Jody L. Kriss - NYTimes.com Mr. Kriss, 38, is a founder and principal of East River Partners, a company based in New York that acquires and redevelops brownstone properties in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Before starting East River, Mr. Kriss co-founded the Bayrock Group, which developed the Trump SoHo hotel. He started his career at the Athena Group where he managed the development of 838 Fifth Avenue. Q. Tell me a little more about what your company does. A. Mostly we started redeveloping buildings, often gut-renovations, and even more specific than that, they're all "brownstones." I use brownstones in quotations, because it's not all brown brick. They're on four- or five-story scale in brownstone neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Every building is at least 100 years old. Q. How many projects are you working? A. Eight. We have two that are complete, two that will be completed in the next 30 days and four that are in the pipeline. Q. You sound busy. A. Business is good. We looked at a lot of distressed opportunities in "08 and "09 and into 2010, thinking it would be a long time before we became developers again because of all the distress out there, and that you could just buy things that were unfinished or almost finished. But around 2010 it occurred to us that we were going to be developers much sooner than we thought. The distressed opportunities never materialized for us. Q. Let's talk about some of your projects, starting with one in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. A. That's 364 Union Street. It just went on the market. There are five units - four are three-bedroom two-bath, and then there's one garden duplex that has a private yard. We've sold two units already. Q. What are you getting per square foot? A. Over $1,100. Q. Another new development is 371 Sixth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn. A. It's also just coming on the market. It's a four-family. Q. And the prices per square foot there? A. Around $1,100. Q. Can you talk about some of your projects in the pipeline? A. Another one is in Park Slope. It's 26 feet wide and on 10th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. We're doing four units there, but they're going to be larger, starting at 1,550 square feet. All of them will be three beds or larger. It'll be on the market next year. And then we have an interesting project that we already started construction on - we started construction on both of these, actually - it's at 415 East Sixth Street in Manhattan and it's a synagogue. It's the last remaining tenement synagogue in the East Village and the Landmarks Preservation Commission has approved the project. We're keeping the synagogue on the ground floor and building three loft apartments above. Q. Would you consider doing larger projects? A. Sure. The ones I've mentioned so far are the last of our pipeline of smaller ones. And then we're doing one on 86th between Broadway and West End. We have three contiguous row houses and so we're in the process of redeveloping those. We're in the Landmarks approval process. We anticipate starting construction before the end of the year. They'll be larger, family-size units - around 10. Q. Could you do rentals? A. We'll be doing larger projects and taking on larger challenges as time moves on, and that'll definitely include some rentals. Q. Much of what you're doing seems geared to middle-class buyers. A. I would say there's something aspirational about it, about living in these brownstones. But it's also really affordable for a lot of families, by New York standards. By far, the hardest part of our job is creating the product; the easier part is selling it. There's no question that there's an extraordinary amount of demand for these brownstones and virtually no competition when we bring them to market. Q. How do you find properties to develop? A. We've just been vigilant about calling everyone in town who we think could have an opportunity for us. New York is a town where you have to move very, very quickly on every opportunity. We used to be buying the building for $250 to $300 a foot; now we're buying the land for $250 to $300 a foot. Having a fund is a big advantage, because the one thing you don't have to do is raise the money while you're doing your investigation. Q. The fund is a main source for financing. Who invests there? A. A lot of finance people; I can't give you their names. We just have one fund - it's $12 million. Q. Do you live in a project you developed? A. No, I live in a Related building on the Upper West Side. We rent a condo from one of the unit owners. Q. Have you ever owned? A. I just never got around to buying.