. This is back in 2003. And when I joined the development business, Atlantic Yards was really a seed in Bruce Ratner's brain that was just starting to sprout and much of my early days there. So I was at Forest City for just over 12 years in its entirety. And those early days were about looking at a lot of financial models, a lot of underwriting, thinking about how to marry some of the ideas around site acquisition and assemblage and this sort of broader development with a lot of the need to understand how could this work financially? You know, how do we sort of get our arms around this broader opportunity and start to articulate it to the city and state, who were really important parts of this equation? Because ultimately, this was a public private development project that was really focused on both economic development, so bringing new tax base and new tax revenues to the city, as well as affordable housing. So early meetings with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Dan Doctoroff, Governor Pataky, which is several governors ago, were very much focused on how this could be a big benefit to the city and to the state in terms of new tax dollars. And, you know, coming out of 9 11, the city was really looking at how do we diversify our economy? How do we think about not being. Well, this would become even a stronger theme coming out of 08 is how do we think about not being so reliant on Wall street and on the financial services firms for, you know, for our city and state budgets, we need a more diverse economy that is more resilient and that provides steadier tax revenue year after year and not so dependent on the markets. So there was a strong Business rationale that really underpinned what was certainly a transformative urban development. It has huge sort of city planning and land use implications. But again, there needed to be a sound business rationale to get government focused and at the table. So those were some of those early pillars, coupled with the big, bold vision of we're going to buy a basketball team from New Jersey and relocate it to Brooklyn and build a new arena which is going to house concerts and conventions and, you know, and be in and of itself a major economic generator for a borough that would be the fourth largest city in America if it weren't already attached to New York City. So, you know, there were a lot of exciting nuggets in there, and telling the story and really piecing it together is something that happened over time. Just to give you a sense, we didn't start out trying to buy a basketball team. We first started out trying to buy a hockey team that was the New Jersey Devils. And that opportunity ultimately eluded Bruce, and, you know, we had to pivot and shift to be basketball, which I think ultimately was an incredible coup and victory for Brooklyn and for the project.

Totally agree. And when I interviewed Bruce and Marianne, what amazed me was, I mean, most developers, they have one specialty, and they build residential condos. And for them, they said, look, how hard is it to build a stadium or how hard is it to build a hotel? And I'm thinking to myself, sounds pretty hard to me. But they said, look, we just study it and we go out. And she talked about, okay, let's go look at every other basketball arena in the country, and let's learn from it and let's find out what worked and didn't. It was kind of like that outsider advantage where, you know, if you're just staying in one lane, you might not be able to draw or bring in inspiration from outside. So I thought that was amazing. So you're attending a lot of these. I mean, are you sitting there at the table with Mayor Bloomberg at the time? And if so, are you speaking up in the meeting? What is he saying? What were those meetings like?

Well, early days, I was getting my feet wet. Though ultimately, I, you know, as I grew up in the business, and I really grew up with this project, so 12 years at Forest City Ratner companies, you know, going from this, you know, Atlantic Yards, which was a seed in Bruce Ratner's brain, to ultimately being, you know, an arena, thousands of units of housing, and I ultimately came to run and lead the Atlantic Yards project. When Marianne became CEO of Forest City, Ratner companies. She tapped me as her successor leading the development business. So I always like to say I had high heels to fill. But, you know, Marianne is tremendous and, you know, was also very focused on how to promote, develop the best and the brightest talent within the firm and to always make sure that it was done with a diverse, inclusive, you know, diverse and inclusive talent at the table. So big kudos because Forest City looked very different than many other developers out there at the time and even today. And, you know, to be honest, I think that that started with Bruce. That was very much how Bruce operated. And I think you said it when you said, you know, it was this sort of outsider's approach to looking at real estate. When Bruce decided to undertake this project, he didn't go hire the person that had built the last six arenas or who had developed the last thousand unit portfolios of housing. He looked to his internal group that he believed had the best and brightest minds and said, let's ask tough questions. Let's not lean on standard assumptions. Let's challenge everything and really see if there's another way to come at this. Because we don't want to just develop the same arena that every other town and municipality has developed. We want to do something that's different. It needs to be a standout. It needs to be competitively advantaged. It needs to, you know, this is a competitive world. It needs to win in every way that you can imagine winning. You know, the architecture has to win, the business model, you know, the operations, the, you know, the way in which it was even situated on the site on top of this incredible transit hub was such an important part of the thesis that people were going to take the subway to this arena and that we weren't going to overwhelm Brooklyn in a sea of cars. Those were the types of outsider assumptions that if you had just hired somebody, you know, somebody who had done this six times before, there would have been parking lots next to the arena. There would not have been, you know, this, you know, sort of idea that we needed to invest in the transit connectivity and to make this really about connecting a great civic facility with mass transit.

