John Coe (00:00:00) - So Dave Bramble, welcome to icons of DC area real estate. I overvalued your biography in the introduction. Perhaps share your role at MCB and your day to day activities, and then we'll go into your background, as my guess is, it will be a fascinating story.

Dave Bramble (00:00:16) - Thank you. I don't know how fascinating, but hopefully interesting enough to keep your listeners, from falling asleep. what do I do at MTV? My primarily, my primary roles revolve around finding new transactions to do and raising capital. of course. And then overseeing the, the overall operations of the company. but, yeah, mostly what I do is finding deals and finding money.

John Coe (00:00:44) - And I assume you have a little bit of a vision and planning and that kind of thing for the company's growth.

Dave Bramble (00:00:50) - Sure. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I mean, we we I spent a lot of time sort of thinking through, what our strategic goals should be and then how the then working with the senior management team, and my partners, to come up with how to implement those strategic goals.

Dave Bramble (00:01:08) - So that's a big, big part of the overall picture.

John Coe (00:01:11) - All right. So let's pivot back. Tell us about your origins, youth and parental influences. I understand you grew up in Baltimore. Talk about your family and influences growing up here.

Dave Bramble (00:01:21) - Yeah, I grew up in Baltimore. I've lived in Baltimore basically almost my entire life. and the, you know, biggest influences for me and I assume for many, my parents, my parents are immigrants from the West Indies, who, became entrepreneurs. and although my father had a job as an Episcopal priest, he also, spent his time finding things to invest in and businesses to grow. and my mother became the publisher of, newspaper here in town of Baltimore called the Baltimore Times. and, I think a lot of the entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial spirit I got came from them.

John Coe (00:02:11) - Say so. Which island in the Caribbean?

Dave Bramble (00:02:14) - It's a small island called Montserrat, which was impacted by a volcano. so, you know, many of the inhabitants have been scattered to the wind.

Dave Bramble (00:02:23) - But, yeah, that's where my family's from. you get back there. I haven't been back in probably over 20 years. but, Was as a kid. I used to go all the time to spend my summers there with aunts and uncles and other folks having a good time.

John Coe (00:02:42) - So you still have relatives there?

Dave Bramble (00:02:43) - Oh yeah. So I have relatives there, and then I have a lot of relatives in Antigua. Interesting.

John Coe (00:02:48) - So your parents, when they came, they come to come right to Baltimore or did they go somewhere to another?

Dave Bramble (00:02:54) - No. My parents were, my parents, my my father went to school here in the States. My mother went to school in Canada. and, after they came, they were originally living in Connecticut before they moved here. Oh, okay.

John Coe (00:03:08) - So just your mom's opportunity was. What brought them here then? No.

Dave Bramble (00:03:13) - My dad. My dad got a job here as a priest at a small Episcopal church in West Baltimore, Saint Catherine of Alexandria. and that's where he started his career.

Dave Bramble (00:03:24) - And then, my mom, I believe, at that time was teaching, and then they decided to buy some little grocery stores, and then eventually they got into the newspaper business. So that's where the.

John Coe (00:03:38) - Entrepreneurial.

Dave Bramble (00:03:39) - Spirit comes from. That's right. So.

John Coe (00:03:43) - did you go to high school and everything right here in Baltimore?

Dave Bramble (00:03:46) - I did what school I went to. I went to Baltimore City College High School, which is, you know, to hear me tell it, the greatest high school in the world. here in Baltimore, we cherish our high schools. and, I'm very lucky to go to City College. I had a fabulous public school education, and was very lucky to, to get to city, meet those friends and have those teachers and mentors that I got while I was at City College.

John Coe (00:04:19) - Well, you must have done pretty well, because then you went on to Princeton University. So talk about that. How you got into Princeton and what were your experience was like in Princeton?

Dave Bramble (00:04:28) - Sure.

Dave Bramble (00:04:28) - I was lucky enough to be to have a math teacher who, suggested that I, take a test and try to get, admitted to a program that Phillips Academy in Andover. Sure. Sponsors called Math and science for minority students. and that program, took me to Andover for all three of my high school summers, where we did intense study and math and science. And, of course, that opened the doors, to some of the best institutions of higher learning in the country. So I was able to do well in that program and well in, in, in high school. And because of that, it opened up doors for college that I think weren't available to, you know, may or may not have been available, but that was, one of the, you know, one of those things that you look back on in life. And, if that teacher hadn't thought to do that and I look, maybe I still would have gotten into Princeton. Maybe not. You never know. But, that played a major role in my decision.

Dave Bramble (00:05:43) - in my in opening up my, I think my opportunities for for different, for different colleges. Now, mind you, you know, my dad went to Yale, my sister went to Harvard and Dartmouth. Okay. so, it's a it's a, you know, it it runs in the family a, a desire for, you know, to do well in school. so, and my parents instilled that in me from the beginning. So.

John Coe (00:06:11) - So did your dad go to the Yale Divinity School?

Dave Bramble (00:06:13) - He did. Okay. He did.

John Coe (00:06:15) - And, he didn't steer you towards Yale then. That's interesting.

Dave Bramble (00:06:19) - He did. Well, maybe he did. I don't know, a long time ago. Now you're getting way back into the memory banks, but, I think he was just, you know, I think my parents were very encouraging, very focused on academic performance, and most importantly, focused on just hard work, which is something that I talk to my kids about all the time, too, because the reality is, most success is the sort of intersection between preparation and opportunity, and preparation is nothing but hard work.

Dave Bramble (00:06:51) - And so, I think that, I think that, you know, every day when I used to, go to school, my father would make me recite a poem. by Longfellow. The heights by great men reached and capped were not attained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night. And that stuck with me. And I make. I try to torture my kids to do it now, too, because I think that's important, to to remind people because, you know, you see Instagram millionaires and this and that and everything seems to be instant gratification. But that's not really how the world works. at least not from my perspective.

John Coe (00:07:38) - I totally agree with that. So what was your experience like at Princeton? It was great.

Dave Bramble (00:07:44) - I had a good time and still have. I'm still very close with all my buddies. from undergraduate. it's a Princeton amazing place with lots of opportunities for academic enrichment. And, I count myself very lucky to have had an opportunity to go there.

Dave Bramble (00:08:02) - Did you, were.

John Coe (00:08:03) - You in sports there at.

Dave Bramble (00:08:04) - All or not? No, I wasn't, I was a wrestler in high school, and I played lacrosse. I'm from Baltimore, so we all play lacrosse, but the I was nowhere near good enough to be on Princeton's lacrosse team, which at the time was a juggernaut. Yeah, I wouldn't I probably couldn't even carry one of the lacrosse balls. And, on wrestling, when I got to Princeton, they'd actually just shut down the wrestling program. Oh, no. So, I probably I might have been good enough to make that team. but, I didn't, I didn't do it. So you,

John Coe (00:08:40) - What did you major in there?

Dave Bramble (00:08:42) - I mean, you.

John Coe (00:08:43) - Aimed towards law school, obviously. So what was your undergraduate major?

Dave Bramble (00:08:47) - My undergraduate major was politics with a minor in Russian studies. So, City College. One of the things about City College is that it had a program that allowed you to study lots of different languages other than the typical, you know, French, Spanish.

Dave Bramble (00:09:06) - there were opportunities for German, Russian, I think Chinese, or Japanese. I can't remember one of those, languages. And, and the deal was that you also got a trip to go on to do a study abroad in high school. and so I studied Russian, as my, in high school. And then I continue that in college.

John Coe (00:09:32) - That's about the other than maybe Chinese is the hardest language of all to learn. And so.

Dave Bramble (00:09:37) - I don't know, I mean, you know, who knows? I mean, I can't speak it anymore, but it used to be I used to be pretty good at it. So,

John Coe (00:09:46) - Did you go on then? I understand you went to Penn Law. Did you do that right after. Right after Princeton?

Dave Bramble (00:09:52) - I went straight through. I, I, I honestly never really considered working in between undergraduate and graduate school. I don't know why that was. It just maybe the way things happened. but, went straight from, straight from, from new Jersey to Philadelphia.

John Coe (00:10:14) - So the political interests translated the law. Is that kind of what it was?

Dave Bramble (00:10:19) - Yeah. I mean, I'd always wanted to be a lawyer. I always thought that, you know, having a profession with a licensed profession would be good because, you know, if you're going to be in business or other things, you're taking a lot of risk. And having a profession with a license is always a good thing. and I did, you know, I went on to practice law, and it was great because practicing law, gave me a great base for what we do today. Number one and number two, of course, it introduced me to, Peter Pinker, my partners.

