On this episode of The Boulos Beat, our guest host Caitlin Burke is excited to connect with Ben Kelley, principal of Kelley Family Properties. The family-owned real estate development and investment company has properties throughout New Hampshire and specializes in value-add re-development in commercial and multi-family properties. Ben and Caitlin sit down to discuss Ben’s life-long career journey, including how his internship with Brady Sullivan Properties, one of the largest commercial and residential real estate companies in New Hampshire, evolved into his estate entrepreneurship today. They also dive into the properties Kelley Family Properties and The Boulos Company have leased together, the projects Ben is most proud of, and why he and his team decided to do business in New Hampshire.
On this episode of The Boulos Beat, our guest host Caitlin Burke is excited to connect with Ben Kelley, principal of Kelley Family Properties. The family-owned real estate development and investment company has properties throughout New Hampshire and specializes in value-add re-development in commercial and multi-family properties.
Ben and Caitlin sit down to discuss Ben’s life-long career journey, including how his internship with Brady Sullivan Properties, one of the largest commercial and residential real estate companies in New Hampshire, evolved into his estate entrepreneurship today. They also dive into the properties Kelley Family Properties and The Boulos Company have leased together, the projects Ben is most proud of, and why he and his team decided to do business in New Hampshire.
Caitlin Burke00:01
I'd like to welcome our listeners to the Boulos beat Podcast. I'm Caitlin Burke guest hosting for Greg Boulos. The Boulos company is northern New England's largest commercial real estate services firm with offices in Portland, Maine as well as Manchester and Portsmouth New Hampshire. We've been selling and leasing real estate in Maine and New Hampshire since 1975 This podcast is designed to provide insight into Maine and New Hampshire's leaders, business movers and shakers. Speaking of business leaders, I'd like to welcome Ben Kelly to the Boulos beat. Ben is from Deerfield. New Hampshire is a UNH graduate and spent the first 12 years of his career working for Brady Sullivan properties, one of the largest commercial and residential real estate companies in New Hampshire. In 2013 Ben began building his portfolio in earnest, forming the roots of what is now Kelly family properties, which currently owns approximately 300,000 square feet of commercial real estate and approximately 250 apartments in New Hampshire. Ben and his wife split their time between New Hampshire and Charleston, South Carolina. They have two dogs and are very active in the arts community, specifically the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, where Ben has been a trustee Since 2015 and his wife, Karina, volunteers as a docent for the Frank Lloyd Wright houses. Welcome. Ben, okay, let's start at the beginning. So Ben, what did you want to be when you grow up? And how did you start working at Brady Sullivan, yes, so I always had an entrepreneurial spirit as a kid.
Benjamin Kelley01:38
You know, knew I wanted to work for myself when I was in high school, I started up a wholesale eBay business where, you know, as eBay was coming out, I saw an opportunity to resell things, and so I'd go around to flea markets and yard sales. Bought a lot of like, wholesale pallets from Kmart and Walmart would break those down and, you know, sell stuff in that avenue through eBay and other outlets. And kind of got the bug for buying stuff and figuring out how to drive value and sell it for more money. So I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but definitely knew, you know, real estate was an interesting option. My dad was a builder and real estate investor, owned some apartments, and so kind of got a glimpse into it, the business through that, you know, just from my father's perspective. And when I was in college, I did an internship at Merrill Lynch my sophomore to junior year, and found it interesting, but it wasn't quite tangible enough for me. I didn't like the you know, you couldn't go look and touch and feel and really see what was driving the value. And so as I wrapped up that internship, I turned 21 and Deborah Douglas, who was one of the advisors I worked for, she took me out for my 21st birthday, and when we were there, out at the bar, Arthur Sullivan happened to be there. Oh, wow. And Deborah and Arthur were good friends, and Arthur jokingly said, Oh, do you want to come work for me next? And I said, Sure. And I called, you know, I think very first thing the next morning, and he offered me an internship. I think it was six bucks an hour. Wow, while I was still going to school and I went to UNH Manchester, so a lot of the classes were at nighttime, and I'd worked for them during the day, and pretty quickly, you know, it was more than just an internship, and even though I hadn't graduated yet, you know, they made me a full time position under the you know, they would not let me not graduate. So that was the one thing they said, If you quit, if you quit school, we're going to fire you. So worked at Brady Sullivan during the day, and, you know, mostly did UNH Manchester at night. And I graduated in 2008 and already had two years under my belt with with those guys. Wow, that's pretty cool.