Unbelievable. Such an incredible project and amazing what you all accomplished. So many firsts in the industry too. So incredible, incredible experience. So from there, and I guess were you with Forest City all the way through the sale? And I know then the retail was spun off. So what point did you leave? And then was it straight to lend lease?

Sure. So let's see, I was there until 2015. So this was before the Sale to Brookfield. But I'll tell you, it was a couple of years after the firm really decided to shift its focus from more of a development company to converting to a reit. When I had left, the firm had recently converted to a reit. And so previous to that, it was very unusual that a company like Forest City that had tens of thousands of units that it, you know, that it built and owned all across the country, but it was a C corp. It wasn't a restructure. And, you know, my. Given the fact that I started in the public market, in the public markets, working at Merrill Lynch, I was always very attuned to the stock price, to the financial disclosures of the firm, and always remembering that I was working on this incredible project. But I was doing that in the context of a publicly traded company, which for a long time was controlled by the Ratner family, but over time, was getting increasing pressure from shareholders to change its capital structure, to change its governance and voting structure, and to unlock value for shareholders that felt that the stock price didn't really reflect the value of the assets and that the development company was impairing the balance sheet and not allowing the company to reach full valuation. So this conversion to a REIT, which happened in 2014, 2015, was a bit of a transition point for me as the head of development at the time. I mean, I was developing projects at the Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island. I was overseeing the Atlantic Yards project. And, you know, we put, you know, thousands of units of housing had either been fully developed or had broken ground during my time there. And I spent a lot of time on our affordable housing program in particular, as well as modular, which was something that was also a major innovation that I played a significant role in as the head of development at that time. So all of this was just to say that there was a ton of development that we were still undertaking and committed to, but the company corporately was really starting to go through some transitions that made it clear to me that the shift was going to focus less on development and more on the operating portfolio. Portfolio. And as the head of development, while there was still a pretty big development Runway, I started to feel the wind shifting, and at that point had been 12 years at the firm, had this incredible experience and wanted to lift my head up and sort of think a little bit about where do I want to sink my teeth in for the next decade? What is that opportunity? And I spoke with a number of different developers existing here in New York City. I love New York. I did not want to Leave this geography, but I met with the folks at Lend Lease, which was an opportunity that really caught my attention because the opportunity with that firm was to help an Australian based company, so headquartered in Sydney, Australia, enter the New York market for development. So it was about sort of marrying some global horsepower and a global perspective on development, but helping them to activate that locally, to lead that opportunity, for them to lead the strategy around New York development, to build a team from scratch and to build a business for a large global player here in New York City. So that opportunity really got my attention and is what ultimately had me decide to leave a 12 year career at Forest City to take on this new challenge.

And from what I've researched about Lend Lease seems very similar in that they also have a history of doing very large scale development master plans, you know, certainly from the construction side, but then also now going to the developer side as well. So this is originally it was founded as Bovis, Lend Lease became Lend Lease and clearly they still do a lot of third party construction. And I figure, so they were already doing plenty of construction in New York, but now to come and also participate as a principal, that was what you're doing. Opportunity was. Is that correct?

That's exactly right. Interestingly enough, Lendlease has operated in New York City for 40 years and it's done that as a third party builder, as you noted. So lindlease knows how to build projects. And what it didn't know how to do before I joined was to really activate a development pipeline as a principal, to assemble sites, to put together development plans, to work through local land use planning and entitlements, and ultimately effectuate business plans for large scale projects here in the city. As you noted, it has done this all over the world, but ultimately real estate is a local game and the global expertise has been an essential part of really why I wanted to come to a firm like this. They have global capital partnerships, global perspectives on development. We are developing projects in all of the major gateway cities of the world. And to be able to harness that kind of information and share in that knowledge and the perspective of how we're unlocking this type of value in other markets, I thought was just, you know, for myself, as someone who had spent an entire decade really focused on almost exclusively on unlocking 21 acres in downtown Brooklyn, an opportunity to really step back, think about New York as a global gateway city and to create projects of scale and significance for a global firm in this market.

