Richard High
Title: President, John M. Corcoran & Co.
Age: 60
Experience: 31 years
John M. Corcoran & Co. started out more than 50 years ago, with two brothers rehabbing triple-deckers in Dorchester. It’s now a leading name in multi-family development across the country – and Richard High has been one of the key figures in getting them there since starting with the company 30 years ago. He sat down to talk with Banker & Tradesman about the company at its latest development, a $60-million apartment project that’s part of the redevelopment of the former Naval Air Base in Weymouth.
Q: Tell me a little bit about the Southfield project in Weymouth. How does it compare with some of the projects you’ve done in the past, as far as size and scope?
A: It’s about the same size as what we like to build – 226 [units] is right in our wheelhouse. Our largest project was about 600 [units], though that was built in three stages. Our new construction properties are typically in the 180 to 250 range.
Q: I understand you do management as well.
A: We do. We’ve been net sellers [in recent months]. We’re down at this moment to about 10,000 apartments, about 60 percent of which we own and the rest we manage for third-party clients of ours. But prices have gone up and there’s money to be borrowed at favorable rates, and so some of our third-party clients have been selling, and we’ve been selling some of our own assets under management.
Q: When did you figure it was time to flip the switch? What was the tipping point that made you think, we should begin freeing up some capital and thinking about breaking ground on new projects?
A: Well, the harder decision was actually the one to start in 2010 with the first phase of Southfield. Picture the world back in 2009 and 2010, it was a pretty grim scene; virtually all construction had stopped, there were a lot of single-family foreclosures going on, money was scarce. But we thought we saw – I almost hate to say it this way – but the light at the end of the tunnel. We thought the economy was bottoming out. You have to really think forward in this business from the day you start; it’s almost a year before you have anything to offer. So as we looked at things, we thought it would be a good time to start, because we knew we’d have another full year into the recovery before we were on the market. We were one of the very early ones to start, and we think the timing worked out well. The hardest part was finding the financing – finding people that believed what we believed in, that 2011 was a good time to start building.
Q: One of your colleges was telling me you always name your project something “Commons”? Why is that?
A: John [Corcoran] started that at Beverly Commons – he was always interested in landscaping and land planning – you know, this wasn’t going to be just an apartment, it was going to be your rental home. So he arranged the first buildings all around a common. So we’ve used “Commons” in almost every development we’ve done since … it was about giving people a real sense of pride that when you came home it was to a nice place to live.
Q: You had a bit of an unusual career path, starting out in government before becoming a commercial developer.
A: I’m really going to date myself here. But, you know, I was a child of the first Earth Day, I graduated high school in the midst of the urban riots … anybody who was in college in that end of the ’60s, early ’70s era was very socially aware. Martin Luther King got shot in 1968, the cities were on fire … in college, I just got very interested in cities and how they worked and what could make them better places to live. And I was frustrated, because there was no one place to learn about this. I [ended up] putting together my own major, taking the urban courses in all the social sciences. I started out working at a social services agency, and went from there into community development.
Q: How did you come to Corcoran?
A: I had been working for the mayor of New Haven, and I had an acquaintance here who asked if I was interested in being a project director, because they were looking for somebody, so I came up and met John and Leo [Corcoran] and they offered me a job.
Q: What was the first project they gave you?
A: Well, that was part of the deal. They don’t give you projects. You’ve got to go find them! I got involved pretty quickly on two different things and ended up getting us involved in a redevelopment deal called Bigelow Commons in Enfield, Conn., which I believe may still be the largest certified historic rehabilitation project in the history of Connecticut – 1.25 million square feet on 22 acres of abandoned mill buildings. It used to be the Bigelow Carpet Factories, which was the biggest carpet factory in the world in the 1940s. That became my first real development deal.
