CommonBond wraps up record-setting year.

Byline: William Morris

CommonBond Communities has never has been as busy as it has in 2019. At least, they think so.

"Not all the records are great, and we've been around almost 50 years," President and CEO Deidre Schmidt said.

Whatever the gaps in previous records, it would be difficult for the CommonBond of previous decades to top 2019. The St. Paul nonprofit developer has closed 11 deals this year in Minnesota and Wisconsin, a mix of new development and affordable housing preservation, with a 12th expected in December. All told, CommonBond is adding 843 units to its portfolio this year, Schmidt said in an interview.

"This is an extremely high level of production for this organization," she said.

Those deals, totaling more than $161 million, range from northeast Minneapolis to the suburbs to rural Minnesota to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said Cecile Bedor, CommonBond's executive vice president of real estate.

Among the largest are the 136-unit Wilder Square apartments in St. Paul, acquired for $9.8 million in March, and Gateway Northeast, a 128-unit complex under development at the corner of Marshall Street Northeast and Lowry Avenue Northeast in Minneapolis with a closing date set in December. On Wednesday, CommonBond closed on Dublin Heights, a 45-unit project recently completed in Mankato.

"As we have matured as an organization, we've gotten really strategic In terms of understanding the priorities of our funders that mirror our mission, and we have been really strategic on the funding applications that we've put in, the properties that we acquired," Bedor said.

CommonBond's packed 2019 is a payoff for groundwork laid over several years, Schmidt said, including strengthened partnerships with funders and for-profit developers and a concerted effort to diversify the markets in which it seeks to develop. The organization is also seeking greater administrative efficiencies, and has reduced its indirect cost rate by 50% in the past several years as it expands.

"It's those kind of business efficiencies that a lot of folks assume that because we're a nonprofit, we don't care about, but actually it's really essential to how we run this business that happens to exist for a social purpose," she said.

Those efficiencies are critical in affordable housing, an industry often hemmed in by regulations and labor-intensive processes that limit how fast and how far a developer can grow, said Anne Mavity, executive director of the Minnesota Housing...

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