Strategy · Entitlements · Execution
From Vision
to Opening Day
Novana is a boutique development management firm that takes hospitality and retail projects from entitlement through opening day. We protect capital, own the schedule, and give owners one person accountable for the finish line.
Hospitality·Retail·Multifamily·Adaptive Reuse·Industrial
One partner, every phase
A single accountable lead, from the first feasibility question to the day the doors open.
Most firms specialize in one phase. Novana connects all of them, so nothing falls through the seams between consultants, contractors, and capital.
Services
What Novana does
Development Management
Run the project end to end, from entitlements and consultant coordination through budgeting, approvals, construction, and turnover, with one person owning the outcome.
Owner's Representation
Protect your interests through design and construction as your single accountable point of contact across the entire team.
Entitlements & Pre-Development
Take a site from raw feasibility to permit-ready: zoning, subdivision, agency coordination, and the jurisdictional strategy that makes or breaks a deal.
Feasibility & Underwriting
Pro formas, deal screening, and feasibility analysis, increasingly AI-assisted, to pressure-test a project before capital is committed.
Why Novana
Every project needs someone accountable for the finish line. Novana exists to be that partner.
Developers, investors, and owners bring in Novana when a project carries real complexity: multiple stakeholders, entitlement risk, a tight basis. They need a creative operator who can make the numbers work, and the will to drive the project across the line.
Background
Ben Cohen brings more than a decade of project leadership across architecture, construction, and development, in the United States and abroad:
- Trained as an architect, with degrees in architecture and civil engineering, a Master’s in Construction Project Management, and early work at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Zaha Hadid Architects.
- Program and project management as an owner’s representative at Mace Group in London and Chicago, including the £100M refurbishment of the Grade II listed Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall for the UK Department for Education, and a 300-site national retail program for Walgreens.
- Ground-up, adaptive reuse, and fit-out construction at Summit Design + Build in Chicago, on projects from $1.25M to $17.5M, including landmarked buildings in the Fulton Market district.
- Multifamily construction at Brinkman in Colorado, building Class A and B communities of 200 to 300 units in Denver and Colorado Springs.
- Senior Development Manager at Highside Companies, delivering ground-up hospitality (including Everhome Suites and Cambria) and industrial projects from $15M to $60M across the U.S., Canada, and into Australia.
Current work
About
Built from every seat on the project.
Trained as an architect, I moved through program management as an owner’s representative, then general contracting, then development. That is more than a decade of projects in the U.S. and abroad.
That range is the point. Having sat on the design side, the contractor side, and the owner’s side, I can see where a project will break before it does, and protect the schedule and budget across the seams most teams fall through.
When you hire Novana, you work directly with me from start to finish. I assemble and lead the architects, contractors, and consultants each project needs, which means senior-level attention and a single point of accountability, without the layers. My clients are investors, developers, and commercial property owners across Colorado, Arizona, and beyond.
Get in touch
Let’s talk about
your project.
Denver, Colorado