Real estate development is one of those high stakes businesses where, most of the time, people with a stomach for taking risks, and a lot of money – or at least access to a lot of money– put together really ambitious plans for a piece of land, convince others to back them and then build apartments or shopping centers or new office buildings and sell them at a profit, not including the hefty developer’s fees they pay themselves along the way. It’s a rich person’s game and most everyone else is left out. But does it have to be that way?
Will Bradshaw and Daniela Rivero Bryant don’t think so. They’ve found a way to make real estate development not only accessible but beneficial to the communities in which it takes place. Will and Daniela are the co-founders of Reimagine Development Partners, a company that does property development and is reimaginging what that looks like.
Daniela Rivero-Bryant, co-founder of Reimagine Development Partners, pioneering community led projects typically too small for institutional developers, that profit the community rather than a single financier
Like other developers, Reimagine takes advantage of the Federal Historic Tax Program. But, unlike other developers, Reimagine replaces the lender – normally an institution like a bank – with a crowdfunding model. In this way, members of the local community chip in five to ten thousand dollars and become investors in the kind of property development deal normally reserved for financial institutions or wealthy investors.
So, regular folks get access to the kind of potential profit, and the immediate real-world tax advantages, normally only available to property developers.
Will Bradshaw, co-founder of Reimagine Development Partners, encouraging citizen-investment by giving small-time investors the same tax advantages only normally afforded to the big guys
Will and Daniela started the firm in 2022. He is a career real estate developer and part time professor at Tulane, where he was a founding member of the university’s sustainable real estate development program. Prior to launching Reimagine, Will founded Green Coast Enterprises, a triple bottom line company, which means it is focused on people, prosperity and the planet.
Daniela is an expert in urban disaster resilience and community development. Prior to launching Reimagine, she spent 15 years supporting the post-Katrina housing recovering in New Orleans and assisting local government in Latin America with resilience and recovery poverty creation.
An artists’s impression of 1440 Government Street – this Reimagine development in partnership with developer Anthony Kimble will bring food service, personal services, and professionals to this revitalized Baton Rouge location
Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On The Boulevard.
The Parlor in Baltimore – Reimagine’s first-in-the-world citizen-funded, tax-advantage property development investment