Caitlin Burke04:07
So that sort of leads us into our next question. Your first job at Brady Sullivan was this internship? How did that evolve over your time there?
Benjamin Kelley04:14
Yeah, when I started out, it was they brought me on to basically canvas and cold call. And I'm not a natural sales guy. I did not enjoy it, but I kind of got a hang for it, and I stuck through, stuck with it. And, you know, the company at the time was in a major growth phase, going into 2007 you know, they were doing a lot of condo conversions. It was just a fun place to be. There were deal junkies, you know, always looking at opportunities, and it was just a fun environment. And so I stuck through, and you know, that internship again, turned into a full time position where I ended up getting my sales license and then my broker's license, and was an in house commercial broker. And just a really fun, fun time and fun place to be at. Um, and, you know, because of the the nature of the company, it wasn't just brokerage, you know, I was doing a little bit of property management. We were very involved in the project management side for tenant fit ups. And it overlapped into Asset Management as we, you know, go into the disposition phase with certain certain assets. And definitely worked a little bit on the due diligence side on the acquisition piece too. So it was really a little bit of everything, exactly, yeah, it was definitely got a sense for different components of the industry. And you know, those guys were multifamily, retail, office, industrial. So that ties into what I do today, which is not a limited focus in any one asset class, and I attribute a lot of that to my roots with those guys. That's great.
Caitlin Burke05:48
So being on the brokerage side and getting your start there, how does that help you now as a landlord?
Benjamin Kelley05:54
Yeah, I think it definitely informs a lot of of what we do and the asset management piece, and knowing you know how your leases are structured and how that's driving or affecting or maybe bogging down your loi, and how that is going to limit or again affect your value. And also just understanding you know what the broker experience is and how it can you know they communicate with tenants. We always used to say time kills deals. And so it's very true on the tenant side. It's true on the buy and the sell side, but just kind of understanding the nuance of what those communications look like behind the scene, understanding landlord tenant fit up a lot of tenants, you know, it's not what they do every day. And so having that experience of having to kind of hold a tenant's hand through the process. Yeah, I think gives you, you know better understanding of how to relate to tenants, and same on the renewals, too. I think just a lot of you know, we do this every day, but yeah, you're it kind of helps to humanize you a little bit when you have dealt with with both sides and just, you know, the more you can educate yourself in different facets of the industry, the better. And definitely, you know, I consider it a valuable resource. I spent that much time, yeah, doing it before getting into investing and developing.
Caitlin Burke07:12
I would say you have very realistic expectations of getting a deal done, which isn't always the case for someone in your position that makes you really easy to work with.
Benjamin Kelley07:22
Thank you. Yeah, I try to, you know, we always say, say yes as often as you can, as you know, a landlord, much as you can make it work, yes, you know, when we're buying, when we're selling, try and say yes. And because having you know, you can get tripped up over little things, and we try to say yes as much as we can to make it easy and to not allow time to kill deals.
Caitlin Burke07:44
Yeah, cool. So at what point did you think to yourself, in those early years that you want to do this on your own, and how did you know you were ready to take that risk?
Benjamin Kelley07:55
I mean, pretty much the day I started, I knew I was going to work for myself at some point I started.
Caitlin Burke08:03
So is that always in the back of your mind?
