A FEW MINUTES WITH CONSULTANT BEV GALLO
Bev Gallo is Owner Principal of Peregrine Urban Initiative LLC and is a consultant with Core Investments, Inc.
What is Peregrine Urban Initiative LLC?
PUI is a real estate and affordable housing development advisory firm that specializes in the creative financing of affordable housing and economic development programs in Massachusetts and beyond.
What do you actually do for Core?
I am advising on all things related to affordable, subsidized, and mixed-finance housing and economic development. I have been working with Core since 2014, and over the years, I’ve done a lot of their internal financial modeling and deal structuring. I provided project management services on Washington Village. I’ve also worked with Core on advancing workforce development projects, preparing business plans, and pursuing components of the capital stacks. Recently, I have been focused on the affordable housing component at 495 Dot Ave. – working with John Barros and Dream Collaborative JV Partnership.
What else do you do besides work for Core?
I work mostly with not-for-profit CDCs [Community Development Corporations] and for-profit development companies, and I also develop properties on my own book. I partner with folks at Peregrine Group LLC [of Rumford, RI], of which I’m an affiliate. Locally, we planned, financed, and delivered the 43-unit Parkside on Adams apartments in Roslindale, the Roslindale Substation historic redevelopment, and 63 new rental units at 1943 Dot Ave. in Ashmont, in Dorchester. We also built and sold the Villages on Mount Hope Bay, a 230-unit 55-plus senior condominium community in Tiverton, Rhode Island, and more recently delivered the Hammetts Hotel in Newport.
I’m doing a lot of work these days with state-owned public housing authorities, using any and all of the tools in the toolbox to support the redevelopment and revitalization of often failing and operationally underfunded state-owned public housing. I am currently working with the Watertown Housing Authority, assisting the Public Housing Authority to pursue 125-plus new and replacement units in a 100-percent affordable program, as well as an 80-unit scattered site redevelopment effort in Manchester-by-the-Sea.
What did you do before this?
I’ve been doing this forever. In the mid-to-late ‘80s, I worked for the Flatley Company in Braintree before moving to California to join an architectural firm in San Francisco. I moved back to Boston in the early ’90s to attend graduate school at MIT. After grad school, I did a short stint with a South Boston Neighborhood Development Corp., where I was the Development Director. My team and I worked to finance and develop the Castle Cove Senior Housing development, on D Street, and Taylor’s Market, on Broadway, a subsidized historic rehabilitation.
Where did you go to school?
I went to UMass Amherst as an undergrad, and at MIT I received a Master’s degree in in Urban Planning and a Master of Science in Real Estate Development.
And where did you grow up?
Outside of Boston, We moved around a bit. Needham, Hudson and Cataumet (Scraggy Neck in Bourne). I was born in Boston.
Where do you live now?
Arlington, on Mystic Lake at the mouth of the Mystic River.
What do you do to have fun when you’re not working?
That’s a good question. Mostly hang out with my dog and my husband, Mike. He’s a scientist, a molecular biologist, and the dog is a 110-pound Bernese Mountain Dog named Iffley. My daughter just turned 24. She now lives in Chicago. She’s an artist with a focus on fashion design and is about to move to Los Angeles to start her career. She recently graduated from The Art Institute of Chicago.
What’s a favorite place of yours in the Boston area?
I have so many favorite places in and around the Boston area. I’m almost always outside because Iffley is always in tow. I spend a bit of time in the City itself, but we’ve recently been spending a great deal of time in Marblehead, where my dad is from. We’ve recently started exploring other communities on the North Shore, such as Essex and Ipswich. We’re up there all the time—we love the miles and miles of walking trails and ocean views.