John Coe (00:10:53) - So when you started in in law, were you thinking a certain aspect of it, like litigation or property law or what? What was your what was your focus?

Dave Bramble (00:11:03) - Business law? Just. Yeah, it was business, corporate law, as we say, it's sort of the corporate side of things. so I was lucky enough to get to a law firm with a corporate department, a strong corporate department.

Dave Bramble (00:11:17) - and then I ended up ultimately, getting into, to doing a lot of workouts. and, that is a that is a very valuable skill set.

John Coe (00:11:32) - So that's how real estate entered the equation for you?

Dave Bramble (00:11:35) - Yes. Sort of. I will say that prior to that, a friend in Philadelphia, one of my fraternity brothers, my best friend, you know, said that we should get into real estate. and this is when we were still I was still in law school, and there was a group of us somewhere, still in undergrad. And I had always had a negative view of real estate because in my brain, growing up in the 80s, every movie you ever saw about real estate was, you know, Joe Pesci putting poor people out to build condos. And so to me, real estate was sort of connected to this idea of displacement or, you know, doing sort of shady stuff. even though my parents had always done real estate, I didn't put two and two together. so, he convinced me that we should try it, and we did.

Dave Bramble (00:12:30) - And and it worked. and then so that, along with another one of my friends to. We're still partners to this day. he, you know, we started in the real estate business doing small rehabs.

John Coe (00:12:45) - And you were an attorney.

Dave Bramble (00:12:47) - At the time. I was still in law school before I became an attorney. Then I when I actually became an attorney, it opened up more things because then I actually had money. But if you can remember back then in the early 2000, you know, money was easy. Probably too easy. This is prior to, everything going bad in the GFC. And, so we got into the business in that way, and we started a mortgage company. And, so while I was practicing law, my, my, my partner Everett was running our little mortgage company that we had, and it wasn't too long before that little mortgage company was a big mortgage company, and that having the income from my share or my earnings from the mortgage company really allowed us the chance to leave.

Dave Bramble (00:13:35) - We allowed me the chance to leave the full time practice of law, to pursue real estate opportunities.

John Coe (00:13:42) - So that's that where you got your financing chops then? Basically, yeah.

Dave Bramble (00:13:45) - Because I was the I became the director of commercial lending for the mortgage company, and we did a lot of deals. you know, it was a it was an interesting time. and, and, where.

John Coe (00:13:59) - Were you doing deals? Mostly.

Dave Bramble (00:14:00) - Mostly everything we did was on the East Coast. but we had at that time, we had, ability to do nationwide residential lending and nationwide commercial lending.

John Coe (00:14:15) - So were you doing Fannie and Freddie stuff, or were you mostly doing, you know.

Dave Bramble (00:14:21) - On the residential side? It was a lot of agency stuff, a ton of agency stuff and a ton of, conventional product and then some alt a product which I don't know how familiar are with residential lending. Yes. But that's sort of, you know, not subprime. It's stuff that doesn't work conventionally. However, it's not subprime.

Dave Bramble (00:14:43) - We didn't do a lot of subprime stuff. we never got comfortable with that market of.

John Coe (00:14:47) - Subprime, though.

Dave Bramble (00:14:48) - Yeah. Three 2000, it was the subprime. It was. So it was an interest. Most people got in trouble. A lot of people got in trouble that way. but it was a it was a, it was interesting times. Learned a lot. It was our first pretty significant entrepreneurial venture.

John Coe (00:15:03) - So did it succeed that I mean, the lending business succeeded.

Dave Bramble (00:15:08) - Well, it's the oh.

John Coe (00:15:09) - Eight to.

Dave Bramble (00:15:09) - Crisis. It did not. Okay. And it's it's one of my favorite stories a guy came in and offered us. This is a business. We started with nothing. We had no money. in fact, if it weren't for my parents being willing to sign for the FHA documents because at the time, you couldn't get your license unless you had a net worth of. Yeah, you know, X and our net worth combined effort. And I was negative X, because we were both graduating from school and, I laugh all the time because, the guy came in and offered us millions of dollars for a piece of the business, not even for the whole business.

Dave Bramble (00:15:47) - And, ever. And I laughed him out of the conference room. We said, no way this thing's worth whatever crazy number we had $100 million or whatever craziness we were talking about. And, at the end, we sold it for nothing, basically, just to get out from under all the liability. And, it's, it's an interesting story, and it's one of the, one of the lessons that, you know, I wish somebody had told me, which is you never lose taking some money off the table. you know, maybe there was a little bit of upside. You gave it to somebody else, but. So what? so very interesting, lesson I try to tell people whenever, whenever I get the. To talk to young people about business. I always tell them, you know, it doesn't go straight up like this. It goes up and then down, or maybe goes down and then up into the side and then left, and then, you know, all over the place and it meanders.

Dave Bramble (00:16:45) - And you know, when you sometimes when you're on the upswing, you gotta take a little bit off the table. Interesting. Yeah.

John Coe (00:16:53) - So you would start doing workouts.

Dave Bramble (00:16:56) - Yeah.

John Coe (00:16:57) - And this was oh eight. Right. Was that in that era.

Dave Bramble (00:17:00) - Was that one. This is when I got started a law firm was 010 okay. So these workouts these workouts go back to, you know, deals from the 90s, late 90s, mostly, CMBS deals, and other kinds of workouts, other kinds of financial products to but sort of think about the 2000 crisis and the Russian crisis.

John Coe (00:17:25) - In 98 or 99. Yeah. Nomura went under and there was.

Dave Bramble (00:17:30) - A you know, you had those. Yeah. That exposure. Then you had a lot of what happened with Enron and Worldcom and all those other companies. There's a lot of financial products that were in trouble. And so we our firm did quite a bit of that. Interesting.

John Coe (00:17:44) - So you were doing did you do like corporate workouts as well as.

Dave Bramble (00:17:48) - As some were? I worked out insurance related things, but a lot of it was real estate. A lot of it was heavily related to one particular client, that had a lot of, of CMBS positions, that needed to be we were on behalf of, conduit lender. and so that's really how Peter and I got together because the conduit, the, the Peter was a retail specialist that was brought in, to work on any retail related product. I worked across all asset classes, hotel, office, multifamily, and, and Peter was a retail specialist. And so Peter and I did a lot of deals together. and then I told him about some of the deals that, you know, I had smaller deals that I had done on the side. And then I asked if he would be willing to, do some deals with me. So when did you sit.

John Coe (00:18:46) - Down and kind of start the company, in essence, is that.

Dave Bramble (00:18:50) - That, 2007, right before the GFC? Interesting. Yeah.

Dave Bramble (00:18:55) - Timing. It was great timing and terrible timing. I tell people this too, which is kind of interesting. The right you know, I we had these deals tied up right before the GFC. The GFC happens. and you know, it was a train wreck we could all see coming, but it was kind of like, just do do more deals, do more deals and and I do. It's the GFC was a big opportunity for us because we were a small company then there weren't we didn't have a lot of assets and if you could convince people to do deals, those deals perform right. Like because you we weren't dealing with we had a few legacy deals, but not a ton. And so by the time the the crisis happened, it was one of the best buying opportunities of the last 25 years, probably, or 20 years, if you could raise capital, if you could raise money. And we were able to raise some money and convince investors to do some deals. And, it was, we were successful.

Dave Bramble (00:19:53) - Interesting.

John Coe (00:19:55) - is Peter a member of the WC Pinkard family? The whole. You know, that's a long history here. Sure.

Dave Bramble (00:20:02) - Yes. Peter, it's, the four brothers, Peter, Wally and, Greg and Bob. Yes, absolutely.

John Coe (00:20:10) - That's the same family.

Dave Bramble (00:20:11) - Okay. Same family.

John Coe (00:20:11) - Bob starred. That's right. Same one. Okay, that's what I thought. Okay, so, you were a Baltimore based, but it seems like you've been active in multiple markets. Talk about your geographical strategy. You have retail properties from New York to Florida. Why such diversity and location, economies of scale or why? How did it grow and what how did it evolve?

Dave Bramble (00:20:37) - So we've done deals in 30 plus states. So we are not geographically focused in that sense. We go where the opportunity is. what we're looking for are transactions where we have some sort of relationship to the transaction that gives us a leg up, and that's sometimes geography. We do own a lot here in Maryland, and then sometimes it's not geography, sometimes it's we know the anchor tenant or, there's some opportunity that's arisen because we know the seller or whatever the situation is.