Benjamin Kelley08:05
Yes, absolutely. And I knew it was a phenomenal opportunity. You know, my father, who knew those guys to the industry, he was always like, stay there as long as you can, and you'll get to a point where, you know, it just doesn't make sense anymore. But I knew being in New Hampshire. Not a ton of, you know, especially at that time, you know, they were by far the most prolific, and I think still are, you know, developers in the area. And so it was just, again, a great opportunity. But I always knew I was going to, you know, try and scale up my own portfolio. And I started buying on my own in 2006 I bought a, you know, my first piece of real estate certainly was not a company, but I had the appetite for the, you know, getting invest my, my first investments in and taking on that risk, so, a different extent. But I know what was that building. It was a condo that I bought at 55 River Road bank owned condo, I think 328 square feet. I think I bought it for like $36,000 and I ended up selling it on Craigslist, of all places, like nine months later, and then back to your eBay room. Yes, exactly. I couldn't let it go.
Caitlin Burke09:23
All right. So another thing that I was just thinking as you were saying that sounds like you've mentioned your dad a few times. Did you have a mentor in this process that kind of helped you make that jump?
Benjamin Kelley09:35
Yeah. So certainly, my father definitely consider a mentor. You know, again, he was kind of in a different area in the industry, and was always open to me learning from him. I kind of got the sense I wanted to, I got a taste of it, and then I wanted to learn more about the commercial piece of it. And so that foundation that he gave me was great for kind of exploring and then working under Shane and Arthur. At Brady Sullivan, definitely consider them both friends and mentors. And as I've grown in, you know, we get the company going over the last few years. You know, Steve Dupree is a good friend of mine through the courier museum, but also a developer in Concord. So yeah, I, you know, been very lucky living in a smaller state to have access to, you know, yeah, be
Caitlin Burke10:23
able to reach out to these people, absolutely. So what was you, I guess you answered this. Your first acquisition of Kelly family properties was that small condo. But what do you consider like the first, you know, big deal, one that set you on that path for good,
Benjamin Kelley10:38
yeah. And so everything we do, we do off our own balance sheet. So we've never taken any outside investment or capital. So we've always, you know, lived and died by our 1031 exchanges buy something. You know, we'll inject capital when we can. But for the most part, it's buy, sell, parlay that hopefully it grows into something bigger and so kind of definitely back in 2006 I wasn't thinking about trying to build a company or anything. I kind of view the first Kelly family properties acquisition as a six unit in a like 4000 square foot commercial building we bought in Concord back in 2013 but even back then, I wasn't like, Oh yeah, I'm gonna go off on my own now. But that deal did kind of parlay and definitely transformed into a lot of other you know, just we acquired it in 2013 sold it in 2015 did a 1031 and that fractured, I think, into three other deals which really set up our kind of capital growth out of those 1030 ones for for the foundation. But back then again, we're not thinking of, you know, how to brand this as a company, how to build a company or make this even full time for you? Yeah, exactly. It was just, you know, those were the building blocks. And now, looking back, I kind of view it as such, but not at the time. Got it.
Caitlin Burke12:03
Do you have any core beliefs in how you run your business? What do you think sets you apart from other developers and landlords in New Hampshire?