So this sounds like a loaded question, but construction, the cost and the whole Process without saying is the biggest part of the equation. I mean, yes, you have to purchase the land, but in many cases the construction aspect is 2, 3, 10 times the cost of the land. And without question, whether or not a development is successful or not depends on if you can execute on that construction plan. So you control that in house. So I would think that you all have an incredible advantage, not only from the start to understand how to underwrite the opportunity, but then to execute upon it. What are we missing? Because if you look at the landscape, 90, 95% of the developers out there choose to bid it out every time and work with different cms. Why aren't all developers vertically integrated like you are?

Well, James, you have tapped on exactly the competitive advantage that has been our calling card across the globe. In all of our markets. We are what we call an integrated developer. So we develop for ourselves, we build for ourselves, and we invest our own capital off our balance sheets as well as from our funds management business. And we have a very significant Funds business, over 20 billion of funds that we manage and deploy into our development projects. So this is a very challenging thing to create because it does necessitate the need for scale, but also the need for local expertise and know how. And to replicate that across multiple cities is, you know, is an incredible challenge. So for us, I think it's a winning combination here in New York. And also very much one of the reasons why I wanted to come and build a business for Lend Lease, because New York was not sitting around waiting for another developer to enter the markets. I mean, we've got plenty of developers here, so what are we doing that is unique, that's different, and is going to allow us to unlock opportunities and look at opportunities in different ways. And I think it is truly our integrated model. The other thing is that many developers invest very little of their own capital. You know, there's a standard sort of 95, 5 sort of relationship that often exists for developers where they put in 5% of the capital and a capital partner puts in 95%. Lendlease is much more aligned with its capital partners and with its ultimate development projects because it is developing projects that it believes in and it's investing significant stakes into those projects. So in our early development deals in the US you'll find that we are here in New York investing anywhere between 30 and 50% of the capital. So this is a significant amount of investment. This is not just, oh, we'll sort of sprinkle a couple of dollars in and see what happens. And I think that the reason why we do that is because we invest and believe in the communities and in the projects that we are focused on delivering. But also to your point, we have this incredible insight into a huge part of the cost stack, which is the hard cost of construction. And we know that information all the way up at the front end when we're looking to acquire a site. So when we're looking at evaluating an opportunity, we are not just looking at land comps and you know, sort of saying, oh, like the guy down the street bought their site for, you know, about 200 bucks a foot, so we should be able to pay 200 bucks a foot. No way. We are very analytical in our endeavors and we're really using the power of our data to inform our purchases. So how do we do that? We will, you know, when we're looking at a site and at a piece of land, we are very early days putting together massing of what can get built there from a zoning perspective, often tapping some of our in house capabilities on design. So we have, you know, we always execute our projects through third party architects, but we have a lot of architects and engineers in house that from the get go we're sort of tearing apart sites, looking at how we can mass projects differently and constantly linking architecture with cost, with revenue. Because of course it's not only about cost, it's about, you know, the vision and you know, about the transformation and how ultimately you can make something worth more because you're delivering a great place and you're creating a great place than you know, than the guy or gal down the street. So we think all this data is a big competitive advantage for us. And you know, in the span of five years, I've now been at Lendley's for five years, we have now, you know, we've now undertaken three different development projects within that span, which is pretty inquisitive and a pretty fast trajectory of growth, you know, in such a short time span. And all of that is really about where are we able to create insights that didn't exist previously? Because as I like to say, no one ever discovered a new piece of land in New York City. All the land's there. But can you unlock it in a way that somebody else could not understand how to do through a different insight, through a different approach, through a different way of envisioning the future.

So on that note, your latest acquisition, 1 Java, a large scale multifamily development opportunity on the Greenpoint waterfront. So I believe you bought it from a developer, but I mean, we're now talking post Covid vacancy is certainly on the rise. There's questions. Are people gonna come back to New York? When are they gonna come back to New York? So you obviously are still bullish on New York. So talk a little bit about that project and why you all are confident to proceed on that in these uncertain times.

