Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/58695
NEWS MAKERS Changing of the guard ECE'S OTTO TAKES THE HELM OF THE ICSC EUROPEAN ADVISORY BOARD By Nicky Godding I 56 SCT / APRIL 2012 cial analyst at Prudential Realty Group, in Newark, N.J., and then director of financial planning at the New York City offices of in- vestment and management firm Paramount Group. He returned to Germany and joined ECE, learning from the bottom up as proj- ect manager on Schlosspark-Center, in Schwerin, an inner-city center located on the site of a former Russian army barracks. Following the completion of the project, N NEARLY 12 YEARS AT THE HELM of one of Europe's leading shopping center development and manage- ment firms, Alexander Otto says he is proudest of having kept ECE Projektmanagement on course through the global financial turmoil. And this month at the European Conference, in Berlin, Otto will tbe named chairman of the ICSC European Advisory Board by David Henry, ICSC chairman and president and CEO of Kimco Realty. ECE manages roughly €21.5 bil- lion (about $29 billion) in assets, much of it owned at least in part by ECE or by the Otto family. The firm is active in 16 countries and manages about 180 shopping centers across most of those. At present the firm is planning or building centers in several countries — mostly in Europe, includ- ing Russia, but also in Qatar. In the aggregate, its shopping centers house about 15,000 tenants and cover some 4.4 million square meters (roughly 47 million square feet) of sales area and generate about €16 billion in sales yearly. The firm manages the retail components of the Leipzig and Vi- enna railway stations. Even at the height of the global economic crisis, ECE has managed to stay strong on investment and de- velopment, taking on several projects, including redevelop- ment of the Ham- burger Strasse (today Hamburger Meile), expansion of the Altmarkt-Galerie Dresden, and de- velopment of the Alstercampus office- apartment complex, in Hamburg, and the Forum Mittel- rhein, Koblenz. After studying at Harvard, Alexander Otto became a finan- he rose to the executive ranks at ECE and moved into the leasing division, where he was responsible for developing retail con- cepts as well as leasing strategies for office and commercial premises. He was named deputy CEO of the ECE board in 1998 and became CEO two years later. Alexander Otto is concerned not just with his projects, but also with the commu- nities around them. Soon after becoming chief executive of ECE, he established the Lebendige Stadt Foundation, through which