MAXIMUS Real Estate Partners
Maximus LLC, (MAXIMUS-BP 1979 MISSION STREET LLC) the developer behind the proposed 16th & Mission Plaza Condo in San Francisco, is poised to profit upwards of $1,000,000 per unit for their 351-unit development, a staggering sum totaling over a third of a billion dollars. This massive, multi-story project would totally transform the neighborhood around 16th & Mission, including depriving the nearby Marshall Elementary School of sunlight for most of the year. This development would attract and accommodate increasingly richer and whiter populace in the Mission, accelerating the wholesale displacement of those who don't stand to benefit from the on-going tech-industry-led “boom.” The ridiculously lowball figure of 12% inclusionary affordable housing units would not be enough to mitigate this, let alone make up for it. The project at 1979 Mission would leave an impact lasting for generations and no amount of short-term bribes and kickbacks, sometimes euphemistically termed “community benefit agreements”, comes close to making up for the aggregate total damage on the lives of the most precarious Mission residents.
As part of this development, Maximus LLC has been behind the so-called “Clean Up the Plaza” campaign which has worked with the San Francisco Police Department to increase policing, surveillance, and harassment of the many low-income and homeless people who have nowhere else to go and use the plaza at 16th & Mission as public space. To this end, Maximus has hired notorious San Francisco political operative Jack Davis as a political consultant.
The principal behind Maximus, Robert Rosania, was previously co-founder and CEO of Stellar Management, who extracted millions in profits taking over Parkmerced while letting the property go into default. Rosania, who likes to spend his wealth collecting rare champagne, has made much of his money by leveraging formerly working-class properties and transforming low-income neighborhoods. Stellar Management was also behind the takeover and default of the massive Riverton Homes complex in Harlem, New York. Deals such as these were a major component of the housing market collapse. Now Rosania and former Stellar executives Seth Mallen are at it again with Maximus.
Plaza 16 Coalition's presentation from May 2014: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cn0hz2e3xf6zood/Plaza16PPT_CommunityForum_english.pdf
Maximus's "Preliminary Project Assessment": https://www.dropbox.com/s/5rloiphaw3d9sj8/Maximus%201979%20Mission%20Preliminary%20Project%20Assessment.pdf
The PPA's applicant is Seth Mallen, current (former?) Executive VP at Stellar Management INC. He previously worked for the Albert Group as well.
It seems that both Rosania and Mallen parted ways with Stellar, and are both now involved in managing Parkmerced for the new owner Fortress Investments, and getting Maximus going on 16th & Mission.
According to http://www.bizapedia.com/us/MAXIMUS-BP-1979-MISSION-STREET-LLC.html, MAXIMUS-BP 1979 MISSION STREET LLC is a CA LLC, and a Delaware LLC. The CA LLC is registered under the Parkmerced address.
- 345 Vidal Drive San Francisco, CA 94132 - Seth Mallen is listed as working from this address.
Robert Rosania is connected to other officers through these corporate roles. One of the top connections is De Real Estate. Robert Rosania's additional active roles include:
- President of Sutro Management Group Ltd.
- Member of Stellar Corte Madera Promote Member, LLC
- Member of Stellar Alexandria Park Owner LLC
Primarily, Rosania is concerned with collecting fancy wines, some of which were recently auctioned in Hong Kong.
Steller / Parkmerced / New York connection
Stellar Management is one of New York City’s premier owners and operators of residential and commercial real estate. The company focuses on real estate acquisitions, development and property management. Stellar’s portfolio contains over 12,000 apartments in 100 buildings in New York City, Washington D.C. and Miami. Over the past four decades, Stellar has offered tenants superior, personalized service, creating a lasting reputation for its dedication to its residents as well as its refurbished and renovated buildings. Our large selection of apartments means that we have a home that will fit your housing needs from workforce to luxury, walk-up to high-rise.
Stellar owns more than 20,000 residential units and 2 million square feet of office space across the country.
"In 2005, Stellar Management and Rockpoint Group, an investment firm, purchased Parkmerced for about $675 million. They created Parkmerced Investors Properties LLC as a venture that would maintain ownership of the colossal property. . .
While Stellar continues to manage Parkmerced, the company was unable to keep up with its loan payments on the property last year, so in 2010, a new financial firm stepped in to take control and save it from default. In Sepetember of 2010, a minor change was entered into San Francisco property records -- the address for the property owner, Parkmerced Investors Properties LLC, was changed from one Manhattan skyrise to another. The new address is identical to that of Fortress Investment Group, a private equity firm.
