Bonus Episode – Dayton Developer Tim Forbess

Housing growth in Dayton has
 typically been divided by the river and real estate developer
 Tim Forbess wants to change that. One example is the historic Longfellow School which he’s transforming into a housing community with a theatre, gymnasium, doctor’s office, dog spa and more. It’s inclusive for LGTBQ+ individuals. He’s also working on another apartment building behind Longfellow which will add even more housing to the Grafton Hill neighborhood.
 

Interview guest: Tim Forbess, CEO of G.F. Bailey, a real estate development and construction firm in Dayton.

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Transcript

Emiko Moore:

Housing growth in Dayton has typically been divided by the river. Real estate developer. Timothy Forbess wants to change that.

Tim Forbess:

I wanted to think about how could we create a magnet that would do something that has historically been very difficult in Dayton, which is to come across the river.

Emiko Moore:

Forbess wants people to take a fresh look at areas that may not have been considered before,

Tim Forbess:

And I think we really have challenged, and I think we've changed the perceptions about these old neighborhoods in the city

Emiko Moore:

Come along as we hear how he is leveraging an asset and helping to create a new destination community.

Tim Forbess:

It's evolving into one of the most interesting and I think critical success stories that's happening in Dayton.

Emiko Moore:

This bonus episode is the third of three interviews with developers. Timothy Forbess is the CEO of the G.F. Bailey Company, a Dayton real estate and construction firm specializing in urban revitalization and adaptive reuse. Let's get into it. This is Brick by Brick Solutions for a thriving community.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to leading support from AES Ohio Foundation, Greater Cincinnati Foundation and George and Margaret McLane Foundation, with additional support from Laurie F. Johnston,  Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation, The Robert & Adelle Schiff Family Foundation, and more. Thank you.

Emiko Moore:

Hello, and welcome to Brick by Brick, where we're highlighting solutions for a thriving community in southwest Ohio. I'm Emiko Moore, and as part of this special bonus episode, I want to take you back to this extended conversation we had with Timothy Forbes last year and a brief update of his projects as the CEO of G.F. Bailey, a real estate development and construction firm in Dayton. Forbess partnered with the United Church Homes out of Marion, Ohio. They're converting the historic Longfellow School building in North Central Dayton into a much needed mixed unit residential community. Let's hear about this exciting four acre project in the Grafton Hill neighborhood.

Tim Forbess:

So Longfellow actually is unique in a lot of ways, one in which it was in my neighborhood and I lived off of Salem Avenue for over 30 years. I had the chance to drive by the school through many of its iterations and much of its life, and in some ways it was an anchor for the neighborhood. When the school system began revamping and doing its work to serve the student population yet better, they did a number of new construction projects, which left vacant a number of school buildings. One of the ones that was left vacant is the Longfellow Project. Longfellow Building is actually seven buildings connected. It originally built in a beautiful Victorian era in 1881, and then added on to electricity came into the neighborhood in 1910. Then in looking at the building, you can see where kindergarten was added when that became a commonplace part of the education system. After that, they added a Montessori wing. The city in 1926 added a gymnasium and a theater that could be used by the whole community, and so Longfellow had long been an anchor for over a century to this neighborhood.

Emiko Moore:

The Neighborhood Association contacted Forbess to see if he could help preserve Longfellow and bring back more market rate housing. He was hesitant at first.

Tim Forbess:

Oh, I tried to think about how to say no in 10 different ways because I knew that it was going to be an ominous piece of work. But at the same time, after I walked the building, I just couldn't fathom that this gorgeous, gorgeous piece of architecture was going to be destroyed. And from a environmental standpoint, I didn't want to see this complex filling up the Dayton landfills and in adaptive reuse, there are assets. The assets for us was the building had a roof, which is not always a given in this business. The electricity was on the building was in very good shape for what we oftentimes see in adaptive reuse, and it had the right landmass that was also there. Then we began looking at something else, which was how do we think about the services that the neighborhood needs? And so we looked at the reality that 60% of the Montgomery County subsidized seniors live within walking distance to Longfellow, but there's not a pharmacy that serves that neighborhood easily.

And so we've thought, well, if we have a lot of people that do not have transportation, how do they get their medications? Then we began thinking about how to provide very simple services, like where does someone get their hair cut? Where does someone go to for services that could be readily available there that are not readily available in the community? So we began thinking through how this complex could provide an outfacing type of service to the community so that it could also be a residential living center that could bring some really interesting people in that we believe will be very natural assets to the neighborhood.

Emiko Moore:

Many notable figures in the past have lived in this area.

Tim Forbess:

Governor Cox, who founded Cox Media, his house was directly across the street. Charles Kettering's home was at 28 Lexington, which is just around the corner. The Wright brothers had a brother that lived in the neighborhood right behind the school, Lauren Wright, and so the Wright Brothers would've been there. Colonel Deed's house is right behind us. And so we have a lot of the really historic families that lived right in that area. And of all things, and I'm going to use a name that only people in my generation and beyond will remember, but Jonathan Winters, who was the mentor for Robin Williams, this was his neighborhood, and he got his first job on the block right next to Longfellow because he had lost his watch. And so he did a standup routine and the first place winner got a new watch, and so he got his watch replaced, and that was his first routine and also that lost his career.

