Six years ago, the city of Minneapolis was looking to select a developer for what is now the Heritage Park development in north Minneapolis, off Highway 55. They wanted to replace the rundown public housing with new affordable housing. I was introduced to Richard Baron, a St. Louis–based developer, with the idea being that it might work for us to submit a joint proposal. In coming together, we found that we had very similar values and beliefs, and we felt pretty good about forming a partnership.
Since then, Richard has had a very memorable impact on how I have grown Legacy Management and how I function personally as a CEO. In particular, he’s had a great influence on how I approach our housing development business in terms of looking at community building—not just developing apartments and housing, but leveraging them as a means to bring about total community development and community well-being. Beyond building the housing, you work to improve the schools, libraries, and community support systems, as well as hiring people of color and women as contractors and subcontractors. Building affordable housing includes all of those pieces. Working with Richard has helped me develop some strong business principles and values and put them to real hands-on use while doing meaningful community work.
