5Qs for Greg Maloney on his 5 decades in retail real estate
When former mall general manager Greg Maloney took over JLL’s retail division in 2002, it had just 20 malls on its client list. Today the global real estate services company manages the business of more than 500 malls, open-air, and lifestyle centers, making it the largest third-party manager in North America.
Last week, Maloney decided 500 was a good enough tally to retire on. Taking over for him will be Kristin Mueller, COO of the property management business, herself with 28 years on the JLL payroll.
“It’s been on my mind for a while now. When I started, we had no brokerage business, no capital markets, and now we do. Twenty years is a long time,” said Maloney. “But the real reason for the timing was that you want to make sure that whomever you put in a position like this will do a good job, and Kristin is the one to do it.”
Chain Store Age spent some time with Maloney to get his thoughts on brick-and-mortar retail, past and future.
In covering retail real estate developers for the past six years, we’ve always been impressed with how long top execs stick with it. Many of them are family businesses. Was that the case with you?
I grew up in Park Ridge, outside of Chicago. My father worked for Sears. He was a shoe buyer. My dad wanted to be a doctor after he got out of the service during World War II and, while waiting to get into medical school, he went down to the Elmhurst Sears and started working there. He ended up working there for 38 years.
He always worked on Saturdays, and I’d go in there with him and loved going to the store. When I was going to college, I had various jobs at Sears. I sold mufflers, tires, paint, hardware, suits. I loved selling. After school, I was asked if I wanted to go into the Sears training program, and that’s when I fell in love with retail. Eventually, I went to Homart, the mall development subsidiary of Sears. They were looking for people to manage malls.
So you started out as a mall general manager?
It was the Eighties, Homart was purchased by GGP, and we were putting up malls everywhere. You remember the movie, “Field of Dreams?” We coined a phrase: “Mall of Dreams.” We would put them up in the middle of nowhere and yet everybody would show up at the mall. We were putting young kids with no training in charge of millions of dollars of property. But, back then, when you were a mall manager, you were like the mayor of the city. Everyone wanted to meet you and talk to you. It was an exciting time for our business.
Physical retail has been deluged with negative press. As a guy who built up JLL’s third-party management client roster to 500 properties, what’s your take for its future?
I just read an article the other day and laughed. It said a third of the shopping centers will be closed in five years. Go back to the Eighties and you were reading that department stores would be non-existent—as would malls, power centers, everything! But the good ones don’t go away. They re-invent themselves. The best way to answer it is, don’t listen to all these critics. When e-commerce entered the scene, it was predicted that it would be the dominant retail channel, but its impact has been no different than the impact catalogs had.
But even top mall developers tell us that physical retail became over-built, and that square footage will diminish.
Yes, retail expanded. There’s too much square footage. But it’s being repurposed into something other than women’s apparel. Now what we’re hearing is brands that say, “Hey, I can start to fulfill online orders out of the store,” and that’s the phase of retail that’s starting to build now. Brick and mortar and online.
So what now for you?
My wife and I have seven grandkids. That’ll keep us busy. We’ll split time between Atlanta and Florida, do a lot of golfing and fishing, spend a lot of time with friends and family. Just going to slow down. Anyone retiring right after COVID is already in that mode, sort of slowed down.