Omaha-based SB Communities has hit a major milestone, reaching 1,000 completed apartment communities.
SB Communities, LLC, owned by Jerry Slusky and Bob Batt, is a privately-owned real estate development company known in Nebraska and Iowa for its focus on building new, first-class apartment communities since 2013. The company specializes in Midwest communities with populations of around 50,000 where there is a particular need for amenity-filled apartments.
SB Communities develops projects with resort-style pools, innovative clubhouses, full-size fitness facilities and individual apartments with quartz island countertops, stainless steel appliances and washer/dryers as basic amenities.
The company recently passed the milestone of completing 1,000 apartment units. Slusky and Batt put their decades of experience earned in real estate development and furniture sales and marketing to give SB Communities, LLC this extraordinary pace of growth.
Batt grew up and went to college in Omaha. He retired from Nebraska Furniture Mart (now a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary) after a long and successful career in marketing and executive leadership. He then joined with Slusky to create SB Communities, LLC.
Attorney Slusky has been in real estate law for more than 45 years, most of which have been spent assisting clients in all aspects of the development of commercial real estate. He is the Founder of the CRE Summit, an annual commercial real estate conference now in its 32nd consecutive year. He is also one of only seven Nebraska Fellows of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers (ACREL).
Some of the company’s widely recognized projects include The Sterling Apartments of Grand Island, The Sterling Apartments of Kearney and The Sterling Apartments at Prairie Trail in Ankeny, Iowa.
Speaking about the company’s recent achievement, Slusky said, “A thousand units is an important number. It demonstrates that we were right to invest in research and move forward with providing these communities the products they were missing. SB Communities provides a first-class apartment living experience that is more like a home, set in an amenity-filled community campus.”
Batt is optimistic about the future of the company.
“Mrs. B, Founder of the Nebraska Furniture Mart, often told me, ‘It’s not what you want. It’s what the customer wants,'” Batt said. “And that’s true for this business as well. The transfer of business ideas and theory applies as we consider what the customer is wanting, not what we want.”
SB Communities is also a partner in a joint venture in the development of 300 units in Papillion, Nebraska, Axis Apartments, which opened its first two buildings last August. The company is also planning to break ground on a new 404-unit apartment community in the Prairie Trail subdivision of Ankeny, Iowa, in May of this year.
