Conifer Realty gets new CEOBy
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Since its spinoff from Home Properties Inc. in late 2000, Conifer Realty LLC has maintained a heavy and steady stream of growth-jumping from 40 employees and no properties to 400 staffers and 8,000 apartment units spread over four states. This week, one of the three original partners that purchased Conifer in the management-led buyout succeeded another one of those partners, Richard Crossed, as president and CEO of Timothy Fournier now leads the company; Crossed remains chairman and managing partner. "It's a planned transition as Dick Crossed is planning to scale back his level of involvement," said Fournier, who moves up from executive vice president and chief operating officer. The two men have been working together for more than 20 years, Crossed said, calling the move in the company's succession plan a natural one. "The company is well-positioned to continue to grow, and he's exceedingly capable of doing that," said Crossed, who owes much of the company's success over the last five years to the company's focus on affordable housing and to Fournier himself. So long as Fournier maintains that focus, he will do well, Crossed said. "This business is very complicated and competitive, and we've done very well at it," he added. Terence Butwid, the third partner in Conifer's original leadership team, also has taken on a new role at the company. While he continues to serve as executive vice president of Conifer, he now heads Conifer's property management division as its president. Fournier, Crossed and Butwid all worked for the Conifer division at Home Properties before buying it for $16 million. Crossed co-founded Conifer some 25 years before the buyout and was responsible for its operations under Home Properties. The Conifer division at the publicly traded real estate investment trust contributed roughly $2.5 million in net income. Home Properties spun off its affordable-housing unit to focus solely on market-rate communities. Early last year, the company developed a partnership to help Conifer focus on developing and managing its properties, while a new entity, Conifer-LeChase Construction LLC, focuses on building them. Owned equally by Conifer and one of the region's top construction companies, LeChase Construction Services LLC, Conifer-LeChase builds all of Conifer's affordable-housing developments in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. It also provides construction services to other housing developers. A year into the joint venture, Fournier said his employees rely on LeChase as the backbone of Conifer-LeChase. "We are not a contractor by trade," he said. "It's been a great marriage for us. (Our employees) are fully integrated into the LeChase organization." William Mack, executive vice president at LeChase Construction and Conifer-LeChase Construction, heads the team. He anticipates Conifer-LeChase to log $25 million to $35 million a year in contracts awarded. Last February-when the initiative was launched-company officials said they expected to attain $40 million over the next 18 months. Instead, Mack said the company should make the $40 million mark over 24 months. "Due to funding for some of the projects, we ended up pushing the starts out a bit, so we currently have about $35 (million) to $40 million on the books for 2006, which includes overlap from that 2005 figure," Mack said. Conifer-LeChase started with five employees last year. That number is up to eight, with another staffer to be added within the next three months and possibly another in the coming year, he said. The organization is helping keep pace with the increasing demand for affordable housing. "Two forces joining together has helped implement the pipeline and expedite the building process," Mack said. It is becoming an increasingly important component to Conifer's expansion as Conifer- LeChase prepares over the next 60 days to handle 10 separate construction projects simultaneously. "That rivals what we've done before," Fournier said. Two of those projects are local: One is St. Michael's II Apartments at the corner of Clinton and Clifford avenues, where Conifer-LeChase is building 32 units, and Old Brookside Apartments off Buffalo Road in Canandaigua, where the company is building 64 units. Fournier said the goal is to have six new projects funded annually, which should translate to 10 projects under construction in various stages of completion. As the number of units at Conifer continues to grow, Fournier said the company will hire staff. Conifer is looking for a new development staffer as the firm relocates one of its vice presidents of development to southern New Jersey. "We are currently interviewing to fill that position and for marketing specialists and regional property managers," Fournier added. As he settles into his new role at Conifer, Fournier explained he will be serving as a kind of tug boat for the company as it grows. It is the management team that steers the ship, he said. "My job is to push when we need to and pull when we need to." ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it / 585-546-8303) 04/07/06 (C) Rochester Business Journal |