In a case of inauspicious timing, Steve Backman's one-year-old development firm was just moving into its new headquarters in Phoenix when COVID-19 shutdowns sent staffers scattering. So Backman, the "B" in BH DevCo, found himself back in the at-home office he had just been dismantling, managing not only a litany of new clients he couldn't meet but also an unfamiliar role as schoolteacher for his sons. "I've been working on my octagons with the third-grader and on Julius Caesar and algebra with the middle-schooler," he said proudly.

Backman's firm, co-founded with construction and industrial specialist Tracy Hammer, develops build-to-suit space throughout the West and Midwest for national e-commerce warehouse tenants, many of which are itching to roll out physical stores. The pandemic has impacted the firm's clients differently. Some want to expand quickly, enjoying sales spikes from sheltering-in-place consumers, while supply-chain disruptions are strangling similar ambitions for others. Capital constraints have put yet other clients’ developments on hold indefinitely.

BH DevCo, which was unveiled at RECon 2019, had been conducting business via virtual offices from the start, so productivity has remained stable, he said. The company employs whichever teleconferencing meeting services each client prefers. "We are fluent in them all, from Cisco Webex to Zoom to Skype to Amazon Chime to Google Meet and others," Backman said, adding: “The negative impact has been in our inability to have face-to-face meetings. It's tougher to build that trust during the front-end time of a project if you're not sitting in front of each other."

Backman remains super busy during the blur of days that has come to exemplify self-quarantine. He said: "My nine-year-old joked, 'Can I get you on my calendar?' So I told him I'd pencil him in at 9:30."

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