Melissa Román Burch On Building Big in Brooklyn, DEI and the City’s Economy

New York City is a metropolis filled with passionate people, and, when you ask Melissa Román Burch what she’s passionate about, it’s New York City. 

Burch, who has been serving as the chief operating officer for the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) since 2022, has had a long career working on commercial and residential projects across the five boroughs. 

Before joining the EDC, where she manages public and private developments involving city-owned property as well as the organization’s portfolio of more than 200 assets across 64 million square feet, she spent over seven years with construction giant Lendlease. During her tenure with Lendlease, Burch served as executive general manager, overseeing different mixed-use projects. 

Prior to that, Burch was an executive vice president for developer Forest City Ratner. There she oversaw the $5 billion development of Pacific Park in Brooklyn, a public-private partnership anchored by the Barclays Center that brought new housing, office space, mass transit and parks to the area (never mind the arena itself). 

It’s safe to say that Burch had a hand in developing some pretty significant projects across the city. Commercial Observer caught up with Burch last week to discuss her career and the city’s economic recovery, as well as EDC’s Brooklyn Army Terminal and MADE Bush Terminal projects. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: How would you define the work of the EDC?

Melissa Román Burch: The EDC sits at the intersection of business and government. So we are New York City’s economic development arm. We are responsible for steering the future economy of the city, and we really do that in close partnership with both business and government. 

The EDC has four main areas that it organizes around. The first is instilling business confidence, and there’s a lot about the economic recovery of the city that has needed to be communicated. First and foremost, we have the most jobs ever in the history of New York, period. That’s a huge deal. We lost a million jobs during COVID-19. So, not only has the city regained all of the jobs it lost, but it is now 150,000 jobs beyond what was the previous high. This is a phenomenal story for the city. 

The second is really around building our innovation sectors. When you think about the EDC, you might think about real estate and real estate development, but we are also in the work of industry development. So we are building the industries of the future. Those, for us, are a laser focus on life sciences, on AI technology and on the green economy. We are focused on those sectors because they are high-growth and high-wage sectors. So we do a lot to help build up those industries, to make sure that we’re developing the workforce and readying the workforce to support the future of those industries.

The third area is that we create neighborhoods, and this is really where our asset portfolio and our real estate holdings are so critical to who we are as an EDC. We have 64 million square feet that the EDC is responsible for managing, developing, owning, and guiding. It is a huge mandate. It’s one of the largest real estate portfolios of any owner in the city, and we manage that portfolio to a double bottom line of financial returns and measured public benefit. 

Our last pillar is that we deliver sustainable infrastructure for the City of New York. We have a $9 billion capital plan that is delivering new greenways for the city and parks for the city. We do this on behalf of other city agencies. Also, because we are adept at design and building, and we’re adept at deploying capital and seeing results for our work, we’re able to do that in partnership with other city agencies.

What drew you to EDC in terms of your career trajectory?

I sort of unexpectedly came to the EDC, and I mean that in the best of ways. I had spent 20-plus years in the private sector as a real estate developer, builder and investor, and that is really my background. I have been doing the work of large-scale public and private partnerships and large-scale public and private development since I got into this business back in 2002, when I was working for Forest City Ratner in Downtown Brooklyn. 

So I was happily running my business at Lendlease. I was leading their development and investment platform for the New York region. I started that business for them from scratch in 2015 when I joined them. I very excitedly received a call from Andrew Kimball, who had been recently named as president and CEO of the EDC, and he asked me if I would consider being his partner in government, be a part of the leadership of the EDC, and help steer the organization as we were coming out of COVID in New York.

I am so happy I said yes to the opportunity to serve. It was a real sense of calling for me to have an opportunity to work with so many folks across the public and private sector who have now come into this administration, who I deeply admire and respect to help steer New York out of COVID. New York was seriously wounded by COVID, it was a very significant crisis for our city. And I did feel that there was a unique opportunity to come to a place like the EDC — for me to have a citywide impact on thinking about growth, thinking about investment, and not only thinking about it, but developing policies and activating projects that are catalysts, and have been catalysts for New York’s recovery.

Do you have a proudest career moment?

