2003-2005 One Hunters Point, Long Island City, N.Y.

Objective: To rezone an underutilized site for the development of a high-rise condo tower

Domain’s resume is all business and no fluff. The firm jumped headfirst into multifamily in 2004 when it helped rezone the Hunter’s Point district in Long Island City, N.Y., a formerly underutilized industrial area that is now one of the city’s most rapidly developing neighborhoods. One of the first firms to enter the market, Domain finalized all construction documents and approvals for One Hunters Point, a 134-unit, 150,000-square-foot luxury condo high-rise nestled on the Long Island City waterfront. The site posed significant construction challenges due to its location directly above the Queens MidTown Tunnel. For instance, the tunnel bisected one quarter of the site and sat directly underneath the foundation. A cantilevered foundation had to be designed so that portion of the building could be built directly over the tunnel without any load bearing on the tunnel.

For Domain, these impediments translated into an opportunity to compete with larger and better-capitalized real estate players. “Most developers—after getting a handle on what would be involved with the site—didn’t want to touch it,” Papamichael recalls. “We looked at that site as an opportunity for us to succeed and stand apart.” The firm completed the pre-construction work after 12 months and then decided to cash in on the condo boom, selling the site in early 2006, and doubling the original price it paid for the land.

Experience Gained: Ability to handle complex transit-oriented construction challenges and propose a project that would turn around a depressed neighborhood

2005-PRESENT The Preserve and The Meridian, New Orleans

Objective: To lead the redevelopment efforts in New Orleans’ Mid-City neighborhood

Lessons learned in the Big Apple prepared Domain for the incalculable challenges that lay ahead in New Orleans. Papamichael and Schwartz always had their eyes on their college town. In the summer of 2005, the two were considering a condo conversion deal in the city, but the plan didn’t pan out because Louisiana didn’t have the development infrastructure or financial resources needed. Then came Hurricane Katrina, unleashing her wrath across the Gulf Coast just weeks after Domain’s condo deal fell through. But with that devastation came opportunity—Domain plans to help rebuild the nearly 80,000 units damaged during the storm. Domain’s principals decided to focus their efforts on the Tulane Corridor—a major commercial thoroughfare in Mid-City, just 10 minutes from the city’s central business district, and bio-tech and medical centers. “Local people didn’t think of the Corridor as the best option for development because you couldn’t just drop a deal there,” Papamichael says. “You had to look at the big picture and say this is where a live/work/play downtown redevelopment can take shape.”

Domain, the first real estate firm to tackle the Corridor, purchased three sites—all which formerly housed commercial properties that were severely damaged during the storm and relocated elsewhere—at a value that made sense for redevelopment due to their large size. “A lot of people thought they were crazy,” says Kathy Furey, an attorney at the New York-based law firm, Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, which represented lender Bank of America. “But the more I got involved, I knew it was calculated risk. They believed in the city, and they put their heart and soul in it.”

Equally important as heart and soul—brain power. Domain had to navigate through a complicated web of newly launched, post-Katrina financial incentives to get its projects off the ground before the financial meltdown. “Domain has embraced the opportunity to rebuild smarter and more integrated housing options for New Orleans residents,” says U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.).

Its first two projects to open in the Tulane Corridor, the 183-unit Preserve mixed-income apartment complex and the 72-unit Meridian affordable housing community, used $17.2 million in federal disaster recovery funds, which were “piggybacked” by the Louisiana Recovery Authority onto nearly $3 million of GO Zone tax credits, plus Community Development Block Grants, IDB taxable-bond financing, and conventional financing.

Obtaining the capital for these projects wasn’t Domain’s only hurdle. The company wasn’t exactly welcomed to the neighborhood with open arms. “The neighborhood, pre-Katrina, had a very high absentee landlord rental occupancy and very low owner occupancy, and so the area had a lot of social issues to go along with that. We were concerned about putting higher density there,” says Jennifer Weishaupt, president of the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization.

Domain, however, assuaged their worries by involving the community in the design process. Domain promised it would fully commit itself to the reinvigoration of the neighborhood, and the firm’s done just that: It purchased, renovated, and sold nearly 30 single-family homes to add homeownership to the mix and is in the process of developing service-oriented commercial space.

Today, the firm’s New Orleans work continues as it completes a third project on the Corridor: The Crescent Club, a 228-unit mixed-income apartment complex with street-front retail expected to be complete by the end of June. And when its opens, you can bet that Soul Rebels will be there again to help celebrate.

Experience Gained: Effectively use Go Zone tax incentives and other financial incentives while negotiating with the community and rebuilding a blighted neighborhood

2005-Present Markham Gardens, Staten Island, N.Y.

Objective: To leverage capital gains for the purchase and redevelopment of a blighted public housing project

The capital from the sale of One Hunters Point enabled Domain to pursue additional development ventures throughout 2005 and 2006, including Markham Gardens, the large-scale redevelopment of a high-profile, 12-acre blighted New York City public housing complex in Staten Island, N.Y. The community, developed as a joint venture with Floral Park, N.Y.-based The Arker Cos. and Neighborhood Housing Services of Staten Island, will include 240 mixed-income rental units, 25 mixed-income, two-family for-sale homes, and extensive community amenities and recreation space. The development, scheduled to be fully occupied by the end of July, is expected to receive green certification through the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Homes. Largely due to its financial prowess, Domain beat out substantially more experienced developers in the RFP process for redevelopment of the site. “One of the most important reasons we got the project is they ranked the proposals based on the amount of subsidy requested, and we were able to request no direct subsidy from the city and still complete the $65 million transaction,” Schwartz says. Domain resourcefully incorporated nearly 15 capital sources in the funding process—everything from tax-exempt bonds and tax certificate sales to energy efficiency and affordable home building subsidies. “We were able to demonstrate that we can come up with creative financing solutions where others couldn’t,” Papamichael adds. “That is one way we’ve been able to so quickly create the name for ourselves that we have.”

Another way: The firm goes above and beyond to establish positive community relations. While it was competing for the Markham Gardens deal, Domain organized a meeting with the existing public housing complex’s tenants’ association to get residents’ input on their sorely needed new community. Domain incorporated many of these suggestions, ranging from new street names to the addition of a basketball court, into their proposal. And when the competition heated up and all the developers jockeyed for selection, not only did residents promote Domain’s proposal, but so did local community leaders who were pleased with the firm’s community-centric approach.

Winning the deal, ironically, turned out to be the easy part. The complex, built in 1943 as temporary housing for workers who were employed under defense contracts at a nearby shipyard, later served as housing for low-income families. The existing structures, which were undersized by current standards and had deteriorated beyond reasonable repair, had to nearly all be demolished and rebuilt.

“We were buying out contracts in an overheated market; we were only able to go with nonunion contracts because of prices; we had an incredibly difficult time with the approval processes; and there was tremendous amount of red tape,” says Cary Spiegel, president of the New York-based construction firm Spiegel Consultants, which came on board prior to the development’s demolition.

Experience Gained: Skills necessary to piece together more than 15 financial sources for one deal and generate community support for a controversial project