Sure. So James, that's exactly right. We are long term, very confident in New York City's future. This project, which one Java, which is a full city block situated on the waterfront of Greenpoint, is important for many reasons. I mean, one is that this purchase represents probably one of the largest land purchases during the pandemic. That said, we were able to really utilize the pandemic, I think to buy at a very attractive price. That sort of made sense in this market where there is more uncertainty certainly than there was 10 months ago. So, you know, we're not blind to the fact that this is a very unusual time in the history of New York. A lot of people invoke some of the other crises that the city has faced. You know, 089 11. This obviously is a very different type of crisis. It's a health crisis, it's impacted demand, and it's also now resulted in a serious economic crisis. As you note, many of the current owners in the city with multifamily have very significant vacancies for the first time ever in their portfolios. Lend Lease, as a relatively newer player in development here in New York, is not saddled with a large operating portfolio where we are consumed with trying to work through all of this vacancy. So that's really been an advantage for us to be able to focus more squarely on the future and on what we believe that future will look like. We believe that people will still want to live and occupy cities. Urbanization is a trend that has been happening for the last 20 years globally that we think will continue once we move past some of the more immediate shocks of the pandemic. All the reasons that made New York such a essential part of a knowledge workers desire to locate here, the connections people make, the culture, the, you know, the job opportunities we think will be here once we are able to push through this pandemic and come out the other side with a vaccine. We also think that, you know, this is ultimately every project you said, Bruce Ratner said every public private partnership is at least 10 years. Well, really any significant real estate project, I mean this One is a five to seven year project. It's two years in design, it's three years to build it, and then two years to stabilize it. It's 800 units. So we're not talking about, oh, are we going to be back to normal in 10 months, 12 months or 14 months. We're talking about five years from now. We believe that the city will have normalized, that people will have reoccupied their offices. Those offices may look very different than how they look now, but we believe that people will want to come back and collaborate in person. That that will be a very important part and a lasting part of the way that people want to, you know, conduct their professional lives and that the proximity to those, you know, work points into those workplaces will drive a lot of the residential occupancy.

Could not agree more. And thinking a couple years, the future in a post vaccine world. And you're going to be so well positioned because if you look at just the land sales, I mean, they have dropped the sales markets off at least 50% volume wise. And so those who can be contrarians and forge ahead I think will certainly be rewarded in the future. Melissa, this has been awesome. We only have a couple minutes left, so I just want to wrap and, and maybe I'll combine a couple questions which is, as I said in the intro, you've done so much for the industry, the community, for women looking to get into the business. You're so involved on the board front, so why is that important to you? And then what would be your advice today for aspiring investors, especially the women looking to get into the business? What would you say to them?

Sure. So, you know, the board involvement and really just being involved with organizations that are, that are part of the civic conversation of New York is something that is important because I really believe in cross sector partnerships and the need for people outside of real estate to talk to real estate people within real estate, to talk to people that are not immersed in real estate day to day. And that's really that cross sector spirit, which is how things really get done in New York. You need different people with different perspectives to come together. So, you know, that's one of the reasons why I'm so involved with the CORA New York Leadership Center. It's all focused on how do you create leadership capacity in young people and to help them bridge situations where people are not already aligned and don't necessarily agree. And we have a lot of that happening in the world right now, both politically and in the private sector too. It's not just a public sector issue. I'm also really focused on how I can use my real estate skills for organizations like The Henry Street Settlement, which is a settlement house on the Lower east side. I've been aboard, member there for about 10 years. They operate out of 17 different locations within their portfolio. This is homeless services, mental health services, youth services, senior services. And they need real estate to do that. So if I can lend my expertise and, you know, advice and relationships and perspective to help them do their work more successfully, that is such a win. And while that's not directly connected to real estate, I always say to young people, get involved in an organization that nourishes you. It doesn't have to be a real estate organization. So many other organizations, whether they're food banks or whether they're mentorship organizations, can utilize the skills that you have, whether it's real estate or whether it's just thinking strategically, utilizing finance and other economic and business tools. There are so many different parts of the real estate skill set that can be applied to an organization, and ultimately it's about investing in people and relationships. Find those people, you know, find. Find that organization and really get to know the people that you are serving with. They may or may not be in the real estate world. That's okay. You have to know everyone in real estate. So just take the time to really get to know people and to help those around you. Whether you're mentoring someone who you know. I have mentored a number of women. I've also mentored a number of men. Just helping to connect people with opportunities is enormously satisfying and rewarding. And focusing your time on that will pay spades both for your business, but also for you sort of emotionally, you know, and you know, and help you feel connected to your best self.

Wow. You have such an incredible story and an amazing power of example. So, Melissa, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks, James. It's a real pleasure. Great to speak with you.

Thank you for tuning in this week to Real Estate Investing live from New York. Please join your host, James Nelson for another program next Tuesday at 7pm in New York, 4pm Pacific Time on the Voice America Business channel. All shows are rebroadcast Wednesday mornings at 7:00am Eastern Time, 4:00pm Pacific Time, as well as always on demand. We'll talk again next week.

Sam.