Benjamin Kelley12:10
Yes. So again, as a company, we're still pretty new. We have a handful of employees, but for a long time, it was myself, my wife, my dad was, you know, provide mentorship, but we were pretty nimble. And so core beliefs on the deal side and investment strategy side certainly, you know, we always say you have to buy it, right? You make money on the buy. And so just holding true to that, there are times when, you know, there are shiny objects, and you get distracted and, oh, I'd like to own that. But I think we stray from, it's easy to kind of stray from the deal fundamentals, and get caught up and so trying to, you know, just remind ourselves that you do make money on the buy and the numbers have to work. So we have all these little adages like that, you know, say yes, as often as you can. And then when it comes to the kind of the business, the company side of the business with employees, you know, we really value and respect the family component. And so our first, you know, big hire was someone I've known since sixth grade, and he happens to actually be the brother of my brother in law. Okay, it's kind of this funny thing, but we went to high school together. Consider him family. And so just thinking about quality of life, we obviously love, love working and what we do, but it's not everything, sure. And so and
Caitlin Burke13:34
motivate. Motivating, you know, being motivated by the loving and liking the people you work
Benjamin Kelley13:39
with too, yep, and I think seeking their opinions too, if you hired someone, it's because, you know, hopefully you trust and respect them and say, What do you think about this? You know, asking those kinds of questions, not just, you know, kind of going about it and giving orders. We're always open to, yeah, what they think and how we should approach it. Well,
Caitlin Burke13:58
that's evident from my perspective, as a broker that works with you, even just your property management team, you guys have a great rapport. They obviously really prioritize your stuff, so that's cool. Thank you. The first property I worked with you on in my partner, Kent white, was the sale of three Pleasant Street in downtown Portsmouth, which is a pretty big one. Give us a history of that, and what made you decide to sell? Yes,
Benjamin Kelley14:25
so that was a funny deal, because it was a net leased asset. It had a long term lease in place, not something that we typically would go after. We're pretty opportunistic value add buyers, and I think it came across my desk at like a five and a half cap, but I knew what the the location was and and
Caitlin Burke14:47
we should probably back up and give some context. So it's right in the center Market Square downtown Portsmouth. And then there was a huge parking lot behind it, which is now a. A full scale development, but at the time, was just, I don't know how many parking spaces there were, if you remember, but yeah,
Benjamin Kelley15:05
it was roughly point seven acres parking space count. I don't recall, but yeah, it was about 18,000 square foot building with like a two thirds of an acre lot, which I think at the time it was, you know, the last kind of undeveloped major close to the center of town, yeah. And so, yeah, I took one look at it, and it was an out of state broker who had it, and I, I knew that long term lease with Bank of America was in place, but I just, you know, got it under contract as quickly as we could, and then I kind of, you know, dove into checking the FDIC deposit rates. You could kind of tell it was a languishing bank branch. It didn't fit. Didn't make sense anymore for bank models,
Caitlin Burke15:46
they upper floors were like moth I remember, yeah, it was three and
Benjamin Kelley15:50
a half stories. They were just using the ground floor retail, and so I had a pretty good hunch that I could negotiate my way through getting them out of there either early or not re upping on one of their termination or renewal options. And so, you know, it's a deal that didn't cash flow for us. I had to convince the bank to, you know, even fund it, because we weren't meeting debt service coverage ratio with it in place. And had to, you know, fund it each month. But we acquired that from the one of the 1030 ones that we had picked up out of that 2013 sale I mentioned. And so it was kind of letting the clock tick by. And we had, you know, some early negotiations. I probably came out the gates a little too hot, and they probably with Bank of America, yes, okay, trying to get them out of there. Because, you know, we picked it up for roughly $100 a foot, plus the lot, and I knew it was probably worth four or five times that, if you could free up the real estate insurance.
Caitlin Burke16:49
I mean, just the bones of that building, the bank had it all, like, covered up, and you go in there. Now, there's a restaurant on the first floor that they've restored all the windows. It's really one of the most beautiful buildings in town. Yep, it
Benjamin Kelley17:04
really is, and just underutilized. And, yeah, the opportunities, even just for repositioning the existing asset, you know, was huge. And so it took about two years, and I still, you know, I remember getting the email from the corporate real estate folks that they weren't going to be renewing. And I grabbed a bottle of champagne, and, you know, we celebrated.
