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director of for-sale marketing, Milhaus Development
Roads not taken: During his college years, Micah Hill not only studied, but worked in, construction. “It was great experience in understanding what I didn’t want to do—which was be a guy in my 50s still framing houses.” He also avoided the architecture road during an internship. “I was fascinated with the creation and formation of things,” he said, “but they stuck me behind a desk and made me a CAD monkey taking care of details that other people didn’t want to do. That poor internship changed my focus to construction.”
In the Milhaus: With over 14 years of experience in construction and development projects, primarily as manager of operations and then vice president with The Re-Development Group, Hill is now director of for-sale housing for Milhaus Development, one of the city’s most prolific apartment developers. “I developed a niche of a niche,” he said, “developing and rehabbing urban custom homes. What I like about this industry is that it’s a very tangible product. The problems are real. And my job is to look at all angles of a project and to look for solutions for my client and figure out how to get from point A to point B.”
Family: daughter, Cora, 7
Builders unite: LEED-certified with the U.S. Green Building Council and a green-certified professional from the National Association of Home Builders, Hill has served on the board of the Builders Association of Greater Indianapolis since 2011 and took over as president in 2015. “My biggest fear is that we fall back into old-school practices and thinking,” he said. “One of the biggest hurdles we have in construction and sometimes development is that contractors have a mentality of, ‘This is the way I’ve done it for 20 years.’ We have to make sure [BAGI] stays progressive and is still a viable organization in five, 10 years.”
Built for adventure: For fun, Hill likes to travel, sometimes visiting other cities “to see what’s going on there with development and architecture” and sometimes backpacking. He recently took a trip to Turkey, staying in hostels. “People thought I was crazy,” he said. “You don’t have email. Only eight pieces of clothing. You may fly over alone, but you don’t end up that way. It’s very communal.”•
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