Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/231459
loyal following within his company and widespread respect among other industry leaders and business partners. "Matthew Bucksbaum was a good person. That simple, one-syllable word tells it all," said John T. Riordan, former president and CEO of ICSC and a past director at General Growth. Riordan was at the helm of ICSC when Matthew Bucksbaum chaired the organization in 1992. Ironically Bucksbaum's rise to the top of an industry he helped to found began almost by accident. After serving overseas in the U.S. Air Force during World War II as a cryptographer, he returned to his home state and attended the University of Iowa, graduating cum laude in 1949 with a bachelor's in economics. After graduating, Bucksbaum went to work in the family business, a chain of three grocery stores in and around Marshalltown, Iowa. But his career took an unexpected turn when he and his brother got the chance in the early 1950s to take over a foundering shopping center project in Cedar Rapids. They scrapped their original plans to open a fourth grocery store at the planned center and became the developers instead, borrowing $1.2 million and selling their grocery stores to finance the project. The grocers-turned-developers opened Town & Country Center in 1954, one of the first centers in the Midwest and the first of a number of centers they developed in the region before shifting their focus to enclosed malls in the 1960s. The brothers cultivated a working relationship that served them well. Martin, older and hard-driving, assumed the lead role, setting strategy, negotiating with retailers and securing financing for projects. The quieter Matthew spent more of his time focused on the operations side of the business. They were tough but fair negotiators who took pride in never failing to deliver what they promised. As a result, they developed strong ties to department 52 SCT / j a n u a r y 2 0 1 4 stores eager to expand their presence in the suburbs of major Midwestern cities. Those ties helped to fuel their growth when they began to pursue development opportunities outside the Midwest. "Martin was the financier, and Matthew was the development and operations person," said Matthew Bucksbaum's son John. Matthew Bucksbaum served as CEO until 1999, when, at age 73, he handed the reins of the company over to his son, who was named chairman when his father retired. "They had a wonderful partnership. They had different skills that, when combined, pretty much covered the full spectrum," said John Bucksbaum, who went on to start Bucksbaum Retail Properties in Chicago. Yet in 1995 Matthew Bucksbaum suddenly found himself running the company alone when his brother Martin died of a heart attack at the age of 74. At the time, General Growth was in the process of finalizing a deal that would first establish it as a major player in the industry, the $1.85 billion acquisition of Homart Development Co., the shopping center arm of Sears, Roebuck & Co. Until then, General Growth had been known primarily as a shopping center company focused on middle markets. The deal also triggered a move from Des Moines to Chicago, where Homart was headquartered. "When it came time to step up to "He always asked questions about what you do, and did not talk too much about what he had done. With him, you always felt like an important partner." the plate [after Martin died], he did it," said Anthony Downs, a former director at General Growth and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy think tank based in Washington. "I always admired Matthew for that reason and also because he is such a wonderful person, completely honest and not arrogant," said Downs, when interviewed a few years ago. Downs joined the board in 1992, the year before the company went public for the second time. The Bucksbaums formed their first REIT in 1972, but the stock languished due to a lackluster appetite among investors for REITs. So in 1984 they sold its holdings to Equitable Life Assurance Society for $800 million, the largestever, single-asset real estate transaction at the time. They ran a private family of General Growth companies until they formed their second REIT in 1993. After seeing through the Homart deal in 1995, Matthew Bucksbaum presided over a steady stream of acquisitions that significantly expanded the company's geographic reach. By late 1998, General Growth had malls in 39 states, not bad for a company that five years earlier had nearly half its portfolio in the Midwest. As chairman, Bucksbaum continued to play a major role in acquisitions, including the biggest in the company's history, the 2004 acquisition of The Rouse Co. A deal valued at $12.6 billion, the Rouse acquisition added 37 regional malls to General Growth's portfolio, including such trophy malls as Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Chicago's Water Tower Place. In 2004, the company also expanded abroad for the first time through joint ventures in Brazil and Costa Rica. As chairman, "he was a steadying influence, asking the same questions that he always asked all of those years. They would tend to be the good questions and the more difficult questions," said John Bucksbaum, who followed in his