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Bob Delhome
Founder and president, Charter
Age: 52
Years of experience: 28
Bob Delhome founded Boston-based environmental remediation, marine contracting and brownfield development firm Charter as a “young and probably a bit naive” man with a vision to plug what he saw as a hole in the New England market: a firm that could offer environmental services and construction expertise at the same time. Twenty-four years later, the company has been at the center of projects as complex as decontaminating the Encore Boston Harbor casino site – once home to a Monsanto factory that made and spilt significant quantities of sulfuric acid – and is now key to an ambitious plan to convert a former landfill at the heart of Lynn’s industrial waterfront into a large public park that will anchor the city’s efforts to redevelop the area. That project is a collaboration with state and city leaders and National Grid, which sold Charter many parcels key to the project in July.
Q: What’s your role in the Lynn waterfront park project?
A: The city and state have a really incredible plan to spur development on what’s roughly 250 acres of real estate. At the core of that footprint are significant environmental liabilities. Our approach has been that if we resolve and remediate those issues at the [30-acre] core it will spur redevelopment in the surrounding area. We’re remediating and capping a legacy landfill site; it’ll be an elevated park that will resemble Spectacle Island or Pope John Paul II Park in Quincy. The state is working with landscape architects and urban planners; the vision is that the 30-acre landfill will be transformed into a public park [that] will be also part of a linear park, so there’ll be connectivity to the east and west.
Q: How do you balance the interests of numerous stakeholders in a project like this?
A: You have to be incredibly patient. There’s always a multitude of stakeholders. It’s at the local level and the state level, and then you have overarching regulatory requirements and then you have a lot of infrastructure in the footprint that’s not going to go anywhere. It’s not one of the skillsets you’re going to see in our website, but we take a lot of pride in facilitating the creation of a joint vision among all the stakeholders and moving that vision forward.
The thing we always have in our mind is that we’re looking for a positive–sum outcome. Because we have the technical and the regulatory expertise and the ability to self-implement the remediation – which at times can be risky – and we have the ability to underwrite the development plan, the business plan, we’re always looking for that outcome. We always remind ourselves that we’re trying to achieve that shared vision of the stakeholders. And because of the end results – putting these sites back into productive use – there’s always a lot of pull on these projects and stakeholders are often willing to compromise.
Q: That kind of process might remind many of the long, drawn-out entitlement process for Cambridge Crossing.
A: At the end of the day, we’re not tied into a multifamily use or an industrial use or a retail use. When we’re doing assemblage and getting infrastructure to the site, we have an opportunity to work with the community to figure out what they would like to see the site zoned for and what’s financially viable. We essentially get sites pad–ready for follow-on development. Often the projects we’re targeting are in the secondary or tertiary communities, where the underwriting isn’t so cut and dry. I don’t want to minimize the challenges of redeveloping Cambridge Crossing or the South Boston industrial waterfront, but the value that’s being created there and the end use is so stable and so high, the underwriting isn’t that complicated.
We initially self-fund for the due diligence process, but then we do have to look elsewhere for additional funding – you can’t necessarily go to a bank for a development loan package. We work with the owners of the [environmental] liability; we look for tax credits and other funding sources.
Q: Has the pandemic complicated the challenge of financing these projects?
A: It’s actually created an increased pipeline for the kinds of projects we deliver. In Lynn, we’ve worked closely with National Grid, who’s been an incredibly valuable partner in moving these projects forward. The projects we undertake take such a long time that even though the economy is slowing down a bit, we don’t feel it as much. And over the last five to six months, we’ve actually seen an increase in Gateway Cities sites that would benefit from our services.
We have a strong belief in our Gateway Cities, probably since before they were termed “Gateway Cities.” It seems like the pandemic is going to create more opportunities for them. If we work in a more distributed manner, Gateway Cities can serve as satellite locations for the center. One of the concerns is public transit and still having the ability to get from where you live to where you work and to get from a satellite location to a hub office. We’ve seen a lot of benefit to things like the Green Line Extension and South Coast Rail. We’d love to see enhanced public transit to communities north of Boston like Lynn.
We’re a business enterprise and we have to deliver financial returns commensurate with the invested capital and the risk involved, but we really look at things with a triple bottom line. Having been in the firm fixed–price [contracting] business for so long – they’re complex projects, with high risk, but the opportunity to deliver a parcel back into productive use and benefit the community is really powerful and motivating.
Five Positives Delhome Finds in the Pandemic:
- Extended family time
- Highlighted the value of relationships
- A chance to pause and reflect
- Appreciating basic conveniences
- Inspired by people innovating and overcoming challenges
