In 1972 Gary, Wolford’s eldest, and in 1973, Dennis, Melvin’s second, joined their father’s real estate operation. Their first jobs included property management of the family’s shopping centers – which meant everything from dealing with Tenant issues, answering maintenance calls and picking up trash.

Training their sons in their business practices was paramount to Melvin and Wolford - the importance of honesty, attention to detail and maintaining strong connections to each tenant and a keeping a first class physical plant. Tasked next with supervising the renovations of their father’s assets, they heeded their fathers advice on the importance of being on time, on budget and the significance of treating others as they wanted to be treated. Contractors in particular were to be paid instantaneously once the job was done and this built tremendous loyalty.

Construction proved to be their niche and soon thereafter they escalated their development activities; building and owning/managing racquetball clubs in Laurel and Silver Spring MD, purchasing and renovating warehouses in Columbia, MD, building a ten story office building on family land in 1979 for only $30PSF and acquiring surplus schools from Prince George's county and converting them into office parks in Laurel and Beltsville, MD. Their projects were very profitable because they were meticulously on time and budget and themselves performed the tasks of four trades - general contracting, supervising, managing, and leasing. They operated a lean organization, and were extremely fiscally conservative as they had learned to be from their fathers who were now ambling towards retirement.

In 1986, Dennis and Gary formed BECO management with Jeffrey Cohen and Michael Epstein, Dennis’ close friend and brother in law respectively, to purchase, renovate and stabilize retail shopping centers and medical office buildings in the Baltimore Washington area. At around the same time, the Bermans acquired fifty acres of prime real estate at the New Carrolton Metro station in Prince George’s County, MD (the only non DC AMTRAK stop and a major transportation hub) which they spent years successfully re- zoning to allow for a massive mixed use development comprised of 1.6 million square feet of office space, 2,400 apartment units, and a 500 room hotel.

The early 1990’s proved to be a turning point for the Bermans, when in 1992, during the collapse of the Real Estate market, they were one of the few developers with cash looking to purchase assets. Having managed literally every aspect of the business from maintenance, acquisitions, legal, leasing, accounting, etc. in house, the Bermans were looking at the prospect of buying a large portfolio of buildings and to do so they decided they needed a more substantial organization structure than the very lean one that they maintained under Berman Enterprises. Utilizing the BECO vehicle that they had formed 6 years earlier and with the Berman money and their signature ability to complete due diligence in blazing speed and close quickly with all cash, they acquired a tremendously valuable portfolio of buildings in Suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia which has grown to approximately five million square feet after acquiring approximately two million square feet in Charlotte, North Carolina in early 2010 www.beconet.com [BECO has approximately fifty employees managing approximately seventy buildings in Maryland, VA and North Carolina and was voted as the #1 midsized business to work for in the Washington Metro area in 2009].

At the same time that they were expanding rapidly with BECO, the Berman’s contracted with the Federal Government (GSA) to land develop their New Carrollton property (“Metroview”) and sell thirty acres to GSA for the vertical construction of the 1.2million square foot IRS facility that exists there today. In 2001, the Berman's constructed the 325,000 square foot built to suit office building for Computer Sciences Corporation on a portion of their remaining lands at Metroview in New Carrollton, MD.

After their completion of this project, the Berman cousins turned more exclusively towards civic and charitable pursuits with Gary’s heavy involvement in the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and Dennis' construction of three of local area Jewish Day schools (the first of which he acted as superintendent showing up at 6am and running the entire job from morning till evening just as he had done at work twenty years earlier.)

Dennis and Gary maintain an active advisory role to the third generation of Bermans currently operating the businesses.