Episode 49: Dave Levine (Whitney Towers)
Meet Dave Levine! He's the General Manager of Whitney Towers, a family-owned apartment building here in Watertown. We talk about the history of the 41-year-old building and how his family started the business, his years in the tech startup and software world and how that translates to operating in real estate and property management, where he thinks Whitney fits in the housing ecosystem in Watertown, and what he thinks most people don't understand about his type of role.
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Find out more about Whitney Towers at whitneywatertown.com
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This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Dave Levine, who is the general manager and the third generation over at Whitney Towers Apartments, which is over on Main Street. So I'll let him introduce himself, then we'll get into the conversation.
Dave: 0:30
Yeah, so I'm Dave Levine. I am the general manager of Whitney Towers. We're family owned and operated, for I'm actually a third generation, so we've been around since the late 70s, early 80s
Matt: 0:44
Cool. Well, let's go back in time to that. Then let's start with a little bit of the Whitney Towers history, of how that came to be and the first generation of that.
Dave: 0:51
Yeah, so my grandfather. Well, let's start where he began, actually, which was World War II. He was a World War II veteran and after fighting for the US, the government would pay for your education, so he wanted to use that and he became an attorney first. Then he started defending kids that were in trouble, because he was also a troublemaker himself. And after that he started realizing that he really wanted to get into this thing called real estate, and so he started developing small two-family homes in Massachusetts.
Dave: 1:26
My grandmother and her side of the family was from the East End in Watertown, and so when he met her, she didn't want to go anywhere else, and this is why he started developing in Watertown. And he ended up with two-family homes and then started making his way towards bigger multifamilies and eventually ended up building what used to be called Whitney Plaza and then eventually Whitney Towers and Whitney on Spring.
Matt: 1:55
And why Whitney?
Dave: 1:56
So there used to be a mansion owned by the Whitney family, the Whitney Estate. He bought that and as part of the business deal, he said that he would name the building in the area after the family. So the Whitney family is a historical family and, yeah, he honored that. And you know, I'd like to find a way to honor him in a lot of ways too. It's been something on my mind is, you know, as I've sort of taken over in the third generation and you know, one thing that I'm considering, and I don't know, we'll see.
Matt: 2:26
Yeah, well, and so do you know the year this the building that we're in was created.
Dave: 2:30
Yeah, this was finally done in 83. So the other ones on the Whitney Plaza, those were developed in the late 60s, early 70s, and then this one was 83. And then there's Whitney on Spring, 31 Spring Street. That was done in 85, I think. And so we still own and manage those two buildings today.
Matt: 2:49
And then how did your, so where's the second generation getting involved with that then?
Dave: 2:53
Yeah, so my mom took over in 2010 and she did a lot of renovations, mainly like the lobby and some of the gyms and the stairwells. There was this bizarre thing, I guess in order to cut cost building the building, my grandfather didn't install risers. And so you could walk on these stairs and you could see right through them, and it was scary. So one of the first things that she did when she took over was put risers in the hallway stairs, believe it or not. So, yeah, that's pretty much what she did and she's been, you know, managing it until I came.
Matt: 3:29
Yeah, actually, maybe we should take a step back and talk about some of the other little nooks your grandfather put in, because you showed me some of those when we were just walking around like you know, he had his own penthouse suite and garage that he built for himself.
Dave: 3:40
Yeah, you know he wanted to build kind of his own slice of heaven on earth here in Watertown. I guess you could say so. Yeah, he built his own garage here in the building and the penthouse really, really nice space. And I grew up coming to Watertown, spending all of my holidays there. We would do Christmas Eve there, Christmas Day sometimes, Easter. So I've grown up coming to Watertown and just being a part of this town and spending my holidays here. Also, you know I can remember doing sleepovers in the penthouse, you know, just really having a fond childhood with him and my grandmother.
Matt: 4:20
So yeah, so you want to talk about what were some of your other experiences being around this building growing up, like how did you envision this building when you were a kid?
