Shopping Centers Today

NOV 2014

Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)

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to negotiating leases," Messing said. "It was a great training ground." In 1992 Taco Bell promoted Messing to direc- tor of development for the Western U.S. and Canada, with responsibility to find and lease new spaces. "I learned that doing business was different in Vancouver than it was in Phoenix than it was in San Francisco," Messing said. "There were different cultures in the different places, and the availabil- ity of land made it easier to find space in Arizona and Colorado." Messing says that what he loved best about the job was assessing the pluses and mi- nuses of potential new space, negotiat- ing with sellers and getting quick feed- back on whether his calculations were right. "You get the results right away," said Messing. Within six months one can know whether a place is headed to- ward success or failure, he says. He was not afraid to "break the rules" on occasion, such as the time he opened a Taco Bell as an end cap to a strip center in Burlington, Mass. "It was a very unusual deal at the time," he said. "Taco Bell was focused on freestanding locations; they did not look for locations in strip malls." But Messing took a gamble that the mall across the street, and the limited avail- ability of other fast-food establish- ments in the area, would make the place a success. And because the site had initially been a bank, the city or- dinance allowed Taco Bell to operate a drive-through. The place was an in- stant success. Messing also learned some lessons the hard way. He learned, for instance, that no matter how attractive a loca- tion is, if it does not have good ac- cessibility, it will fail. "Early on in my Taco Bell days, I opened a Taco Bell in Marlboro, Massachusetts," he said. "It had compromised access, but great de- mographics and a ton of traffic." But the lack of an easy access point and driveway turned people away. Beyond merely appreciating flex- ible, creative thinking, Messing even seems to embody that approach. "In Kissimmee, Florida, it was very dif- ficult to find a freestanding site at an intersection," Messing said, recalling his days at Eckerd. So he took it upon himself to create what he needed — he bought a gas station at the site he wanted, plus some additional land at the intersection. In the end, a free- standing Eckerd stood at the corner, with a relocated Waffle House to the north and a Dairy Queen with a recon- figured parking lot to the west. "Steve excels at problem solving," said John Crossman, president of Crossman & Co., a commercial real estate firm that has worked with Messing. "He's good at reconfiguring shopping centers, but he also knows how to do that with companies. …He has a really good eye for what works and what doesn't." After decades in the retail universe, Messing made the leap in 2007 to the residential side, joining Kitson & Partners, a residential and commercial real estate investment and develop- ment firm in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., as president of commercial de- velopment. There he led a team that oversaw some 1.6 million square feet of shopping centers. "I liked the chal- lenge of mixed-use larger projects," Messing said. His transition, though, happened to coincide with the start of the recession. "Fortunately, with Kit- son & Partners, we were backed by in- stitutional investors that had patience and supported us," said Messing. "We were very fortunate that we didn't get too aggressive and had the strength to survive the recession." From those years Messing learned the importance of underwriting deals that make sense and of having an exit strategy in the event of a downslide. One of his proud achievements at Kitson was a 60-acre redevelopment in Seminole, Fla. This involved con- verting a trailer park into a multiuse project with 330 apartments, 56 single- family homes, 220,000 square feet of retail and a 120-room hotel. Last fall, though, Ferber Co. wanted to expand its portfolio and was looking for someone to manage the deal makers, the firm's chief says, and Messing was the first choice. "I'd known the family for a long time," Messing said. "They had a great repu- tation in the industry and a good team of managers. Working with them to efficiently process multiple deals through the pipeline appealed to me." Messing is confident about the fu- ture of physical retail. "There will be consolidations with the Internet, but there will always be need for medical, dental and restaurant space," he said. "And though it's possible to have gro- ceries delivered to your front door, people still like picking things out themselves." As far as retailers are con- cerned, property owners may have to accommodate their smaller footprint needs, but given the right locations, there will always be demand for space, Messing says. And even that chemical engineering degree has been useful in Messing's real estate career. "Everything you do in real estate is effectively finding solutions to challenges," he said. "The problem-solv- ing skills developed through engineer- ing are very applicable when finding those solutions." SCT 68 S C T / N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 4 "He's good at reconfiguring shopping centers, but he also knows how to do that with companies. He has a really good eye for what works and what doesn't."

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