Find Your Focus
Ever since he bought and rehabbed his first home at age 17, Foreman has had a passion for real-estate development. In 2004, he cofounded Maktub Development, a real-estate development firm focused on inner cities, with NBA star Chris Webber.
At one point, the company had investments across the country, including in Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and California. Then the real-estate market dried up in the 2008 recession, prompting Foreman to reevaluate. “I thought, why do I need to travel around the country to get my butt kicked? Why not just stay right here at home?” he said. “What would happen if we really concentrated our impact in one geography?”
Foreman shifted gears to invest almost exclusively in the Washington Park and Bronzeville communities of Chicago. Today, the Washington Park Development Group is the largest landowner in the Washington Park community, with about a million square feet of land and more than 300 rehabbed residential units to its name.
It wasn’t the original strategy, Foreman noted, but it turned into an opportunity to have a stronger impact on the community.
“We decided that it’s a place where we could have good community relationships, good political relationships, and get to know everybody in the neighborhood,” he said. “It gave us the ability to make a mark.”