Dave: 4:28
Oh, I mean this building when I was a kid was always like this larger than life place. It was always fun to come to. I've always known all the workers. You know Harold, I've known my whole life and it's great to be working with him now.
Matt: 4:42
And for listeners, who's Harold?
Dave: 4:43
Harold, our head of maintenance.
Matt: 4:45
Yeah, and so you're also telling a story to me too. Like you used to throw paper airplanes off the balcony into the pool, there used to be a big, huge pool in the back where the parking lot was.
Dave: 4:52
Oh, yeah, yeah. So before he sold the five buildings to Hamilton, there used to be a pool. It was a big L-shaped pool and it had a big pool house. And as kids, when we were up in his unit, we would make these paper airplanes and throw them off of the roof. But now the older that I've gotten and as I've taken over, I've bumped into, as I've gotten involved with the community, local residents and they're telling me about how they would pool hop the Whitney pool and everything. It's actually pretty hysterical to hear that. So it's great. I mean until they filled it in and now it's parking, but that's just a fond memory that I have.
Matt: 5:26
Yeah, no one's parking lot hopping anymore.
Dave: 5:29
No, no. They're jumping into concrete now.
Matt: 5:33
Yeah, not as fun. So let's see, you said when I was talking to you before you took over recently so there's a stretch between you growing up around this building, but then you went off and did something else before you came back to the family business here. So what were you doing in that stretch of time?
Dave: 5:46
Yeah, so I used to be involved in tech startups and, in particular, my role was a product manager, so, effectively, I would partner with the executive team and we'd figure out initiatives. You know, are we going to increase revenue, are we going to decrease churn? And figure out how to do that from a product and engineering perspective. That means aligning with engineering, design, product management, other stakeholders within the organization for technology startups. And I did that for about 12 years, and that was really great experience, because you're dealing with lots of different people and you are responsible for a lot, to say the least. So, coming into this and transitioning, it was hard in the sense that I have a small real estate background, but I had never done this before. There was lots of transferable skills. Managing people is difficult. I had picked up some of that. Managing resources, I had picked up some of that. I just had never really done property management, and so, when coming on, I had to quickly learn what that was all about.
Dave: 6:56
As a software person, though, we had no software when the transition happened, so everything was pen and paper. Still, it was very old school, and so one of the first things I did was implement software and put the business online, and then, finally, we could manage all of our leases online. And our bookkeeping we had used QuickBooks for a long time, so we did have that, but everything else was really done, you know, all of our leases were paper for many, many years. And as a software person, I don't know how you would do that, because you can just automate so much and make it so much easier. So I'm really all about efficiency, and the thing that I learned in my previous career is optimization and learning how to effectively communicate and run strong operations, and so I just took all of that knowledge and just applied it.
Matt: 7:43
How much when your mom was running it? How much of that background did you see? Or was it kind of just something they were doing, like how much were you here involved?
Dave: 7:51
Yeah, I didn't have any involvement for my entire life. And my mom, her role has really been sort of the owner since 2010. And she hired one of her cousins, Marianne Pannesi, who was a town councilor and she ran it for roughly about 20 years. And so I joined and then Marianne left and that was sort of the transition.
Matt: 8:13
How do you see yourself in the housing in Watertown as it currently sits? Because I don't know how do you see yourself in that whole ecosystem currently?
Dave: 8:21
Yeah, we see ourselves as a value place. So we're not going to compete with the new construction builds, even though anyone that knows anything about construction will say the newer buildings that have been built in the past 10 to 15 years are not built well. So this is all concrete, solid concrete, so it's built extremely well. As far as where we are in the market, we are and where I want us to be, is, you know, we're a great place to live. We're family owned and operated. We still have that small feel. It's quality build and everything is renovated at what I like to think, a more affordable rate than what others are charging. Now, affordability is something that is subjective and that's what's difficult. If you look at the market, we would be considered more affordable than not. Some people would say our prices are not affordable, and I understand that, and so I guess that's what makes it subjective.
