Vince Bennett has succeeded Kevin McCormack as president of McCormack Baron Salazar with the mandate to grow the development company, he told The American. Previously, Bennett was chief operating officer.
“We want to grow the company around urban communities,” Bennett said, during a long conversation in a meeting room on one of the three floors its headquarters occupies in the Laclede Gas Building in downtown St. Louis.
St. Louis, where Richard Baron and Terry McCormack founded the company (as McCormack Baron & Associates) in 1973, does not figure high on the list of where it’s currently expanding developments. That list does include New York City, Florida, Texas, northern California and “exciting work” in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Bennett said.
The company currently has eight regional offices with developments in 40 cities and 23 states. To date, it has developed 19,417 homes and 1.4 million square feet of commercial space, with a total development investment of $3.39 billion. But the company, with 563 employees nationally, is just getting started.
“There is an ongoing need across the country for providing quality, affordable housing as the cornerstone of rebuilding cities – and now is the time for a capable leader like Vince to assume a larger role within the firm to continue our mission and continue to grow the company,” Baron said in a statement.
Baron’s role now is chairman. His co-founder, Terry McCormack, passed in 1981. Terry’s son Kevin McCormack, who stepped down as president, has assumed the role of chief executive officer of the corporate holding company, MBA Properties. The third principal, Tony Salazar, will remain president of West Coast Operations for McCormack Baron Salazar.
That company comprises four operating divisions in addition to McCormack Baron Salazar, which Bennett now heads: McCormack Baron Management, McCormack Baron Asset Management, MBS Urban Initiatives CDE (New Markets Tax Credits), and MBS Capital Corp. (acquisition and syndication).
It’s Bennett’s mandate to grow the part of the company that advances its original mission of community building through urban development around a basis of mixed-income residential properties. Integral to that growth strategy is talent acquisition.
“It’s my job to identify and recruit talent to grow our leadership team that will take in this expansion,” Bennett said. He is looking for “three key variables,” he said, as he looks for that talent: “passion, perspiration and IQ.”
The “passion” that qualifies someone to work for the firm is “a strong interest in working in urban neighborhoods,” Bennett said. In terms of skill sets, he is recruiting senior project developers and professionals with strong backgrounds in finance and economic development.
Over the years, the company has leveraged $145 million in private foundation and corporation investment and received $742 million in federal grants, as well as $275 million in New Markets Tax Credits, so its senior staff must be able to work well at the upper echelons of investment, both private and public. But all of this funding is leveraged to develop the urban core, where the participation of residents is essential to project success, so Bennett needs people who can put their boots on the ground in the city.
“We need people with strong community understanding and communication skills,” Bennett said. “Our most important focus, ultimately, is families and children. It’s one thing to manage large capital projects, but it’s another thing to be successful in the community, particularly with a focus on families and children, which we need to do more in this country – and, particularly, in this region.”
It’s a puzzle why McCormack Baron Salazar has had less success leveraging public/private partnerships to develop projects in its own home city. The company website lists 37 projects in St. Louis, with ongoing revitalization efforts in Arlington Grove and on North Sarah, but nothing of the scale of its HUD Hope VI/Choice Neighborhoods projects in Atlanta, New Orleans and San Francisco.
Bennett sees new hope in St. Louis city and county government collaborating to secure federal Promise Zone classification for a swath of north city and county – something he encouraged regional leaders to pursue. He sees the success of their application as a step in overcoming the regional fragmentation that hampers development in so many ways.
“We broke down the silos a little,” Bennett said. “We’re learning how to work with the federal government in a post-earmarks era. It really requires public/private/community partnerships. The communities that show those kinds of partnerships will receive the transformative resources.”
Bennett also thinks St. Louis needs to learn from its unsuccessful – and costly – pursuit of resources to finance a new stadium for an NFL franchise that didn’t want to stay here.
“As a region, we need to try to solve not just complicated problems, like how to finance a new football stadium, but complex problems, such as poverty,” Bennett said.
The footprint of the St. Louis Promise Zone is a good place to start. “With North St. Louis and Wellston, our Promise Zone has some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the state,” Bennett said. “We have an opportunity to focus on that area and create a blueprint for what needs to happen in this region and this country.”
Bennett moved to St. Louis with the company 20 years ago. He first joined McCormack Baron Salazar in 1993, when he was hired to serve as a project manager for a mixed-income development in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An Alfred P. Sloane Fellowship to Carnegie Mellon University attracted him to Pittsburgh from California, where he studied economics and psychology at the state university in Santa Cruz.
He and his wife, Christina Bennett, still consider California home, though Bennett grew up in a military family and has now lived in St. Louis more than he has lived any other place.
While not blind to its problems, which are now known nationally, thanks to Ferguson, Bennett appreciates the region and especially the city and its neighborhoods. His family lives in the Central West End and worships in the city at St. Alphonsus Liguori “Rock” Church on North Grand. But he knows St. Louis has a long way to go, because his children and their friends tell him so. His daughter is a freshman at Ohio State University, and when he overhears her talk to her friends about their future plans, not one of them includes St. Louis.
“We are looking to create a place in St. Louis – we’re not there yet – where our children want to stay in St. Louis,” Bennett said. “Our company can bring talent and technical ability, but that doesn’t define community. Community requires passion and pride. I see people coming up and owning the redevelopment and improvement of their communities. We have the wherewithal to come together and solve our complex problems if we really want to. It’s time for us to do that.”
For more information, visit www.mccormackbaron.com.