Dave Bramble (00:21:10) - So, we've never let geography be a barrier to our investment strategy. Now, sometimes it is like we don't take on we don't take on large, complex redevelopment or ground up development out of our out of the 95 corridor like that. We kind of do sort of New York through Florida. We have deeper relationships, municipalities and other folks. But, you know, if we've got an operator that knows what they're doing, we'll do a deal. Anyplace in the United States.

John Coe (00:21:41) - So as far as asset management, that requires either an increase in personnel or a very sophisticated way to manage things from distance. Yes. Which is the strategy you use.

Dave Bramble (00:21:53) - It's both I mean honestly it's both. It's we are you know we manage money for institutional investors and they expect precision and they expect sophisticated transactional and asset management execution. And so we do that. So we do have a lot of people. We when Peter and I started this business it was me and him. And then we had one analyst, who was making exactly 100% more than Peter and I combined.

Dave Bramble (00:22:19) - And today we have over 100 associates, and, you know, and, offices in DC, Baltimore, we have a guy out in Los Angeles, and we have a guy in Chicago. So it takes it it takes a platform to execute. And, we made the investments in necessary, we think, in the platform to grow it and push it from, you know, to, you know, two guys in a truck. I mean, literally not even a truck. Two guys in a in a in a, two guys in a sedan to, to, you know, a pretty sophisticated investment management machine.

John Coe (00:23:01) - So how did you find deals? I mean, was it just organic? I mean, did you just have to broker relationships? What? What was this? How was your sourcing of business, typically.

Dave Bramble (00:23:11) - So it's all it is. Yes. Broker relationships 100%. Brokers are very important machinery. I think people, you know, can issue brokers, but I think that's a mistake. and, it's relationships, with capital providers, with lawyers, with other folks who are in the ecosystem, but not necessarily who are definitely brokers.

Dave Bramble (00:23:37) - one of the main ways we did deal deals, particularly in the retail space, is we did a lot of deals with leasing brokers. So the leasing brokers would have the ideas, but they're not investment sales folks, so they don't necessarily know how to go about finding the investors, but they know us. So they would call us and say, hey, this tenant wants to be here, I know it. can we put together a deal? and we did that many on many occasions. So it's really sort of, you know, finding deals is, you know, people will come to me and say, well, how do you find deals? And I say, well, it's hard, right? It's a lot of phone calls. It's kissing a lot of frogs. It's saying a lot of no, or but not just no. Get off the phone. It's more no. And let me explain why. And let me tell you why we how we could do the deal if you if these things were in order.

Dave Bramble (00:24:31) - Because what that does is that makes everyone an army of people looking for deals for you because they know what you'll do. and, you know, look, a lot of it is just returning people's phone calls. I mean, you know, in this business, you get busy, you get big, you can't return phone calls. Things fall apart, following up, being there, returning people's phone calls. And then when the opportunity does come, you gotta grab it and sink your teeth into it and rip it to shreds. and that's important to.

John Coe (00:24:59) - Well, the reason I'm asking is normally people have a patch, they work their patch, they know the market like every property. And they really understand the geography. Right. You're you came at it differently. So that's why, you know, it's an unusual approach. And so obviously that's interesting. It has a different angle. But you have obviously a network of relationships that goes way beyond just the region. And it may have come, you know, evolved a different way.

Dave Bramble (00:25:30) - That's exactly what happens. It evolves. And, you know, you start with, you know, X relationship which turns into Y as long as you treat X right. Sure. Then x tells y and z and then y and z, you build a relationship and look. The way the world works is you're not going to do a deal with one person 9000 times. but you still have to treat that relationship as if it's going to give you a thousand deals, right? Because you want that call. You want the first call, which is I got an idea for you. And I think what makes us unique is as a firm is that we can do lots of different kinds of investments. We're not just a one trick pony that only does one kind of asset. So or we'll only invest in one part of the capital stack. We will provide preferred or do a GP LP structure or just be the GP or you know, we've even given. People first mortgages if we can get the right return.

Dave Bramble (00:26:33) - So we're very flexible in how we look at things, and I think that's what keeps the phone ringing. The funnel is very wide at the top now that has a trade off, which is I just mentioned to you how the size of the platform, you need a lot of expertise to do that. And so we have that, on staff and that, that sort of, you.

John Coe (00:26:54) - Know, talks about raising equity and what, what, you know, when you started, was it all just friends and family or, you know, and then how did you evolve into the institutional realm?

Dave Bramble (00:27:04) - Yeah, it was friends and family. It's exactly right. And and it's hard. I mean, it's easy to do the first two deals, but then after that they're like, what, what another 50,000? And, you know, it's hard. It really is. I'm not gonna, you know, there's no way to sugarcoat. It's just hard. But what happened was we did a few deals they performed, and then a small private equity firm found us.

Dave Bramble (00:27:26) - and they backed us on several deals, which all went really well, which led to another private equity firm. No, new Jersey, which led to another private equity firm finding us, who had some investors. Uhhuh. And then our first big break was a public REIT, Acadia Realty Trust. Oh, sure. they gave us $100 million of allocation out of one of their opportunity funds, and that went really well.

John Coe (00:27:55) - What was the business plan?

Dave Bramble (00:27:56) - all value add retail. So it was all grocery anchored shopping centers, power centers, net lease retail, anything where we could make a high octane return in retail.

John Coe (00:28:09) - Footprint as far as geography know.

Dave Bramble (00:28:11) - Us.

John Coe (00:28:12) - Wow. Okay.

Dave Bramble (00:28:13) - But everything we ended up doing was in the Mid-Atlantic and the northeast with them. but we, it was great. We had a great, great run. we still do business with those guys today. There's some of the some of some great flows in fund.

John Coe (00:28:30) - Or was that just a, you know, kind of a strategic relationship?

Dave Bramble (00:28:35) - So they had closed end funds and we were investing out of that closed end fund.

Dave Bramble (00:28:40) - Got it. and those went really well. And then after that, we were able to find other investors that wanted to do deals with us over the years. And now we've got a very broad mix of pension, private equity. So insurance companies finance.

John Coe (00:29:00) - One off all the time. Or do you? You don't do a pooled fund or we don't.

Dave Bramble (00:29:05) - Well, we do, which I should explain. So the way we operate is we will we do have some funds, but it's not our primary mode of doing business. Okay. and not that it will never be. It's just we never have done that. primarily because we've always been able to raise capital strategically around a strategy, a program or a deal. and we can raise large amounts of capital. and today we have 3.5 billion of AUM, and there's no big discretionary funds in there. It's all finding good deals and good strategies and then convincing investors to go along with us. and, it's, it's been a good run. It's been a good run, but it's not a typical we are not a fund business in the way that some other, some of our peers are fund businesses.

Dave Bramble (00:30:01) - Yeah.

John Coe (00:30:01) - Well, I think of the old JBG companies in Washington, which that was their business was just raising fund after fund and investing those funds. And the strategy was pretty similar for them, but they were very geographically focused. Right. So. Right. It's interesting. Reviewing your current portfolio appears you have four investment strategies core, core, plus value add, development and investment. At least six product types. Multiple markets. This is perhaps the most complicated mix of strategy I've seen for a company or size. We already talked about your acquisition strategy, but how do you come up with it? I mean, that's a huge matrix. So both property type and the way of investing, you know the different you know the four. It's almost as if you've got an institutional investing mindset in a in an entrepreneurial company. So talk a little bit about how that evolved and.

Dave Bramble (00:31:02) - Why I think I think you nailed it. We have an institutional mindset. And look, I think there are other groups that are sharpshooters.

Dave Bramble (00:31:10) - They only do one thing. we're not like that. what we did is we invested in people, you know, a lot of times you as your operator, you get a big promote, you say, what do I do with it? Am I buying a beach house or am I investing in the platform? And Peter and I decided that we're going to invest in the platform. So we have experts in every asset class that we're involved in who are dedicated to those asset classes.

John Coe (00:31:35) - And they're employed or are they employers.

Dave Bramble (00:31:37) - Employ? Well, some are partners. There's partners too. But, but they're part of the company. So what we did is instead of instead of saying, okay, because that's a choice, right? You can make your choice about how you want to grow your business. You can say, okay, we've done really well in value at retail, so let's just do value add retail. and and some of it comes from the background, right? I personally came from doing industrial in office.

