Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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development. Learning about tenants outside of the food business was just the start, he says. "I spent a year in acquisi- tions and a year running acquisitions and leasing, and then the third year I took over construction as well," Cham- pion said. "I became the company's ex- ecutive vice president the fourth year I was there. When I look back at my ca- reer, there seem to be a lot of zigzags. But in hindsight, everything I did was helpful toward what I'm doing now." Lyle Darnall, a managing director at Edens, also looks back fondly on his years in retailing. These days Darnall is responsible for the development firm's platform of assets in high-growth mar- kets in Georgia and the Carolinas. Over the past 15 years, he has directed the development or redevelopment of some 4 million square feet of high- end retail space, including 17 grocery stores, six department stores and nu- merous big-box stores. Before join- ing Edens in 1999, however, Darnall spent a decade running the real estate department at Bookland, which be- came Books-A-Million. During this pre-Kindle era, book- sellers such as Waldens and B. Dalton did brisk business at the malls, while the likes of Barnes & Noble pursued big-box sites at suburban shopping centers. Throughout the 1990s, Dar- nall went up against these and other competitors as he scouted markets in the Southeast and the Midwest for sites suitable for either a 3,000-square- foot Bookland or a 25,000-square-foot Books-A-Million. When Darnall started with the chain in 1989, it operated 93 Bookland and three Books-A-Million stores. When he left a decade later, the company operated 125 Books-A-Mil- lion and about 60 Bookland stores. "At that time big-box stores were starting to become the dominant growth vehicle for a lot of chains," Darnall said. "It was fun to watch the industry change and to participate in that shift." On-the-ground analysis was a big part of the job. Darnall spent hours driving around Kentucky, Missouri, Texas and Virginia to view prospective sites and markets. Along the way, he says, he built a skill set that continues to serve him well as he evaluates markets and sites for Edens. "Going into new markets where I didn't know everything was probably what I enjoyed the most," he said. "You would start with a clean slate and then come away with a perception about whether you could be successful in that market." At Books-A-Million Darnall took dozens of calls from developers seek- ing to interest him in opening stores at their shopping centers. After join- ing Edens, he remembered what it was like to receive calls from those who had skimped a bit on their homework about Books-A-Million's strategic pri- orities, locations and competition. "You would get an awful lot of phone calls where people were just trying to throw something at you to see if it would stick," Darnall said. "I had peo- ple call me and ask me if I would be interested in a shopping center where, literally, we had opened a store across the street just a month before." And so when it came time to approach prospective tenants on behalf of Edens, Darnall put a priority on preparation. "One of my takeaways was that it is important to understand the retailer and what makes them tick, from an operations standpoint, their real es- tate needs, you name it," he said. "So while I might make fewer phone calls to retailers about sites, hopefully when I do make that call, it is a qualified call." Because mobile technology was still in its infancy, Darnall's decade with the chain also gave him a thorough appreci- ation for the face-to-face, on-the-ground nature of the real estate business, he says. "I still believe that nothing beats being out on the actual real estate," he said. "Today there is such a reliance on technology. It certainly helps everybody and has great advantages. But what I tell my people around here is, 'It is not going to happen on a computer screen. It has got to happen in person.' " Van Westmoreland — founder and principal of Westmoreland Co., a com- mercial brokerage and development firm in Marietta, Ga.—started his retail cross- training by putting on an orange apron and walking the aisles of The Home De- pot. He served as a real estate manager for the big-box chain before founding Westmoreland Co. in 2002. "When you O c t O b e r 2 0 1 4 / S C T 51 V a n W e s t m o r e l a n d , p r i n c i p a l o f W e s t m o r e l a n d c o . , m a r i e t t a , G a . l y l e d a r n a l l , a m a n a G i n G d i r e c t o r a t e d e n s