When you’re developing a high-profile, high-stakes project, how do you balance all the complex priorities? That’s the challenge that MCB Real Estate is taking on with Baltimore’s Harborplace, one of the nation’s most prominent current redevelopments of an urban waterfront.
In this episode of “Investment Matters,” you’ll meet MCB’s president, Gina Baker Chambers. She takes us inside the company’s mission to create projects that are not only economically and environmentally sound but serve the community’s needs.
Another example: Yard 56, the reinvention of a 20-acre contaminated site in Baltimore as a vibrant mixed-use project. The connecting thread, she points out, is identifying a need and then devising a plan in concert with the community.
Yet fulfilling this mission calls for a special level of commitment. As Baker Chambers puts it, “You have to have faith, you have to be creative, you have to have a certain amount of tolerance for pain, and really good lawyers.”
Baker Chambers is no stranger to major challenges. Fifteen years ago, she was one of the original team members at Artemis Real Estate Partners, where she played a key role in raising the firm’s first fund during the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis. The insights into investment she gained from that experience continue to resonate in today’s climate. Take a listen.
Episode highlights:
7 principles of project success (1:34)
Creating a model for waterfront redevelopment (8:19)
How to make the community your biggest fan (10:06)
Opportunity in mixed-use retail (11:57)
Doing well by doing good (13:54)
Strategies for tapping unconventional financing sources (17:05)
Investment career beginnings (19:23)
Co-founding Artemis Real Estate Partners (21:37)
Why investors shouldn’t sit on the sidelines after a crisis (25:13)
Making a difference: leadership in nonprofits (27:11)
Going off the clock and traveling light (32:41)
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