Dave Bramble (00:32:05) - Peter is a retail expert. So we already came with three asset classes. the only new additions really are multifamily now. And now we have a new health care division that's led by, Will Jermaine, who formerly was a Ventas guy who left and we started a new platform with him focused on medical office and life sciences.

John Coe (00:32:29) - Interesting. So you have five basically big platform.

Dave Bramble (00:32:33) - Multifamily, retail, industrial and, health care. Okay. Yeah. So four, four.

John Coe (00:32:41) - Okay. You're not in the office business per se.

Dave Bramble (00:32:43) - We are. But who's raising capital for office?

John Coe (00:32:47) - But you have.

Dave Bramble (00:32:48) - Some big projects that include office. We did we did. So we did talk about those.

John Coe (00:32:53) - And we get.

Dave Bramble (00:32:54) - There. Yeah.

John Coe (00:32:56) - but that's that's an amazing structure. I'm. I'm impressed. so let's get into the projects. So I've got a list of four here, but you have a lot more than that. Sure. I'll start with the rotunda. Talk a little bit about the rotunda where it is and the whole story.

Dave Bramble (00:33:12) - Well, the funny thing is, is the rotunda is is not a project we developed. It's just a project we acquired. Okay. I wish I could say I developed it because it's one of the most beautiful projects in our portfolio. and it was owned by a public REIT, and a private family and a venture.

John Coe (00:33:31) - And its location.

Dave Bramble (00:33:32) - And its location, it's located in, north Baltimore and Baltimore, Maryland. and it's, a fantastic location that I used to go to this place as a kid. I remember I used to have a Ritz camera in it, if you remember Ritz. Sure. Or in RadioShack. Oh, sure. and, it, it was a subject of a massive redevelopment right before, the GFC. and now it's a mixed use project, includes, 200 plus thousand feet of retail and office, as well as, over 300 after.

John Coe (00:34:10) - Storey there a little bit.

Dave Bramble (00:34:11) - So the before story was this is it's actually an interesting project because it was one of the first, if not the first mixed use projects in America.

Dave Bramble (00:34:21) - This was the old this is an old, life insurance building, a beautiful old building, and a monumental life building. I can't remember the name of the I'll remember in a second. I know they were here, and they, the mannequin family originally redeveloped it and put a grocery store and retail in the first floor. And then there was the offices above. Okay. and then, they owned it for many years, had a huge parking lot, and this new family acquired, the project, and, they giant moved out. Giant supermarket was in there. They put in a mom's organic market and redid the retail. And they built, the apartment building, which is one of the most successful in the city. and so we acquired that project, from the, from that public REIT, along with two other projects, one project in, Frederick, and one project in Montgomery County in Damascus, grocery anchored projects. One is, anchored by an H mark, which is a large, National Grocer and the other by Safeway.

Dave Bramble (00:35:40) - And then this project here, which is, anchored by moms groceries, moms organic.

John Coe (00:35:46) - So have you done any redevelopment of the project or what?

Dave Bramble (00:35:48) - So we actually are in the process of so the project in, in, in Damascus that we're not touching. It's a fully leased grocery shopping center in Frederick. we are we are. We just got our entitlements to, we're in the I should say we're in the middle of the entitlement process to add apartments, and, reposition the retail, which is underway. and then in, in Baltimore at the rotunda, which is really sort of the flagship property of, of that group of assets. we are in the midst of adding a new Bank of America, and some new restaurants and other things. So we're, we're hot and heavy and sort of, and, investing in this group of assets. Okay.

John Coe (00:36:43) - The next one is the Kirkwood Industrial Logistics Park.

Dave Bramble (00:36:47) - Oh yeah. That's interesting.

John Coe (00:36:48) - Talk about that one.

Dave Bramble (00:36:49) - So that is a large industrial development, in Hagerstown in Hagerstown, Maryland.

Dave Bramble (00:36:56) - that's a site that we bought, in a joint venture, with Invesco, where we specked a one point 2,000,000 square foot industrial building.

John Coe (00:37:11) - and you build that relationship with Invesco that you've done business with them before?

Dave Bramble (00:37:15) - Actually, this is our first deal with Invesco. and, you know, build those relationships just like everything else, which is you start with, hi, my name is Dave Bramble, and I'm in the real estate business. And about 24 months later, you get a deal. Because they're one of the biggest.

John Coe (00:37:31) - Institutional investors in the country.

Dave Bramble (00:37:33) - They are a very large investor, very smart, a lot of data. Oh, yeah. Excellent partners, I will tell you that. and, they, they were able to quickly understand that we, we'd gotten the land tied up, at a good price. and, was it zoned already industrial. So we cut a deal with the. So a group a group who, who who goes by the name Curated Development, which is a joint venture between, two, two local guys, led by Dave Strauss.

Dave Bramble (00:38:12) - We, we cut a deal where we basically said, look, we will close once you once we're ready to go with a permit. So we didn't actually close until the deal was ready to go. But then we did spec a 1.2 million feet and yes, we leased it. That's your next question. We were able to sign a lease with a tenant for the entire building. So, we feel really good about that. There's another 300,000 foot building that we've also built that we're in the process of leasing, and then there's still some additional land. But very excited about that project right.

John Coe (00:38:44) - On I-70 or where is it or is 81 or is it that intersection?

Dave Bramble (00:38:48) - It's 81 and 70, I don't know, I mean, obviously all the information is available. Yeah, it's a great location. It's, it was I gotta tell you, obviously the market for industrials specifically big box has been fantastic. It has been softening, however, so we were very excited to get that deal done. and your user there, our user, I believe this.

Dave Bramble (00:39:15) - Yeah. It's public. Our user is a website. and they've, they committed to a new long term lease. And we're going to say, do they do restaurant equipment? Oh, interesting and stuff. Yeah. So they actually were our tenant many years ago in another product project. so glad to have them again. How did you find them? yeah. Cushman, represented us on the transaction. Was a big user. Big lease. Wow. Big lease.

John Coe (00:39:43) - That's impressive.

Dave Bramble (00:39:44) - And actually, I think just one, I don't know, that was another deal. So I have to say, I think you have one deal with you. There was another deal. We did a deal we did in Aberdeen. Nope. Just awarded that deal a transaction.

John Coe (00:39:58) - Another industrial?

Dave Bramble (00:39:59) - Yeah, that was industrial. That was 865,000ft roughly, or 890,000ft. I can't remember something up in that range, that we did in Aberdeen, Maryland. both these.

John Coe (00:40:11) - Buildings are one, one structure, one.

Dave Bramble (00:40:13) - Building. Yeah, one big building.

John Coe (00:40:17) - Like 30 clear or something like that.

Dave Bramble (00:40:20) - 36 and 40, but yes. Yeah. So they're the big flat.

John Coe (00:40:24) - They the flat big, the big.

Dave Bramble (00:40:26) - Old warehouses that you see they bulk distribution that floor.

John Coe (00:40:30) - And the whole so that they, you put in all the mechanized equipment. Is it all robotic and everything inside.

Dave Bramble (00:40:35) - Well, we don't control the insides of the building. That's up to the tenant. But yes, typically they will typically do, not all robotic, but typically do a lot of a tracking system. And then they're, you know, depending on the level of technology that the tenant uses, sometimes there is automated.

John Coe (00:40:52) - Amazon is kind of the the cutting edge. Correct.

Dave Bramble (00:40:55) - Correct. Yeah. Right.

John Coe (00:40:57) - So next one is yard 56.

Dave Bramble (00:41:00) - Oh that's near and dear to my heart. So that's an East Baltimore. and we that took a very long time to get done. that is a across the street from Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital. And, it was a former porcelain and enamel manufacturing facility.

Dave Bramble (00:41:21) - And what's so interesting about it is that business employed so many people in the area, and then it was a subject of an elbow and, went out of business subsequently. And the thing sat there fallow for many years and as you can imagine, operated as a normal manufacturing facility for 100 years. Extremely. Contaminated. so what you have is you have Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital, the flagship, easternmost hospital for Hopkins. just just not too far from the, you know, main Hopkins Hospital. then across the street from it, you've got a dilapidated factory in, and it's kind of like a symbol, a symbol of hope, like of work, and became a symbol of decay. and, we are really proud of that project, because it was one of those projects, everyone said, oh, it'll never work. It'll never get done. I hear that over and over and over again. And, we were able to put together a deal. we did a big cleanup. the cleanup included. Included, basically oversight by both EPA and MDA.

