Michael Stern
New York
Covers:
Real estate development, supertall and high rise construction, air rights and site assemblage, landmark restoration and adaptive reuse, zoning and entitlements, luxury residential, branded residences,
Interview
How is social media changing news?
In development, it has changed who gets to weigh in and how early. A rendering circulates long before a shovel is in the ground, and the public conversation about a building starts while the project is still in entitlements. That raises the bar on what you propose. A design has to hold up to scrutiny from people outside the industry, not just the review boards.
What tools and software do you use to do your job?
Structural and facade modeling software, BIM coordination platforms, and construction scheduling tools sit at the center of it. Because JDS builds what it develops, the same models carry through from design into the field, so the drawings the team designs against and the drawings the crews build from are one continuous set rather than two separate efforts.
What's the best pitch you ever got?
The best proposals I get are the ones that arrive with the constraint already identified. A site with an awkward lot line, an encumbrance nobody wants to work through, a landmark that everyone treats as a problem. Those are the projects where there is actually something to build.
What's the worst pitch you ever got?
Anything that leads with the sales narrative before the site. If a proposal opens with what the building will be called and how it will be marketed, and the zoning, the structure, and the cost of getting it out of the ground come later, the work has been done in the wrong order.
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
On a job site. The most useful information on a project is rarely in a report. It is in what the crews are running into that week, how a facade panel is actually sitting once it is up, and where the schedule is tightening. Walking the building tells you things a status meeting will not.
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