Wood Partners Names Micah Conn South Florida Managing Director
A national multifamily builder is staffing up in Delray Beach before it has visible product to show for it.
Wood Partners has hired Micah Conn as managing director to run its South Florida development office, the company confirmed this week. Conn will oversee origination, design, entitlements, capitalization and construction management for the region. What he will not have on day one is a South Florida project under construction: a check of Wood Partners’ own pipeline shows its active Florida sites are all in the Tampa Bay area and Orlando, not Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach.
Why it matters
For developers tracking who is about to compete for South Florida land and entitlements, a staffing move ahead of visible product is its own signal. Wood Partners is a national merchant builder with a real South Florida track record, including Alta Dadeland, a 431-unit tower near Dadeland Mall, and three Delray Beach communities. But nothing in that history is newer than 2020, and nothing in the company’s current construction list touches South Florida. Conn’s hire reads as the company positioning ahead of sites, not managing sites it already has.
The numbers
Conn spent more than 20 years in multifamily and mixed-use development, most recently as senior vice president of development at AvalonBay Communities, where Wood Partners’ own bio for him says he established the firm’s Southeast Florida operations. Wood Partners itself has built since 1990 and operates more than 1,500 buildings nationally out of 16 regional offices, according to its website. In South Florida specifically, its last delivered project was the $128 million, 431-unit Alta Dadeland in 2015; its Delray Beach output, Midtown Delray, Alta Congress and Alta Delray Station, totaled roughly 400 more units built between 2013 and 2020. Nothing has broken ground there since.
What’s next
Conn’s mandate is to build a pipeline where Wood Partners currently has none moving. Notably, his former employer just told the SEC something similar: AvalonBay’s merger agreement with Equity Residential, forming Vivmark Residential, names Southeast Florida a formal expansion region. Whether Conn can convert entitlements into groundbreakings in a market where competitors, including AvalonBay’s successor, are also circling will be the test of this hire. Watch Wood Partners’ permits and site plans in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach county records over the next two quarters for the first sign of a real South Florida deal.
On the record
What we checked ourselves, and where you can check it too.
- Public recordWood Partners' own leadership page lists Conn's base as the company's Delray Beach office at 1615 South Congress Avenue and credits him with having established Southeast Florida operations for AvalonBay, a detail beyond what the hiring announcements themselves said.
- Public recordChecking Wood Partners' own project pages turns up no South Florida development currently under construction: its active Florida pipeline is Alta Roosevelt in St. Petersburg, Alta at Magnolia Park in Hillsborough County and Altera Land O' Lakes near Tampa. Its South Florida record is Alta Dadeland, a $128M, 431-unit Miami project delivered in 2015, and three Delray Beach communities built between 2013 and 2020.View the record on woodpartners.com
- Our coverageOur own coverage of the Equity Residential-AvalonBay merger found the SEC-filed agreement names Southeast Florida a formal AvalonBay expansion region, the same market Conn is leaving AvalonBay's lineage to build for a competitor.Read our earlier story →