Dave Bramble (00:42:39) - So it was a brownfield. It was a big brownfield site. The environmental cleanup combined with the site work roughly $20 million. It was a big cleanup deal. and now we've delivered, a grocery store in what was a food desert. Baltimore City's first LA fitness, a new medical office building and 220 apartment units. and it looks absolutely beautiful. So very proud of that. It was the first opportunity zone deal, first large opportunity zone deal in the state of Maryland. and, is that how you.

John Coe (00:43:13) - Financed the,

Dave Bramble (00:43:14) - That's how we're. Well, so I would tell you, that deal needed every bit of every brain cell that I could pull together. it has new markets, tax credits in it. It has brownfields. It has, enterprise zone and opportunity zone. In fact, it was recognized as the first deal in the United States to combine opportunity zone capital and new markets tax credits. Wow. You can imagine a legal bill for that one. It was your documents.

John Coe (00:43:43) - Kind of fill the.

Dave Bramble (00:43:44) - Corner. Oh yeah. All day it was it was it was a zoo getting that done. But it was meaningful. And, you know, you go there today. I mean, that place used to catch on fire. I mean, it would catch on fire. The smoke would bill out, blow out the president of Johns Hopkins Bay, he would call me and say, the building's on fire again, and I'm shutting off the HVAC. What are you guys going to do? And it's so funny because, my partner, Dave Frederick, who's retired, but who really led the initial planning here. we used to laugh all the time. He would say, Bramble, this is the only building we've ever owned that looks the same before. And every and after, every time it burns down. I mean, it looks I mean, it's just it was just a big, hulking thing, and it looks so terrible. and now it's beautiful. I mean, it is just stunning. So, if we do say, I say ourselves, you just check it out.

Dave Bramble (00:44:43) - But it's there's. When we open the apartment building. I'll never forget one of the local news stories, news stations did a story where they showed the thing burning, and then they showed the new building. And, And it's really a testament for what we can do in our cities. And the thing's doing fantastic.

John Coe (00:45:01) - How long did it take to get the cleanup done and all that?

Dave Bramble (00:45:04) - It took forever. It was it was a huge entitlement fight. it was, it was a big entitlement battle. It was a huge battle to get all the agencies to play ball. but they did. They all worked with us. And I'll tell you, MD Hopkins.

John Coe (00:45:23) - The help to.

Dave Bramble (00:45:23) - You, Hopkins was an absolute help. I would think Hopkins leaned in to help us. Yeah. everybody did it once. They. I think there's this barrier initially in these deals with people like, no, no, no, no change. And then they're finally like, well, wait a minute, do we want this dump?

John Coe (00:45:38) - There's a tipping point.

Dave Bramble (00:45:39) - Or are we right? And then everyone jumped on board and it's, it's, it's pretty exciting to see.

John Coe (00:45:44) - I did a, the first tiff in Washington, DC.

Dave Bramble (00:45:48) - Oh, wow.

John Coe (00:45:49) - On the Mandarin Hotel. On the water. Oh, sure. And it took almost five years with that project on. It was. And there was no brownfield, but it was, you know, it was tough because a five star hotel in that location at the time was like, no, but we did get it done. And, we were very pleased. And now the wharf is right there.

Dave Bramble (00:46:13) - It's unbelievable. That's the salamander now, right? The mandarin. Yeah. Right, right. Beautiful location.

John Coe (00:46:18) - Finally, we got the vision across the goal line, but it took time.

Dave Bramble (00:46:24) - It takes time. And you know, the thing about it is that you have to remember as a developer and an investor is, you know what you see, you understand the numbers. But the people you're dealing with on the other side, particularly the community members, one, they have no idea what you're talking about.

Dave Bramble (00:46:40) - Yeah. Two. It's not their job. Their job is whatever they do. They're a doctor or a teacher or a, you know, a homemaker, whatever it is. And we have to explain to them why we want to change the land, use what we're trying to do. And sometimes I got to remind myself to take a step back and put myself into your shoes. You were show up. You're like, well, what are you doing here? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to change? And and it takes a while to build that relationship. Build the confidence. Sure takes.

John Coe (00:47:13) - Time. Yeah. The final one I have on my list is Reservoir Square.

Dave Bramble (00:47:17) - Oh, wow. Okay.

John Coe (00:47:19) - We'll talk about that one.

Dave Bramble (00:47:20) - So that's near and dear to my heart. that's a few blocks away from where I lived, where I live to this day, in West Baltimore. And when I was a kid, it was it was a housing project that we used to call the Murder Mall.

Dave Bramble (00:47:38) - it was a tough project. and it's very interesting. It's kind of an interesting story because it had a grocery store, a school, retail and residential and some office. Sounds like a great project. and at the time when they were conceiving this, you know, it made sense. At least it made sense conceptually. We're going to create all these things. We're going to build this community. but then it was all public housing effectively. And so the concept that I think we all know today of avoiding poverty concentration wasn't known in the 70s, or people didn't, hadn't seen the results yet. So the, the building became the whole complex became a mess. and when I was a kid, like I said, we called the murder mall my mom's first office for her newspaper. When it moved off, the kitchen table was in that complex. So I used to go there after school every day. Very rough place. And, it took almost a decade. Actually not almost a decade. It took over a decade to get it from, to convince all the different stakeholders that needed to be convinced.

Dave Bramble (00:48:56) - And then it had all kinds of real estate issues related to Amtrak and rail lines, and it was just a complete, really difficult and time consuming.

John Coe (00:49:09) - Walking around as a kid there or not.

Dave Bramble (00:49:11) - Oh, that was scary. That was scary for sure. it was a tough place.

John Coe (00:49:16) - Did you see murders or. I mean, things happen or anything like that.

Dave Bramble (00:49:19) - Not when I was over there. I mean, I mean, I'm from Baltimore, so yes, I've seen I've seen my fair share of violent crime, I think. But that particular location, I mean, when we tore it down, when we finally got the demo permit and were able to tear it down, change the neighborhood instantaneously, instantaneously. Crime went down. It was it was, it was it was kind of interesting was that it was capital from the, from the, the state's core program. that allowed us to actually tear down the buildings. And it's it's been it's amazing to see the transformation. So today. So it took us forever.

Dave Bramble (00:50:01) - We got it done. We site works done. In the first phase, which is happening right now, is lot sales to Ryan Homes. So Ryan Homes is building new townhomes. and then we plan to come back with a workforce building and a grocery anchored to.

John Coe (00:50:19) - Establish pricing for your townhouse, you know, for for the lots. Yeah, for the lots there, because there's probably not a not many comps you could find in that location.

Dave Bramble (00:50:30) - Well, I'm gonna tell you a secret. Baltimore is hot. Okay. People want to be in Baltimore. And the fact that Ryan Homes, a national homebuilder who could be building anywhere in the state of Maryland is building in Baltimore, should be your clue. Yeah, they're all here, all the national homebuilders. Okay. Because if you think about the geography of this city. Yes. you know, real estate one on one, right? You buy the worst house on the best block, of course. But in this instance, the block is D.C. to Boston.

John Coe (00:51:02) - I see what you're saying.

Dave Bramble (00:51:03) - The city that's got the cheapest real estate, that's got the best opportunity for growth, that has a port. I mean, obviously, we have our port issues at the moment that can reach a third of the US population in a day. The furthest western inland port, the largest roll on roll off Port Hopkins, Maryland. I mean, I mean, look, you're a good salesman. This city, this city is poised for massive growth, right? Just think about this. How many law schools in the entire state of Maryland. What would you guess? Great. State five. Maybe two. Where are they? Baltimore city. Okay, now, Maryland is known for medical, right? How many medical schools in the state of Maryland? Two. There are two. Just two. And where are they both located? In downtown Baltimore. I am telling you that Baltimore has so much room for economic growth. It just has to shed the whole wire thing image that's that's hung over its head.

Dave Bramble (00:52:10) - Murders are down here massively right. which people don't talk about, but probably should be. But the real thing here is this real estate is cheap, and there's lots of space. and all the institutions everybody want to do business with is right here. So I'm excited for Baltimore. It's Baltimore's time.

John Coe (00:52:30) - Well, when we talked on the phone the first time, I think I might have told you that I'm an investor in a property not far from the site. It's the former Frederick Douglass High School.

Dave Bramble (00:52:41) - Oh, right on the west side. Yeah. Yeah.

John Coe (00:52:44) - It's. I think it's only about five blocks from this.

