Vandercar develops multifamily, industrial, commercial, retail and mixed-use projects across the asset spectrum, specializing in the sites other developers pass over.
Rental and for-sale residential woven into walkable districts, designed around the street, the park and the neighbors already there.
Headquarters, distribution and flex space on infill land, with the grading, utilities and access solved before a tenant signs.
Class A office and build-to-suit space placed where it anchors a district, from corporate headquarters to the upper floors of a town center.
Where the company began, with drug and grocery stores across New England. Today, restaurants and shops sited to draw foot traffic, not just cars.
Housing, offices, dining and entertainment planned together as districts, like the four that make up Summit Park in Blue Ash.
Former industrial ground, like Oakley Station, cleared, remediated and rebuilt as places the city wants back in use.
Some parcels come with a tangle: contaminated soil, a dozen owners, a derelict building, a number that does not pencil. We take that on. We handle demolition, environmental remediation, parcel assembly and financing gaps with foresight and creativity, and we work alongside the municipality rather than around it. What looks like a problem on paper is usually a place waiting for someone to finish it.
Phase II, remediation plan, VAP/NFA path and insurance priced into the deal.
Quiet assembly, options, and holdouts handled.
Demolition and abatement sequenced with construction.
Entitlements, PUDs and variances.
TIF, abatements, NMTC and public partnership.
Plans that match the city’s land-use vision.
Selected work
Blue Ash, OH
A walkable mixed-use community of four districts, with rental and for-sale residential, retail, restaurants, entertainment and Class A office. It builds on the City of Blue Ash's $75M Summit Park investment and is delivered as a public-private partnership.
Process
We look for the parcels others have written off: fragmented ownership, obsolete buildings, awkward access. We assemble them one owner at a time, under contract, before the market sees the whole picture.
Before we close, we know what is in the ground and under the slab. Surveys, soils and Phase I and II work set the real cost of demolition and remediation.
We take plans through rezoning, variances and site-plan review with the municipality, not around it. Neighbors and officials hear the project from us early.
Where a site needs help to pencil, we negotiate it directly: TIF, abatements and shared infrastructure with the city. Summit Park, built beside Blue Ash's public investment, is the model.
We structure the financing around the project, closing gaps that conventional lenders leave open. Equity, debt and public dollars are lined up before the first shovel.
Our own team runs site development and vertical construction, so schedule and budget have one owner. We stay through lease-up and the certificate of occupancy.
Founded in Cincinnati by Rob Smyjunas as a commercial brokerage.
Becomes a developer: drug and grocery stores across New Hampshire and New England.
Exclusive broker/developer for Macy's under its New England Asset Utilization Program.
The Center of Cincinnati turns a Milacron brownfield in Oakley into 440,000 sq ft of retail.
Acquires the 74-acre Oakley plant site, clears 1.6M sq ft of dormant industry, and launches Oakley Station.
Delivers the Hillman Group headquarters in Forest Park.
Delivers the Cold Jet global headquarters in Loveland.
The Neighborhoods at Summit Park.
We overcome site conditions, environmental issues and financing barriers with foresight and creativity.
A small, senior team handles each project first-hand, from the first look at a site through engineering, financing and construction.
Rob has been in commercial real estate since 1987 and founded Vandercar in 1991. He has led office, retail, industrial and mixed-use developments in seven states with a combined value of more than $700 million.
Early in his career he worked at the center of the Savings & Loan crisis, advising lenders and the federal government and buying commercial mortgages and foreclosed properties from banks and the Resolution Trust Corporation. That experience in distressed assets shaped the firm's appetite for the sites other developers pass over.
Steve has been part of Vandercar for almost twenty years and leads planning, design and permitting on the firm's larger projects. Before joining, he spent eleven years as an Associate and Senior Project Manager in the land development group at CDS Associates.
Over his career he has worked on well over 300 residential, office, retail and industrial developments. He is a registered Professional Engineer with a civil engineering degree from Purdue University and an MBA from Xavier University.
Tyler leads acquisitions, incentives and capital-stack structuring. He joined Vandercar in 2020 after a decade in corporate finance, where he served as Director of Financial Planning and Analysis and later as Chief Financial Officer.
That background in project and structured finance, strategic planning and corporate development is what lets the firm underwrite complicated sites with confidence and build capital stacks that close.
Plans that match the land-use vision, and public-private structures that hold up through approvals and construction.
Build-to-suit delivery for single-tenant and multi-tenant users, from site selection through occupancy.
Assemblage, joint ventures and recapitalizations that turn fragmented or stalled land into a financeable project.
Tell us about the land, the constraints and where it is stuck. We will tell you plainly whether we can move it forward and how.
Thanks — we'll be in touch.