Caitlin Burke17:30
My hunch was, right, yes, yeah, it paid off. You know,
Benjamin Kelley17:33
we thought it might have to go another five years, but that just was a lot, you know, really allowed us to get into, you know, go a different number of different ways. At first, I really did want to try and redevelop the site ourselves. I was still full time at Brady Sullivan that was, I think, 2016 2016 going into 2017 that we got noticed because there was some time that had to tick by for them to actually vacate. And so, you know, the more I started looking at it, I didn't quite have the balance sheet to be the one to develop the site in the way that, you know, probably made the most sense. And so did decide to bring it out to market. And you know, we had had people soliciting us a number of times over the years, I think a lot of people were disappointed when they didn't acquire it directly, and it kind of snuck through the cracks, but word did get out that, you know, it had traded. And so again, people had reached out a few times. And so the decision to sell was a tough one. I still, you know, keeps me up sometimes at night because I were at a different point in my career. I would have loved to have developed it. And I think it's they did a phenomenal job maximizing the site I had penciled out, you know, I think a 50,000 square foot building, and they put up something, I think, 60% larger. And, yeah, but, you know, those guys that acquired it just had a different balance sheet and the timing work for them, but for us, we did sell it a little over 5x what we paid for it. And so that infusion
Caitlin Burke19:08
return that'll make you fall back asleep, right? Yes, exactly. It
Benjamin Kelley19:12
was a good return. And you know, that was the real Genesis in the catalyst for allowing me to kind of form Kelly family properties, and, you know, go on my own with with a bunch of fresh capital that, you know, has taken us to definitely another level and given us a great foundation. So I love walking by and going into, you know, the market to get a coffee and, yeah, thinking what, what could have been. But it's also fun to still just appreciate you know that we owned it for this chunk of time and it launched us in the company. Yeah,
Caitlin Burke19:46
and you know, be proud that your your risk that you know a lot of people you said you had to convince to be on board with, paid off. Yes, that's a success story. So two of the projects we have most. Recently worked together on are 40 Pleasant Street in Portsmouth, originally Portsmouth's custom house building, another really beautiful building with character downtown, and 66/3 Street in Dover. It was originally a bakery. There's so much history and character in both of these, I'm noticing a theme here in in the properties that you like to acquire. So is that something that you're like, you're looking for? Is that element of character in history?
Benjamin Kelley20:30
Absolutely, you know, really have a strong appreciation for architecture. Stork buildings coming up through the ranks at Brady Sullivan, you know, a lot of mill buildings in the portfolio. I think we had three and a half million square feet. A good chunk of that was, he's
Caitlin Burke20:47
watched a lot of that type of work, yeah, and seeing how people tenants respond
Benjamin Kelley20:51
to it. You know, it's always fun. People love the brick, the beams, the high ceilings. And so 40 Pleasant Street was one that we, actually, I tried acquiring out of the 1031, of three Pleasant Street. And you know, at the time, it was just the numbers didn't really make sense. It was a bit more than what I ended up paying for it four or five years later. But kind of always just had a soft spot for that building. It is gorgeous. The potential is there. And so pick that one up. You know, I talked about shiny objects and kind of getting distracted. That was one of those, for sure, that, you know, it was just such a well located building. The idea of owning it was just, yeah, who wouldn't want to own this building? And there was some upside there, you know, I went into it thinking we would operate it as is for a bit, and then do a, you know, try and see if we couldn't pull off a residential conversion. But, you know, the more we did get into it, it just wasn't as viable. And we had a lot of other opportunities kind of coming and going, and it just, you know, because everything we do off of our own balance sheet, I look hard every day. And, you know, as we kind of go through reevaluations of how is this asset earning and producing for us? And it just, you know, quickly, kind of realized after 18 months that we're just going to be tied up with this if we want to fully maximize the value for a longer period of time, than than what I thought it was worth from an opportunity cost, cost with what we could do with that capital otherwise, and so hard decision to sell that one. We didn't bring it quite as far as I originally thought we would, but still proud of what we did there in terms of adding some value. Did a historic rehab of the lobby the second floor.
Caitlin Burke22:38
That's the other unique thing I think about you. From other landlords I work with, you're really involved in that design element when you're rehabbing these buildings, and that's obviously something you and your wife like to do and have an eye for.