Dave Bramble (00:52:46) - Not far. Yeah. It's tough. I mean, look, the way I look at it is that. We are at this inflection point. There's lots of stuff to do on the margin. And for Baltimore to take off, we have to take that margin and spread it out and and capture projects like what you're talking about. But it'll happen. It will happen. It's just a question.

John Coe (00:53:15) - Of real estate. If you look at just the the physical plant. Yeah, I mean it's got a spectacular theater inside. It's unused and dilapidated. There's opportunity there physically to do something with it. It just has to have the right vision and the right.

Dave Bramble (00:53:32) - It does. But what Baltimore needs is we need more people. We need we need people who are willing to live in the city, who are excited. I mean, Baltimore is so cool. Like, people don't know. There's all these cool neighborhoods, lots of places to go. and we got to build on that and we got to build on our geography, which is what we should be dialed in.

John Coe (00:53:53) - It has the label Charm City. So where did that come from? You know, you you have to ask that question, right?

Dave Bramble (00:54:00) - It's it's there. And I, I firmly believe that over the next decade, Baltimore is going to be one of the greatest stories in the country.

John Coe (00:54:10) - Okay. Well, that leads to your grand slam home run that you're doing now.

John Coe (00:54:17) - So if you if you hadn't invested enough in the city of Baltimore already, you took on the redevelopment of the downtown core project Harbor Place, right? I remember touring the property in the early 1980s, when it was the hottest waterfront property in the United States at the time. So. Tell that story. I was able to review Gensler plans for the project, and they are state of the art. I mean, it is very cool. I interviewed Jordan Goldstein, who's now the CEO of Gensler recently, and he was excited about it, as well as Under Armour's headquarters that they are designing. As impressive as the wharf in DC is as a waterfront project, this will certainly rival it, if not exceed your walkability and wonder.

Dave Bramble (00:55:10) - So I love that you just you just wrote my next five lines. Yes. So so this is so you ask how we got involved with it? I mean, I grew up in Baltimore. Yeah. And this was the place you're right. In the 80s. Yeah.

Dave Bramble (00:55:25) - It was more visitors in Disney World. Oh yeah. It was. That's how hot the place was. But times change. And, the project was taken over by, by, you know, sort of pure corporate interests. How do I get the highest rent? Not thinking about how do I avoid killing the goose that lays the golden egg? Because what made the place cool was the cool retailers and this and all this weirdness, everything. And then. It became a mall. And guess what? Guess what? Doesn't work. You don't pay to park at a mall, and you don't need a mall on the waterfront. And if you're going to get the same goods that I can get on the internet or at one of our other lovely malls in town, why am I coming downtown? Barring traffic, paying for parking, do all those things to buy a t shirt that I could order from Amazon, or go to the mall and pick up. And the answer is you're not. And so it failed.

Dave Bramble (00:56:25) - and that's not the only reason, obviously. But over time, these projects, especially a project as grand as this, these things need to be revisited now. My argument has been, and the reason we got involved is because, honestly, there's only a few people in this town who would be willing to do something like this. Oh, I should say this. There's only a few people in this town who have the capability to do something. Yes. And then there's no one in the town who'd be willing to do something like this other than Peter and Dave. And the reason is for what? You can imagine the publicity of it all. I mean, we've been doing this for 20 years. We if we're talking to someone, we're talking to someone in the space like you about real estate, what we invest in and those kinds of things. Those are the conversations that Peter and I are used to. All of a sudden, we're thrust into, you know, everybody wanting to talk to us about everything.

Dave Bramble (00:57:30) - and with the unenviable role, I would say, of trying to solve all people's problems, which we cannot do and which we told people we're not here to do that. But what we are here to do is make a major investment in downtown in a way that, quite frankly, in addition to it being an amazing project, it's really asset protection. We're huge investors in this city. Yeah. both Peter and I love this town. We both went to school here. We love everything about the city. and so there's that sort of psychic investment. And then there's also the financial investment, which is impacted if our crown jewel is is failing, which it is. It has been for a long time. in downtown Baltimore, like other downtowns like DC, is facing an existential crisis around the office space. and major investment is needed. and we think this sort of mixed use, walkable, active, you know, pedestrian prioritizing redevelopment is catalytic. And so that's that's what's happening.

John Coe (00:58:43) - So talk about your vision a little more.

John Coe (00:58:46) - I mean, what for this project? I mean, this is it's quite ambitious.

Dave Bramble (00:58:50) - It's ambitious. I mean, but you know, I don't think you can do a project like this without having big vision. It's just not possible.

John Coe (00:59:00) - Why, Gensler? Why did you talk to them and not some other?

Dave Bramble (00:59:03) - We talked to a lot of firms, and we chose Gensler for a couple of reasons. One is, the the Baltimore office is led by a gentleman named Varkey MoMA, who is an incredible architect and who who really put helped us put together an awesome team. So Gensler is the lead, but then we also have BKT and we have three Xin from Copenhagen, BK from Baltimore, two. We have three from Copenhagen. Then we have this amazing team of unknown studio and bio habitats and salt and Campbell Brit. We put together this whole team, all different levels of different pieces of expertise to come up with this master plan. and it was great because they got the heft to really execute and really sort of bring all these pieces together and produce the materials we need, to convince, you know, the neighborhoods and the and the, the voters and the and the and the government officials and ultimately investors, that there's a project here that's executable and doable.

Dave Bramble (01:00:11) - So it's kind of exciting. so very happy with what Gensler has done so far. and, excited to get on to the next steps here.

John Coe (01:00:22) - So how did.

John Coe (01:00:23) - How about the financing that you organized all that now?

Dave Bramble (01:00:26) - No, because we're we really right now are in zoning. Okay. Right. We need to get through zoning and planning. which is really so the the first step to this process was getting city council approval and mayoral approval, which we have. The next step is getting voter approval. So in November, we need, the citizens of Baltimore City to come out and vote in support of the plan. then once we have that, then we'll turn to hardcore drawings and financial endorsement.

John Coe (01:00:59) - With the vote.

Dave Bramble (01:00:59) - There's no, no, we're not there's no financial assets. So why do.

John Coe (01:01:02) - You need the city to vote on that?

Dave Bramble (01:01:04) - Because the original project was done by charter amendment. So therefore, any changes to the zoning, the changes to the zoning that that we would need, include an amendment to the city charter.

John Coe (01:01:20) - So it's not just city council. It has to be a vote.

Dave Bramble (01:01:23) - It's going it's going to be on the ballot in the general election in November. We'll be on the ballot. Wow. And I love it. And people say, well, why do you love that? I said, because it's a chance for people to really say what they want and whether they're support or not. Because, look, here's the deal. And I've said this before, Peter and I need this project. Like, we need a hole in the head. but we we understand its importance. We know it has to be done, and it should be done by somebody who loves this place and who who is going to be here. And I have to look neighbors in the face and, you know, I gotta live here. Yeah. So after you.

John Coe (01:01:59) - Saw those plans from Gensler, your developer, Jean's had to say, oh, this is going to be fun.

Dave Bramble (01:02:06) - It's exciting. Yeah, it's exciting for sure.

Dave Bramble (01:02:08) - I mean, so one of the coolest buildings is the sale building, which was. So we did an international design competition. Yep. and we selected three men from Copenhagen. They won the competition. We had some of the best architects in the world come to Baltimore, pitch different ideas, and go to.

John Coe (01:02:28) - Copenhagen and see what they've done.

Dave Bramble (01:02:30) - I didn't, but members of our team went to Copenhagen. and I got to tell you. Unbelievable. It's it's unbelievable. The building. And I'm so excited about it because.

John Coe (01:02:41) - Triangular shaped building that kind of goes.

Dave Bramble (01:02:43) - Up. Exactly. It's fantastic. And it has the combination of the outdoor space, indoor space. Now, of course, we have the unenviable position of making sure the math works. That's that's why I asked the question, which is going to be, we think a combination of venue space, market based retailers and then some really cool, you know, restaurant, space. We think we can make the math work. So we're pretty excited.

John Coe (01:03:10) - Yeah. I mean, I read and maybe I'm, I don't know if it's accurate or not. You're estimating to be about a $900 million project. Yeah.

