Building Bozzuto

An interview with Julie Smith

By Leah Etling on Mar 10, 2014 in People

On a crisp mid-fall morning, the delicious smell of baking English muffins wafts from the Mid-Atlantic Baking Company out over the row houses and taverns of Fell’s Point, a historic Baltimore neighborhood in the city’s Inner Harbor. People are walking their dogs along the waterfront, the trees are pleasant hues of red and gold, and on South Wolfe Street, a new community is just waking up.

The Bozzuto Group’s Union Wharf is the newest luxury apartment enclave in Fell’s Point. It abuts the harbor, with rental slips for pleasure boats available right outside. Its interior and exterior finishes draw inspiration from the historic seafaring lifestyle that created this charming community, now resurrected with popular bars, restaurants, shops, galleries, and many apartment homes.

Just across the street from Union Wharf is the Red Star, now a modern tavern serving lunch, wine and cocktails, but once a destination for sailors whose ships had docked in the harbor, and they could follow red stars painted on the sidewalk to find a thirst-quenching libation or perhaps the company of a lady of the night.

Long gone are the days of sailors and brothels, but some of the best bits of Fell’s Point – and Union Wharf – honor the very far past.

“We designed it to fit into the community. We have reclaimed floors, beams from shipyards, we’ve got lots of industrial finishes here,” said Julie Smith, President of the Bozzuto Management Company, as she sits near a full-length plate glass window looking out on Wolfe Street, with the Red Star right across the way.

“We really designed this to capitalize on the views and to feel comfortable and casual, but at the same time to pay homage to the community that it’s in. We think it’s a reflection of the Fell’s Point community and the history of the neighborhood.”

Smith and the entire Bozzuto team are very proud of Union Wharf, and rightly so. Now halfway complete and occupied, the project was a challenge to design and build. Situated on a narrow strip of land that was previously a parking lot, the 280 units, plus nearly 6,000 square feet of retail and a parking garage, are shoehorned into the unusual property configuration but still manage to maximize the harbor views. Some of the apartments overlook an infinity lap pool that stretches from the lobby right out to the boardwalk.

“The construction trailer was on a floating barge,” Smith recalls. “It was a very complicated project, on a long skinny site, so everything about it was hard. The design was difficult, the unit plans were tricky, even trying to figure out where to put the front desk was challenging. It was a unique site to stage, an intriguing site to design, and  it was hard to build, too. Now we look back and it’s a gorgeous property, very unique, but it was a lot of work to get here.”

Smith has come to Baltimore on a Monday morning for several meetings, including her interview with us. She’s impeccably dressed in an eggplant-colored suit and heels and looks as though she could be about to anchor a nightly news program on CNN. Just a year away from marking 25 years of work at Bozzuto, she’s helped build and lead a company that has continued to be known for its boutique management style, even as the portfolio size has grown from 2,000 units to nearly 40,000.

In 2013, Smith was recognized as one of the multi-family industry’s most successful executives by Multifamily Executive, an honor she describes as “overwhelming,” especially when people she hadn’t seen in years began to reach out.

“I was really excited by the number of people that I was able to connect with and reconnect with that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. It really brought a lot of people out of the woodwork,” she said.

That there were so many people anxious to congratulate Julie is no surprise to Lisa Williams, the company’s Vice President of Strategic Business Solutions and Smith’s very first hire at the company 24 years ago.

“She doesn’t forget anybody’s name, what company they are with, or even their children’s names. She genuinely cares about the people she works with,” said Williams, who clearly enjoys the chance to spend several extra hours of time in the presence of her boss. Smith’s travel schedule is hectic, and she is not only an executive, but a part-time professor and mentor at the University of Maryland, a mother to two teenage daughters, and a horsewoman, cyclist and dog owner who loves the outdoors.

Even Smith admits that her friendly and outgoing nature can be a bit much at times.

“My kids get mad at me because I talk to absolutely everybody that I meet. But that is my nature, to be friendly and outgoing. I enjoy getting to know people, and I really enjoy getting to know the people on our Bozzuto teams,” she said.

Julie Smith, President | Bozzuto Management Company from Steven Shepard on Vimeo.

The company has been consistently recognized as one of the best places to work in property management in the Mid-Atlantic region, and the corporate values established by founders Tom Bozzuto and Rick Mostyn are a big part of that. So, too, is Smith’s leadership, though it’s impossible to get her to engage in even a humble brag.

“Since we started the company, Tom Bozzuto has been very consistent in terms of making sure everyone really understands corporate values. We are very much a value driven company. The corporate values have really guided the organization over the years, and as the company got bigger, we had to change and we had to adjust to new sizes and new challenges. But the values always stayed the same,” Smith said.

Those values are defined on the company website as “CONCERN for the communities we touch. CREATIVITY in everything we do. PASSION in our approach to business. PERFECTION as a goal worth pursuing.”

Smith’s dedication to each came through as she talked with us about her work and her life. Read the interview on Multi-Housing News.

The gallery below includes images of the Union Wharf property and Fells Point. All images courtesy Bozzuto Group.