Cherokee owns and operates investment real estate. Most of our holdings were previously dilapidated, dangerous, non-performing properties that we acquired by foreclosure from irresponsible or absent owners who had abandoned them.
We then restore a property to its full potential; this typically involves an extensive renovation. In the case of commercial properties, we often redevelop them, creating permanent local jobs, restoring the tax base, and providing a home to commercial enterprises that serve the immediate neighborhood, such as retail stores or professional offices.
Community development is usually associated with the rehabilitation of residential housing stock in a community. Cherokee is active in this area. However a healthy community needs a mix of different kinds of real estate, including residential, commercial, industrial, and undeveloped land that is often called open space or vacant land.
Any improvement to real estate benefits a community. Residential renovations increase the amount and quality of housing.
Renovations of commercial properties not only stabilize the tax base and reduce crime, but they provide local jobs, and often serve the community with retail and office services. While providing all of these advantages, commercial renovations also give the additional benefit of not creating further demand for educational or social services. They are a win-win situation for communities, as they tend to pay more taxes into a town's coffers than they extract in services. Therefore, they are very desirable to a community, assuming that they are developed in a responsible manner, and in concert with a community's vision for its future.Cherokee is committed to being an agent for positive change in the communities in which we work. Our commercial developments tend to be smaller infill projects, or the renovation of existing properties. Our renovations are based on very distressed properties, since these are what we tend to acquire by foreclosure, our standard asset acquisition mechanism.
Renovating existing commercial properties helps maintain the character of mature communities. It is much less disruptive to the surrounding properties, as it does not create new drainage and infrastructure requirements. Plus, renovating is "green" in the sense that salvaging any property is the equivalent of recycling it; renovation means that less material is placed into landfills, and less new construction material is used.
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