Matt: 9:21
Right. Yeah, it's interesting to hear where you think you fit in that ecosystem, because there is the renting in a two family or something like that in town, and then there's the big, mega new shiny ones with the higher prices.
Dave: 9:35
Yeah, I love getting the reaction when people do the tour and they look at the unit and they look at everything that we have to offer. When they say, what's the catch? That's usually when we know that they understand everything that we're providing and it's an awesome deal. That's my favorite, because I know that then we've done our job, because that's really what we're trying to provide, that value. We're on site every single day. Our maintenance lives in the building. We are extremely responsive. You can come down to talk to us. We're here, we'll chat with you, we will get things for the tenants, we'll throw events for you. So we really try and cater to the community and really go out of our way to make this a comfortable place for people to live. And I think that that's a testament to the team that we have, Harold, our head of maintenance, Alex, our property manager, Christian, our leasing agent, Erica, our cleaning crew, they all do a fantastic job in running this place.
Matt: 10:33
And of course, Pepper.
Dave: 10:35
That's right. Yeah, Pepper, the office dog.
Matt: 10:38
Gives that welcome greeting, right. Yeah, so what is a day to day like for you doing this type of stuff? I know there's one of those questions like there's no day that's exactly the same.
Dave: 10:47
There really is no day that's exactly the same, because some days I'm dealing with attorneys, some days I'm dealing with accountants, tax accountants, bookkeepers, maybe working with Alex and Harold on helping align on something. We could be turning a unit and dealing with some sort of contractor. I could be having a networking event or a meeting, inviting someone up to the cantina to chat about future business. No day is the same. Everything is, it's always different.
Matt: 11:16
Do you have a favorite story of, maybe you were like that was a huge success?
Dave: 11:20
One success story that comes to mind is our southeast side facing facade was completely damaged and had been leaking for years, and Harold had been advocating to get it fixed for a really long time. And, for whatever reason, we just didn't have the money to do it. And this is one of the reasons that we had to increase rent so we could afford to pay for things like this. So we got quotes. The quote was somewhere north of $400,000. And Harold was just like how are we going to do this? I said we're going to start saving, and he had been advocating for this for a long time. So when I joined, it was one of the first things that he told me about, and so we immediately started saving. And you know, eventually we got the money and we fixed it. Harold was just ecstatic, finally finished the project, really happy that we got the job done.
Matt: 12:17
Yeah, cool. So do you want to talk about some of the amenities that people can enjoy in the Whitney Towers?
Dave: 12:22
Yeah, we've got. You know, we're on-site staff. I don't know if that's typically an amenity, but I'd say it's a value add that we have. We have gyms, men's gym, women's gym. We have a basketball court. We've got an indoor pool. We've got a game room. We have a business office, free wifi. We've got free wifi in other areas of the building. We have a solarium on the eighth floor where you can just go hang out. We'll throw parties for the tenants, donuts occasionally. We will throw holiday parties and random parties. We'll do yoga events in our yoga studio. We'll host those once every other week. So we've got lots of stuff going on. We're planning to do more too.
Matt: 13:01
How do you work with the tenants on those things? How do you, they come up with ideas or do you have these ideas and just send them like a little slip of note under their door, like how do you do it?
Dave: 13:10
Yeah, we've had some suggestions in the past. Historically, how we announce them is, you know, we'll just send out emails and we'll put up flyers and try and get things going. We are trying to create more community driven events. So, thinking of doing like a wine and cheese night maybe. We've hosted Watertown free library library card signups as an example, where we've invited the Watertown library to come in and just allow people to sign up. We're always open to ideas that's going to connect people and get everybody together, as we're really trying to drive community.
Matt: 13:46
And why is that community building something that's important to you right now?
Dave: 13:52
And why is that community building something that's important to you right now. I think people have lost touch. They want to be a little bit more siloed, which I understand too, and I can actually be that way myself sometimes. But it's important to know your neighbors and you want to be comfortable where you live, and knowing who's on your hallway or who's next door is awesome. I think we're just trying to promote that.
