Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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56 S C T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 art galleries and artisan restaurants, is one of Chicago's most sought-after places to live. And its revitalization bequeathed to her a personal experience she has been able to apply to her professional life. "I understand the importance of smart growth," she said. "You need to preserve and protect the community while still allowing opportunity for commercial and residential development. You can't just pop a project in — you need to be sensitive to the area." This principle is what attracted her to Continuum, she says. "The projects that they focus on, like the redevelopment of Union Station — Continuum transformed 19.5 acres of Denver's abandoned rail yard into an urban center — are very much synergistic with my own lifestyle," she said. Blair had not initially planned on a career in real estate. At Marquette, she majored in speech pathology. "But by junior year I knew that wasn't for me, and [I] started taking business classes," she said. Blair's first experience in the industry was working at her college's apartment living center, helping students find off-campus housing. To her surprise, she found that she liked learning about leases and contracts. She went on to spend her summers working at the local Century 21 office. "I love how all these complex components — from finance, to structure, to design, to operations — all come together to create an actual, physical place," she said. Blair's first job out of college was as a property manager at Compass Management (then a part of Equitable Real Estate). Along with overseeing the company's Michigan Avenue properties, Blair served on the North Michigan Avenue Beautification Committee. "At the time, there really wasn't any sense of a river walk [along the avenue]," she said. "Our mission was to really look at Michigan Avenue and try to make it into a more vibrant, dynamic, beautiful place. We worked on everything from landscape campaigns to creating actual walkways around the river, which led to the opening of restaurants and the start of the beautiful River Walk that exists today." In 1996 Blair was hired by New York City–based Tishman Speyer, which had just purchased Rockefeller Center, to manage one of the complex's buildings. When Blair had been 18 months in the job, Peter Fair, who was leading the transformation of Rockefeller Center's retail, sought to have Blair join his team. "I remember Peter telling me back then about this impressive person who was helping him wade through all the challenges of remaking several hundred-thousand square feet of ground-floor space in one of America's most important historic structures," said Mark Falcone, who would later co-found Continuum with Fair. "Donna has always been fearless. She just calmly takes on any challenge put in front of her." Blair counts her experience at Rockefeller Center as a career milestone. "I get to tell family and friends who are visiting New York: You know where The Today Show does the Concert Series? Well, I was part of making that happen. And all the restaurants along the ice- skating rink? That was also part of my initiative," she said. Blair's next job — overseeing the development of Meadowlands Xanadu, a $2.5 billion development project in New Jersey that encompasses some 2 million square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment space — did not go quite as smoothly. The project stalled when the economy went south, and Blair and her team had to bail out. "It taught me about reality," she said. "Every day you have to wake up with the conviction that you are going to do the best you can, but sometimes things just don't work. And then you have to be resilient and set your sights on the next goal." The former Xanadu, now under new ownership and renamed American Dream Meadowlands — is scheduled to open in 2019. Blair went on to help KKR & Co. reposition and operate Yorktown Center, a 1.5 million-square-foot mall in Lombard, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. This center was the private equity firm's first real estate acquisition, and when KKR bought two more, in New York City, Blair oversaw the operation and the $40 million redevelopment of all three. Blair's arrival at Continuum in May has, in a sense, brought things full circle for the woman who had so many years before recognized the potential in that neglected Chicago neighborhood; Continuum has a reputation for innovative, urban, mixed-used developments. Said Falcone, "There are not many people I can imagine who are as well suited to our specific situation." n I love how all these complex components ... all come together to create an actual, physical space PHOTO: ALANA WATKINS N E W S M A K E R