And also Longfellow is the first stage where Rob Lowe ever performed when he was in kindergarten, first grade. And so it incited his love for theater. So we see the people at Longfellow, the future people living there, or school teachers and people that have a lot of community activity in their background. We think the people that work in our government centers and people that have lived very honorable and good lives but may not have the type of net worth that they could easily live in the high cost of some suburban retirement communities, that this urban center could provide a better price point for persons in retirement, while also providing a human resource for people that live in the neighborhood. It'll have roughly 80 units and that space, and then the original building will hold about 45 units that we will put on the second and third floors or some of those spaces.

So it gives us a total. Right now, the number we're anticipating is about 126 units. These are at the lower end of market rate, but they'll still be in the market rate category. That was in agreement, by the way, with the neighborhood. The neighborhood felt like it was getting out of balance with the amount of subsidized housing that was there, and they wanted to balance that economic disparity by having some market rate that would come in and be a part of it. And so we're working at the will of the neighborhood by being able to make sure that we provide a market rate bookend to the subsidized bookend that's already there.

Emiko Moore:

And by partnering with United Church Homes, they further define their market.

Tim Forbess:

And so this becomes a market rate community that's intentionally welcoming, not exclusive, but intentionally welcoming of L-G-B-T-Q-I-A individuals. With that as a niche focus, it makes it more strategic in how marketing can be done and where we believe that there is a strong market where there's a strong need.

Emiko Moore:

Forbess discusses the vision of the neighborhood.

Tim Forbess:

So the way we are doing Longfellow is we're preserving the historic space and the historic school will provide the spaces for the heartbeat of the overall community. So the Art Deco Theater is fully in place and is beautiful, and that will be involved into a, we do have a theater partner for that, and they will be doing live performances. They will be doing work for children. They will be hosting a number of community activities that will happen in in the theater. The gymnasium is in perfect shape, and we see that as being a place that can really bring about more physical activities. We also see that spaces being the community services side where there would be a physician's office where there would be a pharmacy, where there would be a place to get your hair cut. There is a dog spa that's going to be included in that historic space. There is an art studio where people can come and do arts that's identified in that area. There will also be some social service provisions that'll be made and provided for that the whole community can access, but it's a part of the community. And then we are adding a four story new build on some of the space where we took down some existing property that will have underground parking.

Emiko Moore:

I hope you're enjoying this conversation with Timothy Forbess. There's more still ahead following this short break. This is Brick by brick.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to the generous support of so many, including Diane and Dave Moccia, P & G, The Camden Foundation,  The Stephen H. Wilder Foundation, Rosmary & Mark Schlachter, a donation in memory of Frank and Margaret Linhardt, The A. T. Folger Jr. Lowe Simpson Fund and more. Thank you. We couldn't do this work without you.

Mark Lammers:

Without you. Hey, we all have a different story even if we grew up in the same neighborhood or city, especially if we're talking about housing stories. Hi, my name is Mark Lammers, executive producer for Brick by Brick. Growing up, I lived on the west side of Cincinnati in a single family home, but I've also experienced apartment life in good and bad settings in a number of different cities. I learned a lot from those times in my life and from my journey as a whole. Now, we want to hear your housing story. That's the new audience question that's live on our show pages at thinktv.org and cetconnect.org. Log in and hit the green button to share your journey and what you learn from it. We hope to share some of your experiences and lessons as we move forward on Brick by Brick, so we can all get smarter together. Thanks.

Emiko Moore:

Welcome back to Brick by Brick. I'm Emiko Moore. Let's get back into our conversation with Timothy Forbis, CEO of the G.F. Bailey Company. While preserving a historical anchor greatly benefits the community, it also brings other issues to factor in.

Tim Forbess:

The cost of doing the historic renovation is significantly higher than doing new construction, which is why we lose a lot of the fabric within communities, which is why adaptive reuse can really be challenging because if you're repurposing a school into a place to live, there's a lot about the school that you would never put into a, if you were just doing new construction for a new residential facility, for example, we would never build a theater that seats 500 people. We would never build a gymnasium.

Emiko Moore:

Even shifting utilities can add unexpected challenges and costs.

Tim Forbess:

I never realized how many different companies used one telephone pole. So the cable company uses it. A lot of security companies use, I mean, one of my learnings in this was how much money a single telephone pole must make. And so when we have to move a telephone pole and we have to move multiples of these, then we have to work with six to seven different entities so that we can transition a telephone pole from point A literally by a hundred feet in order for it to be out of the way of construction. But it is those type things that I would never have thought of when I was first starting this. And now I have immense respect for the city and others that have to do this on a daily basis. When we renovate Longfellow, it is 60,000 square feet. It will take 18 months minimum because there's so much surgical type work that has to happen in putting back in some of the historic features inside and outside the building.

