Dive summary:

• Two brothers in Washington, D.C., are taking urban development, and thus construction, in a new investment direction – back into their project's own neighborhood.
• Dan and Ben Miller saw a disconnect between neighborhoods that were haltingly coming back and traditional real estate financing by wealthy or institutional investors focused on high-rise or suburban glass-tower projects .
• The brothers finally found a law firm that said it would be possible to sell small shares in their H Street Northwest building to individuals in the area. They asked people in the neighborhood what kind of businesses they would want in the former dollar store, got Securities and Exchange Commission approval under a seldom-used regulatory provision after sending pounds of paperwork, and made their crowd-funding approach a reality.

From the article:

Dan and Ben Miller began tugging two years ago at a simple question they believe is central to the failings of the American real estate industry. ...