Matt: 14:08
Yeah, cool. Well, we've talked a little bit about the current day. So, maybe let's go future-facing. Where are you envisioning Whitney Towers going in the future?
Dave: 14:16
Yeah, good question. This is really what I'm most excited about, actually. So this has been here for 41 years, this building, and same with the other one on Spring Street, the other ones longer. I'm most excited about growth, and so that can come in different ways. It can come in from building new buildings or acquiring existing ones. And so right now I'm looking at all opportunities, seeing what makes sense for myself personally, my personal career goals, as well as what makes sense for my family and my family's goals. And so kind of seeing where those two things intersect. It's also just the most exciting aspect for me. It's new territory. It's nothing that I've ever done.
Dave: 15:03
I see myself sort of running these two buildings as I begin to grow the business and scale. I'm not sure what my appetite is in terms of the growth. I know that I want to do something, so my plan is to start small. As an example, two-family rehab. I could buy something and hold it and just add it and, you know, just rent it out and just add it to the portfolio. The goal of this first project is just really to learn, have a beginning a middle and an end. So something that I can acquire, something I can maybe do something, improve it and then, you know, potentially sell it, or maybe I hold on to it and figure it out. So that'll happen in the next 12 to 18 months, I would say, and then after that the sky's the limit. So after I take on that small project, I'm hoping that that small project will provide guidance for where I want to go in the future, because I don't really know.
Matt: 16:01
Right, you're kind of dipping your toes in.
Dave: 16:03
Yeah, because I don't have that experience to really understand well where do I want to go and where can I go and everything that's happening with Watertown and the MBTA by-right zoning and all of that, and so I've been paying attention to all of that and speaking with different individuals. And sure, it's certainly possible that maybe I try and buy up some land in the square and try and build something new. I don't know. Maybe that's too big for us to chew off. I don't really know, but I've got to start somewhere.
Matt: 16:33
Yeah, so is there a particular thing that you think someone in your job is often mischaracterized as that you think they don't understand the complexity of something about?
Dave: 16:43
Sure, increasing rents, yeah. I think that a lot of people see landlords as sort of a devil and I think that you know, I think to some extent there can be some of that. I'm trying not to do that. Genuinely trying to make a nice place to live, trying to provide an awesome service, provide a home and get paid at the same time. I think all of those things can be true at the same time. I'm out to do that and try and not whack you over the head too with a bill every month. And so that just takes being a little bit more mindful of people and where they're at. And I will upset people. I have come to learn that what I do is people's housing and that is going to be sensitive. I understand that. Also, at the same time, I am also running a business and you are not aware of my expenses and all the things that come along with it. And no, I'm not going to show you my expenses. There's a lot of them and I'm doing what I think is best.
Matt: 17:41
Yeah, oh, the world is so complicated. Was there anything about the future of this specific building that you want to talk about?
Dave: 17:50
Yeah, so we're in the middle of revamping the building. So, like I was saying earlier, it's 41 years old. It's time that it gets some love and some TLC. So we are planning on renovating our lobby, we're planning on renovating our hallways, we're renovating all of our units. I'm upgrading all the mechanicals. Like I said, I upgraded our facade not that long ago, just installed a brand new HVAC system on the roof. Each unit has its own HVAC. I'm looking at upgrading all of those. So big investments are being put into this building to help it last, hopefully, another 41 years, and so I'm really excited about all of that work. We're also looking at the amenity space. So the gyms, the basketball court, I think, could use some love. Install some new lighting, potentially turn it into pickleball court. I've thought about installing golf simulators.
Matt: 18:42
Top golf in an apartment.
Dave: 18:44
Exactly exactly. I thought that might be cool. Attract a different type of tenant. We just recently installed six EV chargers, so they're exclusive to the tenants and that was another investment. So if you've got an EV car and you want EV at your rental, then we've got you covered. For the couple people that do have it, they love it. It's really nice to have. You know I'm looking to upgrade the whole building. Really it's going to take a lot of time.