Benjamin Kelley22:54
Yeah, we we do both enjoy it probably more than we should. It's fun to get bogged down, but we both love interior design. We always joke, if it's like a rainy day, rainy Sunday, on the weekend, we'll just kind of rehang all of our artwork, and, you know, redo all of our our furniture. It's like our joke about, you know, rearranging our sock drawer. We need something else to do, but it's kind of our hobby. And, yeah, keeps, keeps us busy. And Karina, my wife, was more involved on the property management side very early on through probably 2018 and then she kind of, she quit on me. We joke, but you know, this is her involvement now, is more on the kind of helping out with design color choices and and we both enjoy working on that together. Yeah, it's a fun, fun piece of it. And, you know, you had asked about 66/3 Street. Yep, that's one that we're still in the midst of. You know, we've brought it pretty far. But really, that building was an old bakery, kind of a mill style building with the brick and the beams, obviously not on the river and a mill in that sense, but the esthetic is there, yeah, and,
Caitlin Burke24:05
and it's about as close to downtown Dover as you'll get with some parking, which makes it unique, too. But it, I mean, it sat on the market for a while. What made you confident you could be the one to take a risk on it?
Benjamin Kelley24:18
Yeah, it's funny. A lot of times the deals we get are off market, and they're not, you know, it's word of mouth. It's because we've solicited someone. Then there's a lot of, a handful of times where we've got these great deals for us that have actually sat on the market and languished and I think with the Third Street, you know, they had the previous owner had gotten approvals to convert to residential, but the leases were all stacked in terms of their lease end dates in a very kind of awkward manner, if they weren't all up at the same time. You know, you take some back on the third floor in 2027 some back on the first floor right away. It just didn't make sense to me to try and pivot to residential. Yeah, it had great bones, and so I think I just saw it through a different lens. I knew what the market was, the proximity to downtown. I thought we could achieve a much higher rent as we turn spaces. It definitely had deferred maintenance. But, you know, I think we underwrote the deal at a healthy lease rate. But what you've been able to, you know, work with us and achieve on, you know, new rates as we've turned spaces over is significantly higher even than, you know, what we had underwritten so very, you know, happy that that one kind of came together, but it just had all the pieces there. And sometimes I think it's easy to overlook what's in front of you,
Caitlin Burke25:40
and the deferred maintenance, I think, probably turned some folks away. I mean, you have the you had the experience to understand what that undertaking was, and even going back to what you mentioned at the beginning of this interview, is making it easy for tenants. That building's the perfect example of that. I don't want to say sophistication of the tenants, but these people are not moving, you know, offices across the country, and understand what that is. It's their one family owned business or small company that moves once or twice in their lifetime, and you've made it really simple for them to get a turnkey, really nice space.
Benjamin Kelley26:15
Yeah, no, I absolutely. And once we've turned a as we turned a couple, people could kind of see, you know, specifically, think of that second floor space that was previously building storage, you know, that gave us a great kind of show piece. And, yeah, it's been a great deal great building for us. And one other thing to touch on with that, you know, Brady Sullivan, I learned, you know, they used to joke. We like buildings big fat and empty. And, you know, again, different balance sheet when you're buying, when you're buying, when you're buying. And, you know, but that also keeps you up at night because you have to carry that, that debt, and, you know, those operating expenses. And so I look for deals that you know have the upside, but also I don't necessarily have to stress and stay up at night thinking about, How long am I going to carry this for? And not that we never look at, you know, vacant buildings. Certainly, we've, we've acquired some, but love deals like this, where you can get in. It's got some cash flow. But the upside is there kind of as a slower process period time. Yeah, and you can also it's a great, you know, value proposition for the existing tenants to keep them because, you know, we did all new roofs, all new mechanicals, all new windows. And so, you know, it's not just going in, putting lipstick on a pig and jacking up the rent. You know, tenants truly appreciate having a cleaner, better space. And so for us, that's really a win win as a kind of a deal archetype,
Caitlin Burke27:42
cool. Most of what you what you have purchased, is a value add opportunity. We talked about 66/3 Street already. So what makes you confident you can handle these projects is just your experience at Brady Sullivan, is there, has there been an example of a deal that you've thought, Oh, wow. I mean, over my head? Yeah.
