Finance & Capital Management

Ten years ago, demographic experts predicted a looming talent shortage: When the massive baby boom generation retired, the small Generation X would not have enough experienced leaders and managers to fill the positions that boomers would vacate.

Bucksbaum Retail Properties opened for business in April 2012. The Chicago-based company has already opened one project and is working on four more.

The 53,000-sq.-ft. Kingsbury Center near North Chicago has opened with four tenants: Buy Buy Baby, PetSmart, Road Runner Sports and Jimmy Johns. It is a joint venture with Chicago-based Structured Development.

Madison, Ala., city officials didn't want just any development for its last available commercial tract, a 28-acre property along a major thoroughfare. They wanted to bring in retailers currently unavailable in the area.

They approached Target and Brentwood, Tenn.-based GBT Realty Corp., a developer known for its Target-anchored developments.

"Madison told us they wanted Target," explained George B. Tomlin, president and CEO of GBT Realty. "If you help us, they said, we'll participate financially in the development of the property."

Invest in the right experience for a shopping center's customers, and you will earn a return on experience. That is the business model driving Fort Worth, Texas-based Trademark Property Co., which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

"Do customers love being at the center? Do they come back and drive sales? That is return on experience," said Terry Montesi, Trademark chairman, CEO and founder. Experience is indispensable today when most goods and services are available online, often at a lower price.

Von Maur got its start like many of its department store peers: An immigrant with an American dream opened a downtown store, customers came, they shopped, the brand took hold and took off.

In the case of the midwestern upscale department store banner Von Maur, the dreamer was German immigrant J.H.C. Petersen, who opened a downtown storefront in Davenport, Iowa, in 1872. He and his sons grew the business and sold it nearly a half-century later to a partnership that included two Austrian brothers — C.J. and Cable von Maur, whose family gained full ownership by 1937.

Editor's Note: Chain Store Age's 24th annual survey of Fastest-Growing Managers measures new domestic and international third-party management and leasing contracts obtained during the preceding calendar year (2012).

Last year's numbers were such that we couldn't limit our annual Fastest-Growing third-party managers listing to a top five; a sixth was added because the contract totals were that close.

Liberty Center is a 64-acre, 1.1 million-sq.-ft. mixed-use development located in the North Cincinnati market. It will be comprised of 600,000 sq. ft. of retail, including at least one 200,000-sq.-ft. department store and 370,000 sq. ft. of specialty retail and restaurants. Liberty Center will also include 100,000 sq. ft. of Class A Office, a 135-key hotel and 220 luxury residential multi-family units. A 60,000-sq.-ft., 14-screen second-level upscale theater with integrated dining is also planned.

I visited my first Von Maur store in 1999, a decade after I relocated from southern boomtown Atlanta to Lincoln, Neb., a sleepy college town that only really wakes up on Husker football Saturdays. Today I am back home in Baton Rouge, La., still no bustling metropolis, but the food and football trump.

One hundred and forty one billion dollars. That's the estimated brand value of Walmart, according to Interbrand's "Best Global Brands" report. The annual study ranks the 50 most valuable U.S. retail brands, along with the top store brands in countries around the world.

Jim von Maur

President, Von Maur

HEADQUARTERS Davenport, Iowa

TYPE OF BUSINESS Department store retailer

NUMBER OF STORES 35 in 11 states (27 Von Maur stores, eight Dry Goods stores)

Seventeen years ago, in the January 1996 issue of Chain Store Age, Jack Arth, who at the time was president of Von Maur, explained how the circa 1928 department store retailer set out to differentiate itself from competitors such as the then hugely influential Federated and May chains.