Adam Stein
Title: Vice President, WinnDevelopment
Age: 40
Experience:13 years
Adam Stein has been involved with historic building rehab projects since college in Savannah, Ga., where he specialized in architecture and historic preservation. The school he attended was redeveloping several properties downtown, and his work in the field helped solidify his career choice. He ended up working in Atlanta on historic rehabs in multifamily housing. He then moved back to Boston five years ago, working on new construction of residential housing. Then he landed at WinnDevelopment, where he helps reposition and revamp historic but run-down properties.
Q: What are the projects you’re working on right now?
A: I’m really working on primarily two types of projects. One is acquisition and rehabs of older apartment communities that need to be repositioned and renovated. We recently finished 280 units of housing in Bristol, Conn. We’re working on a similar project in Waterbury. We just finished a big project in Lawrence, Malden Mills. That’s been a long time coming for Winn, with 75 units of workforce housing. That’s a great project, real turn-around project for the city of Lawrence. There’s about a million square feet of basically underutilized mill space in the city, and those are the symbol of Lawrence. Now they’re sitting there vacant. The ability of Winn to go in and redevelop them has not only made great new housing for people … but has been a real success story for everyone involved.
Q: Can you explain how you address the financing for what I expect are rather complicated deals?
A: Sure. We bought this apartment community that was built in the 1990s in Bristol that was an affordable project with some [Connecticut Housing Finance Administration] financing attached to it. The property had a lot of deferred maintenance and wasn’t making all of its mortgage payments. We were able to go in with a syndicator on the deal as a partner, along with CHFA, to refinance the project and extend the affordability from 40 percent, which is what it was when we purchased the building, to 70 percent affordable for another 40 years. So it really met everyone’s objectives. These projects have eight to 10 layers of financing typically, a combination of private financing from a bank, or local through the city, and the other public agencies involved.
Q: Why has Winn carved such a niche for itself out of the historic rehabs, especially the old mills?
A: It’s come from the people, the leadership. The development team principals really have developed a niche in the mixed-income housing business. They’ve become leaders in the industry and have built relationships with, not just property owners, but with municipalities. They’ve been able to go into troubled areas and redevelop them. I think, to use the pun, it’s a win-win combination. I think Winn is also successful in how they finance projects.
Top Five Tax Incentive Vehicles Winn Utilizes:
- Historic tax credits
- Housing tax credits
- Brownfields credits
- Lead-based paint credits
- Solar investment tax credits
