Experience

Winstanley Architects & Planners

• United States
• Architecture and Planning
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Managing Director

  • May 2020 - Present

  Mike Balaban dreamed of being an architect as a kid in Philadelphia, and with conviction, he set off to obtain his degree, his license and a job designing buildings. Soon, while walking in the proverbial yellow wood, Mike took the road not taken and ended up with an MBA and the head of a major development organization for twenty years. But Mike’s story did not end up like the poem because, lucky for Mike, the roads that once diverged came back together again and returned him to the world of architecture and design. So while Mike was exploring in the woods, fortunate for us, he gained invaluable experience in the investment and development side of the real estate business. Today, having taken the road back to architecture, his experience gives him exceptional insight into the business of design, as Managing Director of the firm, not designing per se, but rather focusing on the planning, operations, and marketing of the firm’s practice. With graduate degrees in both architecture and business, Mike has procured and managed the activities of best-in-class design practitioners for commercial, residential, and mixed-use properties, involving not only new buildings but also the re-development, adaptive re-use, and historic preservation so vital to the Winstanley practice. Formulating, communicating and managing the priorities of complex design programs is at the heart of what we do, and so, doing it from the design side of the table is not all that different: we believe the best teams work at proverbial round tables, with everybody pulling on the same oars. Mike has always been most energized by the confluence of business strategy, project execution, and the opportunity to leverage the contribution of enlightened land-use and architectural design. The investors with whom Mike has worked have for the most part the same priorities as the clients for whom we work, and so, as they used to say in Philly, ”same difference”. Show less



J Street

• United States
• Real Estate
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Development Officer

  • Jun 2017 - Mar 2020



msb Urban

• Principal

  • 2015 - Jun 2017



SB-Urban

• President, co-founder

  • 2013 - Oct 2015

  Co-founded and served as President of firm dedicated to small-unit residential strategy and program I had personally formulated to serve an urban renter without a conventional household, but requiring flexile terms for furnished product immediate proximate to the workplace, to a rich urbane amenity fabric, and to transit. In addition to the Patterson House (now the Ampeer) which delivered in Dupont in 2017, other properties were acquired and entitled with zero on-site parking. Co-founded and served as President of firm dedicated to small-unit residential strategy and program I had personally formulated to serve an urban renter without a conventional household, but requiring flexile terms for furnished product immediate proximate to the workplace, to a rich urbane amenity fabric, and to transit. In addition to the Patterson House (now the Ampeer) which delivered in Dupont in 2017, other properties were acquired and entitled with zero on-site parking.



Lowe Enterprises

• Washington D.C. Metro Area

• President, Eastern Region

  • Mar 1994 - Mar 2012

  Over almost 20 years, first hired as acquisitions officer, provided regional leadership for an LA-based firm with Investment Management, Hospitality and Commercial Real Estate business units. I transformed the regional unit's market orientation from exurban retail and land development to an urban mixed-use infill portfolio and platform which included value-adding, re-development and entitlement/new-build projects. Projects were in all three jurisdictions in the metro, and evolved from a gut re-hab of the 100K sf Fairmont Building in Bethesda ($15M), through CityVista ($250M), to the acquisition of the Washington Hilton to yield the ultra-prime residential site and project which delivered as the Hepburn, which has among the highest rents in the metro (ending gross investment approaching $500M). Show less



Washington Real Estate Investment Trust

• Washington D.C. Metro Area

• Acquisitions Officer

  • Oct 1988 - Mar 1994

  Contributed to long-term positioning of one of the first REIT's by leading acquisitions teams for assets larger and with greater longer-term upside opportunity than had typically been the case for this fine firm previously focused primarily on discount from replacement cost. Contributed to long-term positioning of one of the first REIT's by leading acquisitions teams for assets larger and with greater longer-term upside opportunity than had typically been the case for this fine firm previously focused primarily on discount from replacement cost.