Blackacre Management founder & CEO Dalen Hanna, along with president & managing partner Maha Banno, want to make real estate “sexy again.” And their strategy seems to be working quite nicely for the two whose path to success was anything but traditional.
“We often joke about how most people start in real estate with a single-family home flip. We started with a 50,000-square-foot office building in Southfield,” says Hanna.
From that point in 2018, things have moved quickly. Today, the company is busy revitalizing underutilized and distressed properties through adaptive reuse, converting them into residential and mixed-use communities. “We’re fully integrated now, from acquisitions and construction management all the way up to full stabilization,” Hanna says.
The company’s headquarters is in the original revitalized building in Southfield, where an in-house team focuses on architecture, engineering, finances and management of properties throughout Southeast Michigan. “We’re vertically integrated as much as possible so we’re able to control things,” says Hanna, noting the use of third-party contractors when necessary.
“We have projects in Wayne County, Macomb County and Oakland County,” says Banno. “We just closed on a big project in Detroit, an office-to-multifamily conversion in Troy and we are wrapping up work on the tallest building in Pontiac.” Built in 1925, the 15-story building will feature 114 luxury residential lofts, with retail, office and restaurant space occupying the first four floors.
In addition to offices and lofts, Blackacre’s integrated projects include salon suites and coffee shops.
So where does the sexy come in?
“It started out as a catchy statement to give us the publicity we were looking for,” says Banno. “We just like the name ‘sexy’, because every time we walk through our spaces, we describe them as sexy. And we thought, okay, sexy real estate. And it kind of just stuck with us.
“Now that we’ve built out the lofts in Pontiac, they really are sexy,” Banno says. “This is the track we’re following for all of our properties. We want to set the highest standard. We use the nicest finishes. We don’t cut a single corner.”
“We absolutely love design,” adds Hanna. “We want every property to be recognized as a Blackacre property when you walk in.”
Visit Blackacremgt.com or Sexyrealestate.com.