Benjamin Kelley28:07
So understanding the math, you know, inside and out. And as deal junkies, investors, developers, I do think it's easy to, uh, cheat the numbers a little bit and convince yourself, you know, to buy this certain, you know, certain deal that maybe you should have underwritten and looked at a little more closely. So again, really understanding the numbers. But yes, you know, I think 40 Pleasant Street was one where I just couldn't get over the location and wanting to own more product, you know, downtown Market Square. And you know, certainly wasn't going to get burnt with it, but it's more that opportunity cost that kind of kept gnawing and just chipping away. What else could I do with that capital? This is just it's not languishing, but I have pretty high expectations for what my money's going to do for us in terms of the returns and yeah, but for the most part, I think that confidence just comes from understanding what's out there in the market. Knowledge is everything. So, you know, I read the registry review pretty much every other week. When it comes out from front to, you know, front page to back, I consume as much as I can, not just, you know, within the confines of real estate, but you know, I consider myself a learner, not necessarily a developer, and so try to kind of pick up whatever nuggets and info I can, and I think that really has just kind of started to steamroll And snowball and help us with projects. And certainly the math, though, is a huge component of that.
Caitlin Burke29:44
Yeah, that's the foundation. So What project are you most proud of? It's
Benjamin Kelley29:50
funny, I, I don't know that I have one that stands out because of the way, again, we've grown. It's, it's these kind of parlays. So. One deal splinters into another. So I think I also recognize that I'm still really young in this as in terms of our company and just getting going 2018 2019 I view as, like the actual, you know, I tribal properties back to 2013 but we're really only five years old. And so I think our best, biggest projects are still yet to come.
Caitlin Burke30:26
What's next? More development, more value. Add both.
Benjamin Kelley30:30
Yeah, for a long time, I really didn't even consider myself a developer. I just was an investor. Over the last four or five years, I've started developing more. And so all developers are investors, but not all investors are developers. And so kind of thinking about that, and I tried to not get too hung up on it either, you know, in comparing myself to other companies and how we operate, because at the end of the day, I'm really like a Chief Investment Officer. That's what I enjoy doing, the procurement of deals, putting them together. So, you know, I think I am proud of kind of our portfolio of work and what we've been able to parlay our deals into. But I do see more development for us. We love adaptive reuse projects. We just did a 20,000 square foot retail bank branch that we converted to housing and some retail on the ground floor. When we sold that, that we turned into a 70 unit portfolio in the Concord area. So we're in the middle of that right now. And then I have a and that's, it's actually a church building. It's kind of the rectory Sunday school, and, you know, the main sanctuary space that we're converting to 30 apartments in Concord right now. Oh, wow. We just finished up demo last week. And so, yeah, those kinds of projects rehabbing the actual church building, yes. So we are adding a floor to the sanctuary, okay? And the Sunday school and the kind of administrative office spaces, you know, we just gutted and, you know, we're, we're starting fresh, but the the sanctuary space we've will end up being three floors within, oh, cool. And I'd have a partner on that, John Chorlian, who's based in Concord. He's developed two of these other churches around the state. I i looked at the deal on my own, and I passed John, and I happened to be friends, and you know, I think he knew I was looking at it, but, you know, wasn't my cup of tea. And when he brought it to me and said, What if we would, you know, worked on this together, that was much more appealing because technical nature, you know, of building within a church and adding floors are just much more appealing with someone who's been through it, gone down that road so but yeah, we have a lot on the horizon. We still kind of look at core value, add stuff. I do think, though, we'll do more, more and more development, some out of the ground in the years to come, but mostly in New Hampshire. Yes, although we have one, one deal we're closing on in a couple of weeks up in York Maine, but we really like we we have stuff from Keen to Portsmouth and so kind of that east to west corridor. We have some stuff in Nashua, some stuff in Manchester. We try to stay kind of a 45-50 minute radius, from a management standpoint. Yes, management, you know, we don't do everything in house for management, but you know, you can only have so many successful strategic partnerships, and it gets to a point where it's just too tough to manage, and so we are cognizant of our growth and not getting ahead of ourselves.
