Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 5 / S C T 51 ers, he joined ICSC in 1963, attending its first Canadian convention, which was held that year in Montréal. Some 12 years later Solal co-founded ICSC Europe, and he was chair- man of that division for nearly two decades. He became an ICSC trustee — the first from outside North America — in 1979 and remained on the board until 1991, which made him one of the association's longest-serving trustees. In 1983 he co-founded the French shopping center council: the Con- seil National des Centres Commerciaux. In 1988 he received the ICSC Trustees Distinguished Service Award. ICSC's an- nual European Marketing Award is named in Solal's honor. "He introduced to Europe the idea of competitors coming together to talk about their projects and ideas," said Riordan, ICSC's Lifetime Trustee. "It wasn't in their mentality that competitors would come together to discuss things, ultimately making everyone more productive." Solal also collaborated with Riordan and the late Albert Sussman, ICSC's first head of staff, to expand ICSC's global footprint beyond Europe. He played a key role in organizing ICSC's first Pan-American meeting, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the mid-1980s. He was also instrumental in helping to launch the World Congress of Shopping Centers, prede- cessor to the Retail Real Estate World Summit, and he was chairman of the first of these meetings, which took place in Hong Kong in 1990. Solal's last major project was Diagonal Mar Centre, a 936,500-square-foot retail-entertainment center in Barcelona, Spain, that he co-developed with Houston-based Hines, a pri- vately held international real estate firm. The three-story center, completed in 2001, was the first portion of an 84-acre mixed- use project that helped revitalize the surrounding seaside area. Born in 1928 in Algeria, when it was still ruled by France, Solal spent his childhood in both Algiers and Paris. At age 17, over the objections of his parents, he went to America to attend college. He earned a bachelor's and a master's degree (the latter in international law) from George Washington University. His affinity for the U.S. was rooted largely in his admiration of the American entre- preneurial spirit. " I f e l t t h e 2 0 t h c e n t u r y w o u l d b e t h e A m e r i - can century, and I wanted desperately to go to the U n i t e d S t a t e s , " h e r e c a l l e d d u r i n g a v i d e o t a p e d 2011 interview with Riordan, produced as part of ICSC's Industry Leaders series. "I must say that the little I know, I learned in the United States," he quipped. Rather than join his family's cornflower business after college, Solal co-founded Paris-based Société des Centres Commerciaux, a shopping center development and man- agement firm, in 1962. Solal developed his first project in 1966: Elysée 2, a lifestyle center built to serve a fast-growing section of metro Paris. Three years later he opened Parly 2, overcoming opposition from some department stores. Solal drew inspiration for that two-level, 60,000-square-meter (about 645,700 square feet) mall from Southdale, the first enclosed mall in the U.S., near Minneapolis. Adapting the American model to Europe, Solal added food retailers — including grocery stores, meat markets and bakeries — to the merchant mix at a number of his shopping centers. In 1975 he developed Ulis 2, the first hypermarket- anchored mall, in metro Paris. When he retired from Société des Centres Commerciaux in 1992, Solal founded his own investment company, Jean- Louis Solal Investissement, which owned stakes in several large shopping centers. He sold the firm in 2004 to Paris-based Uni- bail-Rodamco, one of Europe's largest publicly traded commer- cial real estate companies. Solal was also the author of indus- try-related books Megatrends, published by ICSC in 1991, and Centri Commerciali, published in 1993. Ultimately, he gained recognition beyond the shopping center industry. He was a re- cipient of France's highest distinction, the Légion d'Honneur, and of the Belgium Order of the Crown. Gerald D. Hines established the ICSC Foundation Jean- Louis Solal Retail Sustainability Scholarship fund in Solal's honor last April. SCT For the latest breaking news about shopping center development and the retail industry from Shopping Centers Today , follow @sctnews on Twitter and "like" us on Facebook .