Condo Media - March 2017 - 42

Volunteer Spotlight

The Energizer

David Abel's Commitment to Saving Energy-and Giving It, Too
With so many demands on one's time, from career
to home and family, it takes energy to be a volunteer. David Abel, CMCA, has been an active volunteer
with Community Associations Institute (CAI) for more
than two decades, so it's poetically fitting that energy is
one of Abel's passions.
Abel's interest in energy and conservation dates back
many years, and, as a property management professional, he has been in an excellent position to share this
passion with condominium associations. For example,
early in his career, when replacing toilets with low-flow
models was popularized, he advocated with association boards
to make the switch.
He also was an early proponent of solar energy and
energy-saving programs. "I'm
very excited by the whole thing,"
he says. After putting solar
panels on his own home six
years ago, he began establishing
relationships with industry professionals and looking for ways
to promote energy conservation.
Additionally, over the past handful of years, he has been involved
with numerous lighting retrofits.
And he was among the first
property managers to implement switching streetlights to LED fixtures.
Currently senior vice president and director of business development for The Niles Company, Inc., of Canton, Mass., Abel "fell into" the industry in 1984, when
he was a volunteer for the John Glenn for President

campaign. The campaign's local office was a donated
space in a small condominium office in Brookline,
Mass., and when the owner offered him a job in the
industry, he accepted. It was right at that point in time
that the market "began to explode," as he puts it. "I had
to learn on the fly."
He turned to CAI for his education and promptly
became actively involved in the organization. What Abel
has enjoyed most in his volunteer work with CAI is the
Managers' Committee, which he first chaired some 15
years ago and recently co-chaired with Ryan McGowan,
CMCA, vice president of Mercantile
Property Management Corporation of
Weymouth, Mass. "It's a very collegial
group and a great opportunity for
senior people and company owners to
kick around whatever's going on," Abel
says. "It's really beneficial."
One of the committee's functions
is bringing in guest speakers to
enlighten managers on current
issues. For example, now that
recreational marijuana is legal
in Massachusetts, managers and
trustees are concerned about
its impact on a multifamily setting and how best to make sure
properties are properly prepared
for any complications that might
arise from marijuana use. Abel and McGowan invited
attorney Ellen Shapiro, a principal of Dedham, Mass.based Goodman, Shapiro & Lombardi, LLC, to join
the committee to discuss the issue. "David is a very
good leader. He's very methodical and follows things
through to a T," says McGowan. "He makes sure he
knows all aspects of an issue so that he's 100 percent
accurate, and he goes in knowing what the questions
will likely be."
Among the Managers' Committee events of which
Abel is most proud was a debate over whether banks
should offer long-term loans to condominium associations. One of the panelists at the debate, which Abel moderated, was Wes Blair, senior vice president of Brookline
Bank. Though the debate "still rages," as Blair puts it, he
recalls that, "It was a very well-attended, interesting discussion that was very well received by all the managers
who were there. David did a great job of moderating."

DAVID ABEL, CMCA

"Abel's interest in energy
and conservation dates back
many years, and, as a property
management professional,
he has been in an excellent
position to share this
passion with condominium
associations."
42

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Condo Media - March 2017

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