Caitlin Burke33:39
Okay, what do you love about New Hampshire? What makes it a good or bad state to do business in?
Benjamin Kelley33:44
Yeah, so growing up in New Hampshire, I think, you know, I'm nostalgic for the state natural beauty that it has, the woods, proximity to the mountains and the ocean. From a business standpoint, I think it's great place to do business. I touched on this earlier. If you want to be involved, whether it's business, the arts, nonprofits, politics, it's such a small state of you know, I think million and a half people, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get connected to the right people. And I've been very fortunate of you know, being able to find and work with mentors and people that have taken me under their wing. So I attribute a lot of that to to living in New Hampshire. And obviously there are tax advantages from from living in New Hampshire. And I think it's a great place to do business cool.
Caitlin Burke34:39
So shifting a little bit to, you know, more of your personal life and other things that you like to do outside of real estate. Tell us about your involvement in the New Hampshire arts community and why it's important to you.
Benjamin Kelley34:50
Yes. So, you know, I think the arts, culture, the humanities, is kind of everything in life, and we. Don't always have the most opportunities in New Hampshire, just given the geographic and the way the state is laid out. We don't just have the arts and culture necessarily at our doorstep every day. You have to work all over the state, right? Yes, you know, Portsmouth certainly does. Manchester, Concord, but so I think kind of holding on to what we do have and making it more accessible for everyone. Yeah, the arts have just always been meaningful. I was not a great student in my high school and college years, but I always had an appreciation for my art classes and art teachers, and so I think once I got to a place where I could give back and being involved, whether it was time or treasure or both, you know, the supporting the arts was always just a no brainer, personally for me. And then my wife has an art history degree, and so when we met, you know, it just kind of all clicked, yeah, took off more from there, and she, she had an art gallery for a while, brick and mortar in Manchester, she still has the gallery, but they do more pop up kind of site specific events. And so through that, we've done a lot with the New Hampshire potters guilds and some different contemporary dance nonprofits in New Hampshire. And, you know, we support the arts, really, throughout New England whenever we can, whether it's in the Berkshires, Portland, Museum of Art has a great museum. And then, of course, the courier is just, you know, we think it's a phenomenal Museum, great collection. It really, you know, it's known, but it's not, I think, as known as it should be, its collection really punches above its weight. And you know, we do have two Frank Lloyd Wright houses at the museum, which is just a cool, cool fact, but the only museum in the country that owns multiple Frank Lloyd Wright houses. So yeah, as a museum, I think we're looking at right now how to kind of leverage those and market them to make that more well known. Yeah, because people travel from all across the world in the country to visit those houses and so lots of fun things happening at the museum, and just very proud and happy to be, you know, involved at the level I have been for the last nine years. Wow.
Caitlin Burke37:14
Yeah. And in full circle, moment, the last lease deal we worked together was with a new startup pottery studio at 66/3 Street, so that's fun.
Benjamin Kelley37:24
Yeah, they are. We're wrapping that up hopefully in the next few weeks. And yeah, I think that will be a great addition to Dover and the arts community
Caitlin Burke37:32
Cool. Well, Ben, thank you for being our guest today on the Boulos beat, a Boulos company podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. Yes, thank you for having me. Where can people learn more about you and Kelly family properties?
Benjamin Kelley37:46
Yes, so we are at Kelly, K, E, L, L, E, y, familyproperties.com,
Caitlin Burke37:53
great. And if you'd like to learn more about the Boulos company, please be sure to visit us@boulos.com you can also find us at the Boulos company on Facebook and LinkedIn and at the Boulos CO on Instagram and Twitter.