Matt: 19:11
Sure, sure, piece by piece.
Matt: 19:16
Was there anything else you wanted to let anybody know about yourself or Whitney Towers or anything else Watertown related that you want the folks who are listening to this to know?
Dave: 19:26
I would say that embrace change. I know it's hard for a lot of people and it was hard for me at one point. The older I've gotten, the more seasoned I've gotten, with more experience, I've learned that rolling with the punches, accept change, learning to deal with what you're given. You want to be more like bamboo, so can bend in the wind but not break, I like to say. That's how I run this business. And know that massive change is coming to Watertown and housing is a part of that, and know that we need to adapt and kind of see what is the market doing. And you know we've got new buildings that just popped up across the street from us that are much nicer, much newer, and we're not. So we need to change and adapt and rethink about how we're providing our service and our housing and where we fit in the market. We're not just here going through the motions. So it's really understanding that change is happening. We need to be aware of it, accept it and learn to adapt and not die.
Dave: 20:34
We do try and follow the market as much as we can and that sort of dictates a lot. Right, and if housing were suddenly to take a dramatic hit, well, guess what? So would we, and that's exactly what we would do. We would adjust. If taxes are increased and costs of things are increased, then our costs increase. So we kind of just follow the market. Really, and being able to adapt and adapt quickly. I think that's what I learned in software building software and then trying to apply that to real estate. It's just real estate’s much, much slower.
Matt: 21:09
You can't iterate as quickly with a building as you can with a software program. Can't beta test a building.
Dave: 21:13
You cannot, but I do try and, for lack of a better term, beta test the unit. So, for example, we have some ideas that we want to do in a renovation. Well, if it's just one unit, go ahead, try it, try it out, see what happens, see what it's like to hire a new contractor, to install a different type of material, or paint something a certain way, or do a tour a certain way, or whatever it is. Try new things and see what works. So I do take that approach definitely to running the business.
Matt: 21:45
Yeah, you can't avoid your previous life experiences. They're always going to apply.
Dave: 21:49
Absolutely.
Matt: 21:50
Yeah, so if anyone wants to find out more about Whitney Towers, where should they go to find that information?
Dave: 21:56
Yeah, they can find us on our website, whitneywatertown.com. They're more than welcome to just swing by. We're at 275 Main Street. They can email us, office at whitneytowersllc.com. You can find our listings on Zillow and apartments.com, so we're out there.
Matt: 22:13
Cool. Well, thanks for taking your time to share your thoughts and stories.
Dave: 22:15
Thanks for having me.
Matt: 22:18
So that's it for my conversation with Dave. You can find out more about Whitney Towers where he mentioned. Also, put that in the show notes. If you like the podcast and you want to listen to more episodes, find out about events, head on over to littlelocalconversations.com. Everything is there. You can sign up for the email newsletter that I send out once a week to stay up to date on everything Little Local related. And for anyone interested, the next event coming up is another Creative Chats event over at the Mosesian Center for the Arts on Friday April 18th with guest Cat Bennett. She's been an animator, an illustrator, artist and teacher, so again, head on over to littlerlocalconversations.com for more info on that.
Matt: 22:53
And a few things to wrap up here. I got a grant this year from the Watertown Cultural Council to help support this podcast, so I wanted to give them the appropriate thanks and credit, which is this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org or massculturalcouncil.org. I also want to give a shout out to Arsenal Financial, the first sponsor of this podcast. It's a financial planning business owned by Doug Orifice, who has been on the podcast before.
Matt: 23:26
I put out a Watertown Trivia episode with him to celebrate his sponsorship, so you can go back and listen to that one. Thank you, Doug and Arsenal Financial. And lastly, I want to give a shout out to promotional partner, the Watertown Business Coalition, their nonprofit organization here in Watertown that is bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. Find out more about them at watertownbusinesscoalition.com. They have lots of interesting events coming up too, so check out their website. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
