Dive Brief:
- Middleburg is expanding beyond its core Eastern market, hiring Scott Makee as regional development partner, west, to establish and scale the Vienna, Virginia-based firm’s development platform across key high-growth Western markets, according to a press release issued today.
- Makee, who was most recently senior managing director of Mill Creek Residential’s Denver office, will oversee market entry strategy, regional team buildout and full-cycle development execution. He will be tasked with expanding the firm’s vertically integrated model into new high-growth corridors, according to the release.
- “Expansion into the West is not about planting flags,” said Chris Finlay, founder and CEO of Middleburg, in the release. “It’s about expanding geography from a position of strength and at a time of clear opportunity. Scott understands how to enter markets, build strong local teams, enforce capital and operational discipline with an eye toward long-term performance.”
Dive Brief:
Middleburg, a real estate investment, development and construction firm, produces both apartments and build-to-rent homes. Since 2004, the firm has completed more than $4.5 billion in transactions and delivered over 32,000 homes across nine states, according to the company.
In the press release, Finlay said taking advantage of opportunities in the Western U.S. requires leveraging capital and organizational infrastructure, local expertise and operational control while empowering the firm’s development partners with entrepreneurial flexibility.
“Scott’s experience scaling development operations across multiple regions positions us to grow deliberately — without compromising the standards that have defined Middleburg for more than two decades — which is what makes him such an excellent fit for this role,” Finlay said.
Makee, who has more than two decades of multifamily and mixed-use development experience, has led the acquisition, capitalization and development of projects totaling more than $1.4 billion in aggregate value throughout his career, according to the release.
Before working at Mill Creek, Makee was at Crescent Communities, where he expanded the firm’s multifamily platform into Tennessee, Texas, Arizona and Colorado.
“What attracted me to Middleburg is the ability to pair entrepreneurial market entry with institutional discipline. When you control the full lifecycle — from how capital is structured to how projects are executed and operated — you can move decisively while still protecting downside risk,” Makee said in a statement. “My goal is to build a regional platform that is locally embedded, capital-efficient, and capable of generating durable performance as it scales.”
Middleburg isn’t the only Eastern- and Sun Belt-focused developer to announce Western expansion plans over the past year. Last October, Woodfield Development hired Neil Hanlon as vice president of development to lead the company's expansion into Arizona and Nevada.
The Charleston, South Carolina-based firm, the No. 21 developer in the country, said Phoenix and Las Vegas share many of the same fundamentals as the firm’s Southeast and Texas markets, including strong population and job growth, business-friendly environments and an attractive quality of life.
Early on, Woodfield was developing in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic. It later expanded to the Northeast, Florida, Tennessee and Texas.
“Texas was our last expansion before things began to change in late 2022 and 2023,” Todd Jacobus, a partner at Woodfield Development, told Multifamily Dive at the time.
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