So that's an 18 month and really expensive project for less money. We can build a four story building that has 80 units in 12 months. Doesn't take nearly as long. We have blank land, and the building goes up very quickly. In order to do that without the historic tax credits to offset the overriding much higher expense for retaining an asset and a historic asset and doing something, creating another use for it, the numbers would never ever come out. So what the tax credits do is they make possible the renovation and the pulling back into utilization. A vacant historic building allow it to be repurposed. And so for this project, the historic tax credits provided us with about $7 million total that we can use for the renovation. Now, the city of Dayton came forward with some ARPA funding as well, and they added 1000001.5 million to the historic tax credits for this same project. And with the tax credits and with the City of Dayton's contribution and with Montgomery County's contribution of 1 million, and with car source's contribution of a million, then we can start to see how it's possible to do the more expensive renovation and preserve the building than would be possible otherwise.

Emiko Moore:

While historic tax credits make this 52 to 54 million project feasible, they come with restrictions.

Tim Forbess:

The state historic tax credits mean that the building has to look, as I said, as it did the day it was built. Parts of the building were built in a modern era where there were very few windows, and for living space, we would like to have more windows, but we're not allowed to do that because of the tax credit. So we're looking at things like skylights, which we can do not visible from the street, but still honor the look of the property

Emiko Moore:

And yet remain modern and affordable to the residence.

Tim Forbess:

There will be multiple size units in there, so we believe that this will be less expensive than what you typically find in retirement communities, but then there also will be some larger units as well. And so there's a variation from one bedroom to three bedroom from all on one floor to the three bedrooms. There are a two floor townhouse type unit from essentially 800 square feet to 2000 square feet.

Emiko Moore:

Ultimately for Forbess, finding the right balance of saving an asset while negotiating the liabilities was key to its undertaking.

Tim Forbess:

You don't realize that initially. It's something that comes as you do your planning and as you start taking down ceilings and moving walls and all these pieces and discovering basement drains that haven't worked in years and old systems that are still there that are no longer usable. So there is a higher, if I had been a lot more risk averse, I'm somewhat risk averse. If I'd been a lot more risk averse, I don't think I could have done Longfellow, but it just made so much sense. I am going to say this, and maybe this will be helpful to someone who's thinking about doing adaptive reuse. I did a model when I was working on Longfellow, and it's something that I'd picked up in my academic work, which was predictive modeling. And so I put together a score sheet for predictive modeling, and I put that score sheet together based on a lot of other projects that had been done successfully.

And then I took that same predictive modeling score sheet and did Longfellow and Longfellow overwhelmingly scored positive. And when I looked at it statistically from a predictive modeling standpoint, then I knew it would succeed. And so my risk level went down, and that gave me the comfort to then be able to continue to go forward and to advocate and to believe in the project. And so I do find that when I am doing other projects now, obviously, and where we are taking historic properties, but I do that little predictive modeling piece every time to see if it does make sense. And if it doesn't, then I think, well, what would we have to do to make it make sense? Or do you have to walk away and sometimes we have to walk away?

Emiko Moore:

Fortunately, Forbis believes in the Longfellow project and continues to walk straightforward into it.

Tim Forbess:

Adaptive reuse is really, I love it, and I love it because especially if you are helping to perpetuate an icon, something that's been important to a neighborhood or a community for a long time, it's a marvelous piece. And it does require thinking through how this historic fabric really is an identity and a touchpoint for communities and for people. And so the thing that I would say about adaptive reuse is that it does give you a footprint, and that's what I loved about Longfellow. It gave me a building that we could never rebuild. We don't build beautiful, gorgeous historic properties anymore.

Emiko Moore:

The G.F. Bailey Company is planning to break ground this winter after some asbestos mitigation. Forbess is also working on another apartment building behind the Longfellow, a 6,000 square foot property, which will add even more housing to the neighborhood. And in the Wolf Creek neighborhood of Dayton, Forbis is completing another house with an accessory dwelling unit or a DU that is insulated with hemp. So we'll be sure to continue to follow his projects. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Remember, if you're interested in digging deeper into our conversation with Timothy Forbess and want to learn more about Brick by Brick in general, there are plenty of web articles and videos. Go to CT connect.org and think tv.org and we'd like to hear your housing story. Click on one of the big green buttons to share your feedback. We have season number two coming up on September 3rd. That's our show. If you like what you hear, please rate and review our podcast. It helps make it easier to find. We hope you learned something, and if you did, please share it with your friends and family. For Anne Thompson and Hearns Legger Jr. I'm Emiko Moore. We'll be back soon with more solutions. Take care.

Ann Thompson:

Our show is produced, hosted an edited by me, Ann Thompson with reporting and story editing from Hernz Laguerre Jr. and Emiko Moore. Our Executive producer of Mark Lammers. Our show consultant is Gloria Skurski. Audio sweetening provided by Mike Schwartz. Zach Kramer runs the lights and cameras. Derrick Smith is our production specialist and Jason Garrison is our production manager. Kellie May heads up our marketing and promotions, along with Mike Shea and Bridgett Dillenburger. Elyssa Stefenson handles the website and Steve Wright is our designer. Bill Dean and Andres Kruza are the engineers for the show and our Chief Content Officer is Colin Scianamblo. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community is a production of CET and ThinkTV, Southwest Ohio PBS member stations.