Dave Bramble (01:03:17) - Between 900 and 1 billion. Yeah. And but so it's very important to break it out though the actual buildings themselves we think are 4 to 500 million. the real the other piece though, there's $400 million in there of public space infrastructure. And it's not just infrastructure, it's actually parks. It's it's some of it's infrastructure and roads. But the biggest piece to it is the promenade. So there's this beautiful promenade that surrounds the water that was originally developed, you know, and is a huge park that really covers, that goes all the way around the Baltimore waterfront. And the promenade here in front of Harbor Place is failing. It's flooding. It's failing. It needs new, new conduit. It needs all kinds of things. So a huge chunk of that money that public is going into the promenade because and I say, I try to explain this to people who say, oh, it's public money is like, listen to me.

Dave Bramble (01:04:14) - Whether we do this project or not, you still have to do that work. You can't hide from that. The only thing that's happening is by doing it in conjunction with us, you're getting a building, buildings that pay taxes.

John Coe (01:04:26) - Well, you're going to need bonds. It seems to me the city will have to float bonds or the state or somebody to do that.

Dave Bramble (01:04:32) - The city is not. City does not have. There's no intention for the city to put in any money. This isn't this. That project was previously done with federal money, and the goal is to raise money from the state and federal government for those, for those for that infrastructure stuff. And the state's already committed, you know, well over 60 million towards the project. Interesting. Yeah.

John Coe (01:04:56) - So you have to go to the feds now.

Dave Bramble (01:04:58) - To we will we will, but we're not doing anything until we get our approval. So we gotta get through. We gotta get through our,

John Coe (01:05:04) - So not till after November.

Dave Bramble (01:05:06) - After November.

Dave Bramble (01:05:07) - Then we'll continue with the fundraising process. Oh. That's fascinating.

John Coe (01:05:10) - Yeah, it's going to be fun to see.

Dave Bramble (01:05:13) - maybe not fun to do, but it'll be fun to see.

John Coe (01:05:18) - You're committed to to Baltimore is bold and impressive. Other than the Under Armour founder, Kevin Plank, there may not not be a larger proponent of Baltimore real estate. Now, perhaps explain your optimism and why companies. Well, you've already done it. I guess outside the Baltimore should consider locating here. You want anything you want to amend?

Dave Bramble (01:05:37) - No. I just want to say to you that it's the biggest barrier, honestly, is just getting people here. And it won't be long because, we have a new leader at TDC, the Greater Baltimore. I mean, we have so much institutional coordination that that never used to happen before. Now we have this massive institutional coordination with Maryland and Umbc and the Orioles and the Ravens and all the folks who are saying, well, wait a minute, this is a great place. We need more investment.

Dave Bramble (01:06:13) - Where David Rubenstein just acquired the word. I mean, this is huge. Baltimore is going to Baltimore is poised for so much growth. It's very exciting.

John Coe (01:06:21) - Let me express a theory I have based on David Rubenstein because he's a native Baltimore, but he's invested so much in Washington, D.C. I mean, he's the largest proponent of the National Mall. I think there is, and in investing in documents and everything. And so my sense is he could bring the two cities together. And that's what the city that's what Baltimore needs some way to facilitate transportation between the cities other than Mark, you know, like a as we have always read about this high speed train like we have in Japan, if you could have that, Baltimore real estate would have a huge shot in the arm from that.

Dave Bramble (01:07:01) - Yeah. Listen, you know, I will say to you that connecting to DC is and I don't know whether the answer is, you know what the answer is in terms of rail transportation or whatever. But I will tell you this.

Dave Bramble (01:07:16) - If you think about the real estate opportunity here, the price of real estate relative to the huge opportunity in town, the connectivity to DC train station in the heart of the city, ten minutes to the airport, waterfront, all of those things. Like I look at a city, I look at some of these other post-industrial cities, many of which have staged comebacks, like Detroit, for example. Detroit would kill for any one of those things that I just mentioned, yet they really have none of it. Right? And they've somehow, well, they've got the waterfront. They're not like our world, right? That's the same.

John Coe (01:07:54) - I grew I'm a native Detroiter.

Dave Bramble (01:07:55) - I'm just going to say there's almost no waterfront like what we have here in Baltimore.

John Coe (01:08:01) - Nothing. Not the walkability. Right.

Dave Bramble (01:08:03) - And what I would say is, if you if you line us up against other places, we've got more opportunity than anybody. It's just a question of whether we are going to lean into it. I mean, our governor's fond of saying that we're asset rich and strategy poor.

Dave Bramble (01:08:25) - and that strategy part, a lot of it, due to his leadership, is turning around, and he's giving people a reason to come together and figure out how do we leverage these assets and execute. and it's exciting.

John Coe (01:08:41) - So even with the huge focus on Baltimore City, you have projects now in Baltimore County with the with the Affordable Housing initiative. Waldorf, Maryland, in a joint venture with Greenberg Gibbons in Chicago with your Science and Health initiative and your industrial project in Aberdeen. You mentioned earlier, are you able to stay in in the mix on all these projects, or do you rely heavily on your team to manage them?

Dave Bramble (01:09:06) - The latter for sure, I it's so funny. People will say, how do you do all this? I was like, I don't, that's not my job. My job is to find the best professionals that I can who want to be part of this machine and give them what they need to be successful, centralized. We're told, yeah, we can't we can't operate like that.

Dave Bramble (01:09:27) - I mean, we we have 4,000,000ft under construction at the moment. That's 4,000,000ft. That's a lot. We will do tons of leases. We will execute, you know, we will execute deals. We're in, you know, Florida and, you know, in Chicago, in Illinois.

John Coe (01:09:46) - So you rely heavily on your team heavily.

Dave Bramble (01:09:48) - And we have a great team at MCP. Peter and I a long time ago realized for what we want to do, we can't do it by ourselves. We recently just hired, brought in as a partner and now the president of MTV, Gina Baker Chambers, who was at Artemis. Artemis was a big investor with us. We've done half $1 billion worth of deals with Artemis over the years. and Gina was looking for something entrepreneurial, and it lined up perfectly. and.

John Coe (01:10:19) - So.

Dave Bramble (01:10:20) - Through, through one of her team members who, approached us, about potentially doing some business together. and I was lucky enough to get an audience with Debbie. in a small world story.

Dave Bramble (01:10:37) - At the time, Artemis was general counsel. The lady who was their general counsel was my law school professor. Yes. and, between that and, of course, we had a track record. they were very interested. Artemis has a program that's focused on supporting emerging managers. and, that program, which Gina, worked on, was instrumental in getting us some of our first pension investors. Oh. That's great. They've been. Artemis has been just incredible to work with. and they've been so good to me over the years.

John Coe (01:11:17) - And what did they invest in? I mean, what type? It was a certain product type or everything.

Dave Bramble (01:11:22) - They invest in. Artemis has primarily invested with us and in in retail, industrial and office. Okay. Yeah.

John Coe (01:11:32) - So is there any project I mentioned? We've talked about a lot of projects. Is there anything I missed in this that you want to, you know, champion a little bit more?

Dave Bramble (01:11:43) - No, I mean, I think you hit the big ones that we're working on.

Dave Bramble (01:11:46) - the only other, you know, large scale project that we're that's recently, been announced as we're working on a large scale project in Montgomery County. which we're pretty excited about. mixed use project. but that's just at the very early stages. But we I will tell you that, you know, like I said, there's 14.5 million feet of sitting here in our operating portfolio, another 4,000,000ft under construction. There's always something to talk about at MTV, right? so, you know, we got a lot of exciting projects and a lot of different communities. we're very we're feeling quite optimistic about, you know, where we sit, in, relative to, to our, our journey as a company, as a firm. and, a lot of exciting opportunity ahead.

John Coe (01:12:39) - So talk a little bit more about your team. You talked about Gina, and I read a little bit about her. I think she started at Goldman Sachs before she was an artist. Is that.

Dave Bramble (01:12:50) - Correct? I don't think so. I think she was at, Fannie Mae before.

Dave Bramble (01:12:55) - Oh, okay. Maybe firms. Yeah. Okay. but she, she's in the next room so we can ask her. You. But, So. Yeah. So Gina's been great, as I mentioned. Came over as a president. my partner Mike trail's our chief investment officer. He started here with as a with us as an analyst after he left corporate office properties trusts. That's probably 12 plus years ago. drew Gorman, who has been a shopping center, acquisitions specialist and developer for 30 plus years, joined us, after he left echo. that's after stints at, Federal and Faizan. Sure. I met him before. Oh, drew. Okay, great. Incredibly experience. And then, of course, Peter and me, that's the team. That's the that's the, the the partners.

John Coe (01:13:50) - And I know that Dan Rego works for you.