I have many projects that I am proud of, and I consider projects a little bit like children. When you’re in the work of development, you are conceiving of new things, you are making them and creating them. You build them, and then you manage them, and in many ways they never leave you. So my buildings are buildings that I have so much pride in, because I’ve been able to see them from conception to reality.

I’m so proud of the work we did on the transformation of Atlantic Yards, now known as Pacific Park. I helped lead that project through its acquisition, entitlement stages, financing and building the Barclays Center, which, I think over a decade later, we’ve realized how transformative that has been for Brooklyn, for growth in the borough, for investment and for quality of life.

Can you discuss how you’ve navigated your career from the perspective of being a woman in a male-dominated industry?

I have been incredibly lucky in the course of my career to have early on been brought into a network of other women, and to see that network grow. It has been one of the real strengths that I have been able to lean on and rely on as I’ve advanced in my career. 

There were a number of unbelievably visible and talented women at Forest City — and, by the way, they are all leading major real estate organizations, major public and private projects, and I’m incredibly proud of what that network has gone on to do — and I feel that way about Lendlease as well. The team that I was able to create there was incredibly diverse. We had phenomenal men and phenomenal women. 

And I think that a key to all of this is that I am a big believer in a horizontal network, meaning that for some people, you can have a mentor that is above you or ahead of you or more senior to you. But I think that in an industry that’s still really developing future leaders, future women leaders, you really need to look horizontally. I have been very lucky to have a phenomenal peer group that has worked really hard to support each other. 

We meet often with each other. We do deals together. We have done projects together. And I mention that because it almost doesn’t matter what the raw numbers are of this business. I think when I look out at the landscape of the city, I can tell you that women are at the helm of so many of the major moves that are happening in the city right now. So focusing on percentages or on sheer numbers is really under-selling and under-recognizing the role that women are playing at this time in our city’s construction and development. 

This is a really exciting time, and when I think about the women in development who are leaders in these organizations — women who are leading major construction groups, design firms, who are lawyers — it is now the case where only every now and then are you the only woman in the room. 

There has been a significant attack on DEI efforts across corporate America coming out of the current White House. Mentions of women, people of color and other minority groups are being scrubbed from federal websites. Does EDC have a stance on this issue?

Our work has not changed. We are in the business of creating the best projects, the best places, and doing that with the best talent here at the EDC, and really thinking about how to make sure that the future economy of the city has a workforce that is ready for it. To do that, we need to be interfacing with New York in its broadest form. 

We need to be continuing to advance our agenda around making sure that we are reaching into high schools and colleges, and that we are reaching across the industry to make sure that we’ve got the best and the brightest working alongside us. 

We do track metrics in our snapshot that look at workforce participation and break down those numbers by race, and I think it is also important for us to be wide-eyed about where some of the disparities still persist, and we need to be motivated by the challenge of closing those gaps.

Can you give us an update on the EDC’s Brooklyn Army Terminal and MADE Bush Terminal projects?

The Sunset Park portfolio is the crown jewel of the EDC. This district that the EDC owns, controls, and manages is over 200 acres on the South Brooklyn waterfront. It comprises our Brooklyn Army Terminal, which is about 4 million square feet of manufacturing and industrial space. It includes the new MADE Bush Terminal campus, which has just opened up to the world and is an EDC-developed project. 

We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into that campus, and now are leasing the first building at the campus. We have created an incredible public realm there, and that campus is exclusively for manufacturers, artisans, designers and entrepreneurs, and that is because those are the types of jobs and professions and makers that are hard at work on the Brooklyn waterfront, and we have an opportunity to continue to serve this growing community. 

The Sunset Park District also includes the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, which is being constructed and transformed right now into the largest offshore wind port in the United States. We are doing that through a public-private partnership with Equinor, which is one of the world’s largest offshore wind developers. We are very excited that the industries that we are serving within this Sunset Park District are connected to clean energy innovation.

Why do you call the Sunset Park portfolio the crown jewel of the EDC?

Because it’s just really rare to have — in a real estate context — a footprint of that size. This isn’t one building, it’s not one block. It’s hard for New Yorkers to imagine 200 acres, because we don’t get to talk about acres in the city, but it’s sizable, and it’s all right on the waterfront, and it’s connected to the rest of the city via our New York City Ferry. People can access this district, and they can be connected to every single borough, which means that we have a way for jobs and for workers to come here.

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.