Thirty years ago, Monty Hoffman, the founder and chairman of Hoffman & Associates, started his company converting townhomes to condos in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
After recently completing one of the biggest mixed-use projects in the nation's capital and moving into Northern Virginia and Raleigh, North Carolina, Hoffman is continuing to branch out into new cities. In June, the mixed-use and residential developer with a more than $6 billion portfolio expanded into two new markets: Charlotte, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia.
“As we were nearing the end of The Wharf, we were looking for what the next invention of the company would be,” Shawn Seaman, president of Hoffman & Associates, told Multifamily Dive. “And we decided to look outside the market.”
Early in the Washington, D.C.-based company’s history, Hoffman developed a reputation in the city for its residential projects, including condos. In 2008, the firm took a major step in its expansion when it acquired the land to develop the 3.3-million-square-foot, $1 billion The Wharf project in Washington, D.C., which it says is one of the largest waterfront projects in the country. The first phase of the project opened in 2017 and the second phase opened in 2022.
John Florian, a former colleague from Bethesda, Maryland-based construction firm Donohoe, had his own development firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hoffman brought him on board as executive vice president to help open its office in the city in 2019, where the company eventually began building its Seaboard Station project. It is also building West Falls, the largest development in the history of Falls Church, Virginia, out of its Washington, D.C., office.
“We then started looking for markets that were within a two-hour radius of the two offices [in Raleigh and Washington D.C.],” Seaman said. “We looked at new markets that had the right demographics and a highly educated workforce and strong growth patterns.”
Moving south
In Richmond, Hoffman is developing the $133 million 3200 West Moore Street project, which will break ground in late 2024. The nearly 400,000-square-foot mixed-use development will include over 13,000 square feet of retail space and approximately 368 apartment units.
In Charlotte, Hoffman is working on two mixed-use projects, combined to be more than $300 million in cost and over 800,000 square feet. The nearly 350,000-square-foot development at 2500 Distribution Street will have approximately 330 apartment units and over 10,000 square feet of communal space and extensive outdoor amenities. It will break ground in spring 2024.
Hoffman is also developing 2401 Distribution Street in Charlotte, which will have approximately 410 apartment units across nearly 425,000 square feet. The project, due to break ground in spring 2025, will include over 5,000 square feet of retail.
So far, Hoffman has managed to avoid the “immediate struggles” of trying to find debt and equity for projects because its next round of work won’t begin until later this year, according to Seaman.
“Although it's next to impossible to get a construction loan right now or generate interest on the limited partner equity side of things, by the end of this year and early into 2024, we should be in good shape for trying to line up financing for the next round of projects,” he said.
Hoffman doesn’t plan to stop after moving into Richmond and Charlotte. It is continuing to seek out new markets near its offices in Washington and Raleigh.
“We'll continue to look for opportunities in Charlotte, but we’re also looking at other secondary markets in the Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast,” Seaman said. “We've looked previously in Nashville, Tennessee. We've looked in St. Petersburg in Florida. We’ve looked in Charleston, South Carolina; Wilmington, North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina; and Norfolk, Virginia. Any of those are in the right spot as far as location and demographics and the size of the city.”
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