Fortress bought a roughly 75 percent stake in the venture that controls Parkmerced, according to a report in the San Francisco Business Times, in a deal which reportedly valued the entire property "at about $750 million."" - http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/03/23/who-really-owns-parkmerced
Parkmerced is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, designed by architect Leonard Schultze and landscape architect Thomas Dolliver Church in the early 1940s. Parkmerced is the second-largest single-owner neighborhood of apartment blocks west of the Mississippi River after Park La Brea in Los Angeles. It was a planned neighborhood of high-rise apartment towers and low-rise garden apartments in southwestern San Francisco for middle-income tenants. It contains 3,221 residences (after sale of five blocks to SFSU) and over 9,000 residents, and is one of four remaining privately owned large-scale garden apartment complexes in the United States.[1] The complex is located south of San Francisco State University (SFSU), west of 19th Avenue, and east of Lake Merced and the Harding Park Golf Club. The far western boundary of the neighborhood extends to Lake Merced Boulevard, and the neighborhood is popular with students and faculty at San Francisco State University because of its close proximity. The property was purchased in October 2005 for approximately $687,000,000 by a joint venture between Stellar Management and Rockpoint Group from a JP Morgan Chase and Carmel Partners joint venture entity.
According to CrainNY, it seems Gluck and Rosania have parted ways, so there's no formal link between Maximus and Stellar other than through personal interests and money connections:
- Messrs. Rosania and Gluck have bounced back in recent years—but have done so largely apart. Mr. Gluck, who is in his 60s, led a group of partners that acquired two adjacent SoHo properties in 2012, 161 Sixth Ave. and 233 Spring St. They are in the process of renovating the properties into a combined 500,000-square-foot office building.
- Mr. Rosania, 44, has since spun off his own real estate investment company, Maximus Real Estate Partners. Mr. Rosania has focused on buying in San Francisco, including residential properties. He is involved in the largest apartment complex in San Francisco, called the Parkmerced, which Mr. Rosania had previously owned with Mr. Gluck and other partners before that property's $550 million mortgage went into default and the property was taken over by one of its mezzanine lenders, the investment firm Fortress.
- According to a source, Mr. Rosania is now a part owner of Parkmerced and helps operate the investment for Fortress.
JACK DAVIS / Clean up the Plaza
The "Clean Up the Plaza" campaign, which is an astroturf campaign to increase policing and surveillance in the Plaza, is partially coordinated by "notorious SF political operative" Jack Davis. Davis is now a 'paid political consultant' for Maximus.
"Davis used to run San Francisco politics. He got Frank Jordon and Willie Brown elected mayor, led the campaigns for new stadiums for the Giants and the 49ers, and worked for developers and landlords on campaigns including the defeat of a measure to extend rent control to vacant units. Perhaps most infamously, he hosted a 50th birthday partyattended by much of San Francisco’s political establishment where the entertainment included a woman dressed as Pocahontas sodomizing a Church of Satan priest with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Davis is semi-retired, and he had largely vanished from the San Francisco political scene, spending most of his time in Wales and Arizona. But he’s back in town now, and he has a new mission: cleaning up what he calls “the most dangerous corner in San Francisco.”"
The Clean Up the Plaza campaign began in September 2013. It was "responsible for the “three-month police occupation of the plaza” that began in September and, according to Guzman, led to increased harassment of the homeless and residents who frequent the plaza. . . . Mission District Supervisor David Campos hinted at a connection as well, during an Assembly race debate with Supervisor David Chiu. When Chiu challenged Campos over the thousands of signatures gathered by Clean up the Plaza as a sign of his ineffective leadership in the Mission, Campos replied, “It’s a way to get a luxury condo project.”
Contact Maximus:
Robert A. Rosania
STELLAR NEW YORK 156 WILLIAM STREET, 10TH FLOOR, NEW YORK NY 10038 Phone: 212-406-0030 Fax: 212-267-7695
Seth Mallen
Parkmerced/Maximus LLC
345 Vidal Drive San Francisco, CA 94132
1979 Mission Street
415.316.0122
http://1979mission.com/contactus/
Skidmore Owings & Merrill - Architect Firm for 1979 Mission
1 Front St, San Francisco, CA 94111
415-981-1555
McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP
(Filed Maximus's PPA with SF)
Contact for the filing - Alice Suet Yee Barkley
One Market Plaza Spear Tower, 24th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 T: 415.267.4000 F: 415.267.4198
Jack Davis
3375 17th St #209 San Francisco CA