Not your suit & tie real estate firm.
Steel Projects is a boutique real estate development and brokerage firm specializing in preserving, enhancing, and activating impactful urban properties. Steel Projects maintains strong community involvement, keen market knowledge and awareness, award-winning brokerage services, and robust asset management and development experience with commercial, residential, and mixed-use projects.
Who is Steel Projects?
Ben Steel, a Raleigh native, founded Steel Projects in 2020 following nearly 15 years of real estate finance, brokerage, development, and asset management practice with other local groups. Prior to founding Steel Projects, Ben worked with downtown Raleigh-based Empire Properties as Vice President of Asset Management and the firm’s managing broker after initially joining as a leasing associate. During his tenure with Empire Properties, Ben successfully negotiated over 1,000 commercial leases and advised the firm through the acquisition, disposition, and evaluation of numerous properties, helping it expand into one of the market’s largest, most-stable, and impactful private real estate firms. He managed the firm’s third-party brokerage projects, assisting clients with purchasing, selling, leasing, financing, and managing commercial and multifamily real estate holdings. Prior to joining Empire Properties, Ben worked with Paragon Commercial Bank, now TowneBank, gaining valuable experience on a number of projects that included aiding with raising large-scale capital and underwriting clients’ prospective commercial real estate projects.
Ben has been the recipient of awards by the Triangle Business Journal (TBJ) and/or Triangle Commercial Association of Realtors (TCAR) for the most completed commercial real estate transactions in the region in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Ben has received over 20 additional awards from TCAR during his career and was also named a member of the TBJ’s “40 Under 40” in 2016, awarded to individuals demonstrating substantial community service and high professional achievement.
Ben actively serves on the Southeast Raleigh YMCA board of directors and its racial equity committee, and has previously served on the boards of directors of the Me Fine Foundation and Visual Art Exchange, and the advisory board for the Junior League of Raleigh. Ben was a member of the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce’s 31st class of Leadership Raleigh, was appointed to the City of Raleigh Retail Task Force, and has served on numerous other planning and development initiatives.
Ben is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Economics and minoring in both Entrepreneurship and Spanish. Ben’s affinity for downtown Raleigh came at an early age while attending Washington Elementary and Ligon Middle schools, before later graduating from St. David’s School.
His first self-managed project began in 2008 with the preservation and renovation of a condemned historic home in the Chavis Park neighborhood. Ben and his wife, Lindsay enjoy living in that same house, spending time with their two young children, seeing live music, and going to the beach - especially Cape Cod.