Dara Kovel
Beacon Communities has a busy year ahead, including redeveloping a historic school building into a mixed-use community anchored by affordable housing for seniors in Beverly, Massachusetts.
The firm, along with Harborlight Homes, is transforming the 100-year-old Briscoe School into the new Beverly Village for Living and the Arts, an ambitious adaptive-reuse project that will create 85 affordable home for seniors and six live/work studios with an artist occupancy preference.
Overall, the firm has about $1.5 billion in development under way from early-stage predevelopment work through construction completion, says CEO Dara Kovel.
The firm has seen major growth in the New York region, purchasing two portfolios last year—one in Ulster County and another in western New York, effectively tripling its ownership and management presence the state. In addition, the New York City Housing Authority this year announced the selection of a team that includes Beacon to deliver $128.5 million in comprehensive repairs and upgrades to three properties in the northeast Bronx along with new construction opportunities.
The Boston-based firm is also growing in Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., according to Kovel, who became CEO in 2019 after serving as president of Beacon’s development company.
She came to affordable housing early in her career. Kovel, who grew up in Connecticut, moved to San Francisco after college and found an industry that brought together her many interests.
“As I started to learn that there was such a profession where you could build buildings, oversee construction, run numbers, work with designers and contractors, work with community groups, and change neighborhoods and change lives, I knew immediately it was something I had to do,” Kovel says.
She began as an administrative assistant at Mercy Housing and never looked back, steadily moving up the ranks at the nonprofit organization, eventually opening its Southern California office.
After Kovel and her family moved backed to the East Coast, she earned an MBA at Yale University and worked for Jonathan Rose Cos., another prominent developer, and the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, where she led the multifamily and tax credit allocation divisions.
“The moment I learned about the field, I knew it was what I wanted to do,” she says.
In addition to her work at Beacon Communities, which has roughly 18,000 units in 150 properties in 12 states, Kovel is involved in several industry organizations, including serving on the boards of the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing and the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association. Kovel is also on the board of Housing Navigator Massachusetts, a nonprofit that was established to create a platform where people can search for affordable housing opportunities throughout the state.