Dave Bramble (01:13:52) - Yes. Dan Rego runs our multifamily, development division, which has been very busy. you mentioned the project we're building with Greenberg Gibbons in, in Waldorf.

Dave Bramble (01:14:04) - we're also building a project here for Morgan State student housing. Oh, really? One, one. Another one that we're working with, that's by the Hopkins campus. and then the deal I mentioned in Frederick, and then several other projects on the, on the drawing board.

John Coe (01:14:24) - sustainably. Sustainability appears to be a focus of the firm. Talk about your commitment to it and other aspects of ESG.

Dave Bramble (01:14:33) - So I would say to you that those things are really just in McD's DNA. They're not They are, you know, before they were a thing, they were just things that we did anyway to the extent we could. I think now where we're moving and where the industry is moving is more towards documenting those things and understanding, how they impact the deal and the community where you're doing business. I think the thing that I'll say that I think is, is somewhat, is when you think about the environmental piece, I think now people are very focused on it, but they also understand understand the ROI. And so with all the environmental stuff we do, there's a big focus on what is the ROI on those things and are they performative or we're just doing them because we want to say we did something? Or can we really show that making these investments actually impacts the overall health of the project? I think solar panels is a great example.

Dave Bramble (01:15:41) - Or, you know, and other decarbonisation efforts. and now with the with the new rules that are being promulgated, promulgated through Doe, I think there really is a chance, to really show how these decarbonisation efforts can turn into value for investors and communities. on the social side. It's very interesting because that's in our DNA. You can tell from some of the projects that we talked about today. Sure. they're important to us. And that's because of who the leadership here at team at MCD is, is we want to lead places better than when we found them. and is every deal perfect? No, I'm not going to sit here and say every deal checks every box because it just doesn't. but, when we can make those investments and we can say, hey, this is a deal that fits this, our ability to really impact the community. We want to do it, and we want to lean in, and we know it has extra costs because it does, but it's worth it. That's great.

John Coe (01:16:46) - Since this podcast is aimed at young real estate professionals, please offer your thoughts on where you focus today. If you are a new in the business, in both the investment and development businesses, product types, geographies, niches, what would you be focused on if you're.

Dave Bramble (01:17:00) - Business today. Good question. and, I'll tell you the I think you gotta go to where the action is. which is my mind is going to be office. really? Yeah. Because that's where the distress is. That's where the that's where the money's going to be made. but, you know, there's always going to be room in retail and multifamily, and there'll always be room in industrial these days. But the thing to keep in mind is that things change over time. When I got into this business, raising money for industrial from institutional investors was impossible. Yeah, they wouldn't they wouldn't do it. Even though some of our best deals back then were industrial deals. So like, oh God industrial that right. They all wanted big shiny office buildings.

Dave Bramble (01:17:46) - Now none of them want things now. They all want industrial buildings. And it's shocking to me. I used to make money converting industrial to retail. Now industrial rents in some markets are higher than retail rents. And so the world continues to change.

John Coe (01:18:03) - How about regional shopping centers?

Dave Bramble (01:18:05) - We I mean, our business is very retail. we do a lot of retail and we love retail. We think retail is one of the biggest opportunities there is right now, because it's been off the run for so long. It's been underinvested and people don't recognize the value creation opportunity.

John Coe (01:18:24) - The redevelopment opportunity.

Dave Bramble (01:18:25) - It's huge. It's huge. It's a once in a lifetime, no question. So look, I gotta break for this call. Do you want to give me how much more time do we have?

John Coe (01:18:32) - About 15 minutes.

Dave Bramble (01:18:33) - Okay.

John Coe (01:18:34) - So, Dave, let's shift now to personal questions. Sure. What are your life priorities among family, work and giving back?

Dave Bramble (01:18:43) - Oh that's interesting.

Dave Bramble (01:18:45) - I'm not sure I've ever ranked those things, but they're all very important to me.

Dave Bramble (01:18:49) - Obviously, family's more important than anything. you know, I was lucky to grow up in a very loving family. Demanding but loving. And I want to make sure I, provide the same to my wife and my children. And I love what I do. I love deals, I love business, I love the I love the process of value creation. Right. so I love it. And, you know, giving back is in my soul. It's like, you know, it's how I grew up. sharing and being part of a community. and making sure that people know you're there and that you can count on them. Those all those things are important, but obviously family first.

John Coe (01:19:33) - So since your father was an Episcopal priest. Did that kind of give you that whole, you know, charitable giving spirit type of.

Dave Bramble (01:19:43) - Oh, yeah. When I was a kid, my dad used to give my toys away. To the neighbor. Yeah. He's can he's still like that. He's what? My dad, my father and my parents, both of them are some of the most giving people that you'll ever run into.

Dave Bramble (01:19:58) - and, so it's it's, it's a, I feel very lucky.

John Coe (01:20:04) - It's in your genes.

Dave Bramble (01:20:05) - It is. I feel very lucky. Yeah.

John Coe (01:20:08) - So what advice would you give your 25 year old self today? Now, we talked about, you know, from a business standpoint. But what about general life advice.

Dave Bramble (01:20:16) - Well, it's I gotta tell you, it's the same thing that I make my kids, say about hard work. That poem that we talked about earlier. Yes. So much of this of everything is just being there. It's showing up, and being there and being ready for whatever your opportunity is. and I describe this to young people all the time. I said, look, you don't know when your opportunity is going to knock. You just don't know. It's going to one day there's going to be an opportunity in front of you. Will you recognize that it's an opportunity or will you be too scared? Will you be too scared to fail? Will you be afraid to take the step, to take the risk? Then the opportunity is going to come.

Dave Bramble (01:21:02) - Will you know what to do with it? You know, will you know? Oh, well, if I get that, I know exactly what to do with it. And those are the things that I try to impress upon people, because you don't know how your life is going to turn out, who is going to walk into your life and give you an opportunity to do something? Or when you think a door is shut, that there's really a side door and all you got to do is look around the corner. And so I that's what I encourage people to work really hard, be prepared. And then most importantly, when that opportunity comes, you drive a freight train, really drive a train through it, do your best, stay up till four in the morning, get it all done, get it done accurately. and use that opportunity to find the next opportunity. And I think that sometimes can get lost, which is being prepared. And that means studying. That means knowing what you're talking about.

Dave Bramble (01:21:55) - That means when you finally get the guy on the phone or the lady on the phone, you've been trying to get on the phone for, know what you're talking about. Be ready to ask the questions you wanted to ask. Prepare. And it's hard because you're preparing sometimes not even knowing when the opportunity is going to come. But that's what you got to do.

John Coe (01:22:13) - That's where your law school education came. And the preparation site. So if you could post a statement on a billboard on the Baltimore Beltway, I normally ask for the D.C. Beltway, but in this case, we're in Baltimore.

Dave Bramble (01:22:27) - Well, I posted on the D.C. Beltway.

John Coe (01:22:29) - For millions to see. What would it say?

Dave Bramble (01:22:31) - I would say Baltimore on the rise. Yeah. And I'd put that on the D.C. Beltway.

John Coe (01:22:39) - There you go.

John Coe (01:22:41) - So, Dave, we've had an interesting conversation. Anything else you'd like to say or share with my listeners at all? And my listeners are primarily D.C. area people, but I'm now getting out there, so.

Dave Bramble (01:22:53) - Well, I would tell your listeners that Baltimore is a huge opportunity. I think that, the the economies between Baltimore, DC, the surrounding counties are all getting more and more connected, not less connected. Yes. and, there are big opportunities afoot in this little city to the north. and, we want to see you here. We want to see your investments. We want to see your dollars. We want to see you coming to visit us. And you won't regret it.

John Coe (01:23:23) - Well, I think it's important, because what I've seen, I'll just share my views of not just Baltimore, but the whole region. We've seen a weighting towards the West, at least in the DC market, with Northern Virginia being kind of the the becoming more of the central. But now with Baltimore hopefully germinating more, it'll pull back to center more or less, you know, coming back across the river a little bit. But in our area we've seen Virginia really just kind of yeah. Take off. So it's interesting, you know, because of what's going on with the pandemic, I think things are hopefully going to evolve back.

Dave Bramble (01:24:05) - Yeah. Well, and I think you also got to think about having a governor who's excited about growth and economic growth. I think that matters. And and I think that, you know, having all these different things sort of lined up to push things forward.

John Coe (01:24:21) - Well, Dave, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it. All right.

Dave Bramble (01:24:25) - Much. Thank you for having me.

Speaker UU (01:24:26) - Thank you. All right.