Tampa Bay's Top Retailers 1993 by Bob Andelman

Here's what's right with retail today: asset management. Get the right contract to manage the right property at the right location, work hard and you'll sleep a lot better than you did when you were DEVELOPING these same properties. You may sleep well tonight by skipping a few of the above elements, but in the morning, the Sembler Company may be having your lunch. As it has done a number of times in the past, the St. Petersburg-based real estate development and retail asset management is sitting atop one of the annual MADDUX REPORT surveys of the year's most active retail property companies. Company president Craig Sher says it happens almost by accident. "We're a little bit different animal than your average asset manager," he says. "We have not actively pursued management by marketing. We grow by reputation. We apply our development experience to asset management. We treat our clients' centers as our own. Sometimes, our people don't know if the property they're working is our center or someone else's." Sher says his company's policy is to charge management clients a flat fee rather than $2 for this, $4 for that. He jokes that as a result, his people probably put too many hours into client properties versus company-owned retail. One of Sembler's newest management jobs is Clearwater Marketplace at State Road 590 and McMullen Booth Road. "It's a good piece of property that we're turning around," Sher says. The Publix-anchored center opened in the last two years and was recently purchased at auction by Canadian investors. Its location is enviable: McMullen Booth was widened to six lanes during construction of the Marketplace, and the new Bayside Bridge will increased the center's visibility by thousands of cars daily. Another addition to Sembler's stable in '92 was the 160,000-square-foot Pasadena Shopping Center in South Pasadena. "We want new ones," Sher says. "We expect to pick up a couple per year. But we're not going to spend a ton on advertising and cold-calling institutions. We want a COUPLE. We don't want to be an empire. We're a small, family business. We couldn't give an empire the attention that it needs." Sher is aware of the trend among institutional owners to demanding consolidation of multifarious asset management firms. "I think it's a mistake," he says. "What's happened is, all the people that were big developers who failed now want to be business managers. But success breeds success. Some of the small managers are good. Some of the institutions would do well to go to small, competent managers. "Reporting is good," Sher says of institutional demands for consistent reporting methods from a variety of property caretakers. "But the bottom line is leasing the damn centers. A lot of institutions are worried about how pretty the reports look. I don't have the time to kiss the asses of all the insurance companies. We tend to manage for the more entrepreneurial types because we take a cowboy approach: Let's get the centers LEASED." Coming in a close second to Sembler on this year's list is Chicago-based Heitman Retail Properties, a newcomer to Tampa Bay area retail. Heitman is a top national management firm which represents the pension funds that in 1992 purchased Tampa's University Square Mall now simply known as University Mall and in January 1993 closed on Sarasota Square Mall. "You take a look at the demographics of the Tampa market, where University Mall is, and it's a strong area in population and income levels," says Joel Erickson, president of Heitman. "University had always been a dominant regional. And because of the limited resources to fund new projects, its value is enhanced. We are renovating and will possibly expand we're exploring that and have a dominant mall for the future. "We have a waiting list to get into University Mall," he says. "It's one of the reasons we're considering expansion. We can lease new space and continue our dominance." Rents at the fully leased mall are increasing, too. Heitman which apparently takes a hands-on approach to its management role took an interest in Sarasota Square partly for the efficiencies gained by having more than one mall in a geographic area. "We thought Sarasota would make a good match with Tampa," Erickson says. "There are some physical problems with the center that we would like to address. There is a possibility of an additional department store and some reconfiguration of small space." Don't be surprised to hear of Heitman moving in on another regional mall in the near future, although Erickson says he's not working on anything firm. Yet. "We're certainly interested," he says. "Because of our size, we usually know what's available. We're not in active negotiations now, but you never know when something might become available." Not every company at the top of this year's retail asset management list is enjoying the success of the Semblers and Heitmans of the world. Jill Strumpf, vice president of Bruce Strumpf Inc. in Tampa, says 1993 was a bad year for collecting rents at many of its 45 shopping and strip centers across Florida. "Terrible," in fact, she says. "And we lost a lot of tenants. Many of the tenants, we've tried to work with. We've reduced rents, but you can only reduce rents so much. We've evicted some tenants and some have gone out of business." The good news, Strumpf says, is that many of her better performing centers are in the Tampa Bay area. Britton Plaza in South Tampa and Gulf to Bay Plaza in Clearwater, both of which were aging properties that got major facelifts in recent years, are doing well. Midway in Largo may be the next to go under the surgeon's chisel, if a proposed Publix expansion goes through. "I have some centers where I lost the food stores, Winn Dixie in a few," Strumpf says. "But they were outdated shopping centers. I don't know what we're going to do with them." end

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