 While Camber does build market-rate housing around the city, it mainly focuses on affordable projects, either from the ground up or in existing buildings. And it has been active in recent months, especially in the Bronx.
Camber kicked the year off picking up an 11-building, 343-unit portfolio in the West Farms neighborhood for $75 million, teaming up with Belveron Partners and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to bring 100 market-rate apartments in the properties back to affordability.
In May, Camber cut the ribbon on two Longwood buildings — The Hemlock at 960 Simpson Street and The Mulberry at 1000 Fox Street — that added a total of 200 affordable units to the neighborhood. The next month, Camber partnered with Belveron again to buy the 400-unit Highbridge Houses at 1133 Ogden Avenue with plans to bring all apartments lost to vacancy decontrol back to regulation.
This activity comes after Camber closed on several sales in December 2018, including the purchase of a 50 percent stake in 722-units of public housing in the Bronx’s 14-building New York City Housing Authority’s Baychester and Murphy houses for $90 million as part of a joint venture with L+M and MBD Community Housing Corp.
All told, the company has either closed or is in construction on 4,000 units across the city, with a large chunk of them in the Bronx. The portfolio is a mix of new market-rate developments, new mixed-income ones and completely affordable properties.
The 37-year-old has always been a driven person — competing in ski races and finishing the New York City Marathon twice — who said he tries not to let any obstacles get in his way.
He was born in New York City and grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, amid a family of avid skiers. On a family ski trip to Vermont in 1996, the car he was traveling in skidded on a patch of ice and hit a truck. The accident left the then 13-year-old Gropper paralyzed.
But it didn’t keep him off the mountain for long: The next year he started to learn to adaptive ski.
He eventually got into competitive ski racing and had a plan to move to Colorado after college to focus on it full-time.
Gropper said the show was a pretty good snapshot of his life at the time, and he hoped it conveyed a message about dealing with life’s challenges.
Gropper was on a train into Manhattan when he had a chance encounter with a real estate professor from Columbia University. By then, Gropper had graduated from Connecticut College, discarded the professional skiing plans, and was working in fundraising while living in New Haven. The conversation with the professor peaked Gropper’s interest, enough that he applied to Columbia and was later accepted.
He graduated with a master’s in real estate development in 2008 and was able to land an internship at L+M despite the terrible job market. He immediately got assigned to work on the firm’s growing affordable housing division — eventually landing a full-time job after a year internship — where he developed a passion for the market.
Gropper — who lives in Midtown and has been married for six years — has had the itch to start his own company since he was young. He met Moelis, who was then working at Empire State Development, and the two shared a lot of the same real estate values. They eventually left their jobs to start Camber.
The company has steadily grown each year and currently employs about 15 people. It moved to new digs at 419 Park Avenue South last month to accommodate the growth.
Even though affordable housing is Camber’s bread and butter, it has also worked on several market-rate projects around the city. Its first development was the six-unit condominium building at 64 East 1st Street in the Lower East Side, which was completed in 2017.
The company currently has a nine-story, 122-unit rental building under construction at 1881 Starr Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which will have 25 percent of its apartments set aside for affordable housing.
But whether market-rate or affordable housing, Gropper said Camber brings the same mentality to each project of giving people comfortable places to live that will be a benefit for the neighborhood.
Gropper said the company wants to be long-term owners and generally pumps money into all of its affordable housing projects. Sometimes that means simply beefing up security and upgrading the infrastructure, but other times it means a bit more care.
When Camber bought the two-building Carol Gardens complex in Soundview at 820 and 880 Thieriot Avenue for $19 million in 2017, the Mitchell-Lama buildings needed a lot of work to revitalize them.
It’s not just empty pools that can make affordable housing projects a headache. Camber has to review tax credits, subsidies, tax exemptions, taxes on bonds, and lenders to finance the purchase, all while working with city agencies and elected officials to sign off on them.
Camber tends to avoid dealing with affordable housing subsidies for these deals and instead focuses on getting tax abatements from the city to make them financially viable.
HPD offers several types of tax incentives that can be granted for the creation or preservation of affordable housing, which include an abatement on taxes owed on rehabilitated buildings by applying credits based on the costs of improvements.
Gropper also has to be comfortable with shelling out millions of dollars on a down payment before getting the go-ahead from the city on its tax breaks for a project. But Gropper said his favorite part about real estate is problem-solving, and affordable housing has that in spades.
In the future, Gropper still sees value in buying buildings to bring them back to affordability, and he doesn’t expect that the rent reforms will impact its business model.
Camber was actually involved in some of the advocacy to get the rent reform bills passed. While Gropper said changes needed to be made, he worried that changing major capital improvements (MCIs) to drop off tenants’ rents after 30 years, instead of being built in as permanent rent increases, went too far and could be disastrous for the market.
“The result of rent reform is going to be disinvestment by some owners and their properties,” Gropper said.
So far, he’s seen prices on multifamily buildings with regulated apartments across the city decreased by 20 percent. And the bill made these properties that still have free market or preferential rental units more vulnerable to deregulation, so Camber has started to focus its energy on trying to pick up some of these.
Some new heat from the Bay Area! Tyler Coolidge just released his latest single, titled 'Hot Topic.' The track also features Abhi the Nomad. First things first - how about this beat!? Definitely a banger. Those hardhitting 808s and chiming flutes were a perfect combo. Coolidge definitely provided a dope verse too...dripping with confidence. The transition between Tyler and Abhi was seemless - this is some windows down Summer music!
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Promoting the community by participating in efforts that actively improve our quality of life and ensure Boca Raton remains the best place to live, work, learn and play.Rev. Vicki Cousins envisions herself as carrying a spiritual knapsack filled with spiritual tools that include prayer, meditation and journal writing. Vicki has served in parish ministry for eight years and was formerly a hospital chaplain. She believes in a holistic approach to healing and wholeness. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. There are many times in life when we seek to share our story and know that we have found a safe place, a healing and compassionate presence who listens deeply while supporting emotional and spiritual healing.
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London Fashion Week to go ahead with no live audiences
2 days ago - By Fashion United
The British Fashion Council has confirmed that London Fashion Week in February will go ahead as a digital-only event. All shows, presentations and installations will take place without a live audience.
Taking place from February 19 to 23, London Fashion Week organisers said that the decision to go digital-only follows the return of coronavirus lockdown measures in the UK.
The British Fashion Council said in a statement that they had been “specifically discussing with Government the appropriate way forward with regards to London Fashion Week considering the current backdrop to a public...
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London Fashion Week February 2021 to Go Ahead as Digital-Only Event