FEATURE ARTICLE, MAY 2008
ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE
After 18 years, The Weitzman Group/Cencor Realty Services still makes its business about its clients and its people. Lindsey Walker
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West Plano Village will span 650,000 square feet and feature retail, restaurant, residential, office and hotel space. The project is being leased by Weitzman.
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Herb Weitzman founded The Weitzman Group/Cencor Realty Services in the midst of the Texas recession in 1989, first opening offices in Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin and later expanding to Houston and San Antonio in 1991. In each of these Texas markets, Weitzman saw the need for a regional commercial real estate firm that offered a very high level of customer service and knowledge. The company is populated with CPAs and attorneys who jumped from the corporate ranks after the Texas real estate collapse that followed the 1986 tax reform act.
“Everything was based on customer service and market knowledge with commercial retail specialization. That was the basis of our plan,” says Weitzman, the company’s chairman and CEO.
Weitzman learned to appreciate the value of customer service early on, watching his parents take care of customers in their family’s dry goods store in a blue-collar area of Dallas. That value became ingrained, and he applied it to his own company years later. From the beginning, Weitzman determined never to grow his company beyond a size that could maintain the highest level of customer service and that could build strong relationships. This resulted in offices in Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, Houston and San Antonio. “All offices only 45 minutes away from each other on our company plane, Southwest Airlines,” Weitzman says.
“We built a culture that operates with this philosophy — we never had the goal to be anything other than a company that provided excellent service,” Weitzman says. “We took care of our clients, and our client successes enabled the company to grow in each market.”
Though it is the company’s backbone, customer service isn’t all that The Weitzman Group/Cencor Realty Services has brought to the real estate table in Texas. The company’s success also can be attributed to its strong emphasis on research. A significant portion of the budget has been dedicated to research since its inception because the company understood that it would always have to know more than the developers, owners and tenants in order to be successful. “Knowledge is what we sell in a service company, along with the service itself,” Weitzman says.
The research department, for example, uses cutting-edge mapping, demographics and software, as well as key databases, to meet clients’ increasingly complex needs for site selection and development decisions. And while the company strives for innovation and the best technology, nothing is more important than the basics, according to Weitzman: driving the market, knowing what works and what doesn’t in each market, and getting the prospects out to the property.
The company conducts ongoing, in-depth research on these markets and publishes market status reports twice yearly. Mills adds, “We often bring in new business from retailers and investors who read our information and come to understand our knowledge-driven approach.”
Focusing on non-mall retail — neighborhood, community, power, specialty, lifestyle and mixed-use properties — the company offers a full-service, hybrid approach, integrating all of the services that relate to retail real estate. The Weitzman Group offers a full range of commercial real estate services, from tenant representation to project leasing to re-tenanting and re-positioning to retail disposition services and investment sales. Cencor Realty Services provides property management, asset management, accounting, development and construction services and currently manages 22 million square feet statewide.
Like the retail market itself, Weitzman/Cencor is constantly innovating. One innovation is Cencor Urban, a division of Cencor Realty Services that the company launched several years ago to focus on urban and urban-style mixed-use real estate.
One key Weitzman specialty is retail tenant representation services. Working with everyone from big boxes to restaurants and small in-line retailers, the company is able to help clients because it understands their business. “Single deals often produce exclusive accounts after retailers and restaurants do outstanding business at the sites we find,” says Mills. “We have a proven track record of putting concepts into locations that make our clients money. We understand our clients’ business.”
Throughout Texas, Weitzman/Cencor has worked with numerous anchors, from every active major grocery concept and discount chain to junior category killers like Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and Staples. The company also specializes in site selection and market penetration for a variety of retail concepts and categories, including apparel, shoes, furniture, jewelry, home improvement, pharmacy, specialty retail and service concepts. Weitzman Group also has a strong track record of handling site selection and market penetration for restaurants, working on multiple sites for local, regional and national concepts.
Project leasing is another strength for The Weitzman Group, which was founded on a base of four decades of experience in the Texas retail real estate market. The company’s leasing portfolio now incorporates 44 million square feet throughout Texas. For each center, the company creates a leasing plan that takes into account all aspects of supply, demand and market forces and then works with the client’s timeframe and goals to create the strongest tenant mix. This specialty has produced over 900 executed leases each year for the last 10 years.
“We work with property owners from individuals to REITs to institutional owners, who understand and appreciate the value of working with a leasing team that is so connected to the Texas market, to retailers and to retail leasing trends,” Mills says. Weitzman Group works with both existing and to-be-developed properties to create strong tenant mixes, which require a tremendous focus to succeed at a high level.
One of the reasons that The Weitzman Group/Cencor Realty Services has such longevity in the business is because the company understands market dynamics and knows how to respond to down cycles.
“We know that retail centers can suffer when cycles or concepts change,” Weitzman says. “In our markets, we often see anchors relocate to larger stores and newer formats. So, we provide a specialty for re-tenanting and renovations.”
For example, Barnes & Noble relocated from Grapevine Towne Center to join a new lifestyle project. Grapevine Towne Center is a 700,000-square-foot power shopping center located at the crossroads of state highways 114 West and Highway 26 in Grapevine near Dallas. The Weitzman leasing agents, who understood the need to for a quality tenant that would both quickly add to the mix and draw traffic, were able to bring in Conn’s, a highly promotional electronics retailer.
In addition to these specialty services, The Weitzman Group also offers retail investment services, which complement project representation. Oftentimes, Weitzman’s project leasing team works for a landlord to bring a center to full occupancy, and then the retail investment team takes over and markets the property for sale. And Weitzman’s services aren’t solely limited to retail; the company also offers brokerage services for office and industrial and investment sales services for office, industrial and properties.
On the development side, Cencor is working on more than 30 projects under construction in the Lone Star State with a pipeline for 16 more yet to be started. Key projects can be found in each of the company’s major markets. In Austin, Cencor Urban is set to open The Triangle this spring. West Plano Village is a mixed-use project leased by Weitzman that will comprise 650,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, residential, office and hotel space upon its completion in 2010. In the booming Houston suburb of Pearland, Cencor recently completed the newest phase of The Crossing at 518. Not far from The Crossing at 518, Cencor is in the planning stages for Manvel Towne Center, a 1.25-million-square-foot regional town center project. In San Antonio, Cencor has new regional centers in the works and has expansions at Culebra Market and The Village at Forum Parkway.
In addition to development services, Cencor offers services for renovations, redevelopments and tenant finish-out. “When a center no longer provides the right environment for a quality tenant mix, you have to remodel,” Mills says.
Major renovations by Cencor include Austin’s Capital Plaza, one of Austin’s oldest inner city centers that Cencor recreated as a regional powerhouse. Weitzman, working in conjunction with the renovation, tore down an old Montgomery Ward store and brought in a new Target anchor, as well as junior anchors such as Conn’s, Ross Dress for Less and K&G Menswear.
IAnother 17 renovations are in the works around Texas in all of Weitzman/Cencor’s markets.
The Weitzman Group/Cencor Realty Services success story wouldn’t be quite what it is today without the people that comprise the offices in Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, Houston and San Antonio. The company works hard to provide a work environment that encourages growth and teamwork, and it maintains programs to make every person take pride and ownership in his or her work.
“For Weitzman/Cencor, it all starts with the best people, and leaders who understand retailing, retail real estate and all aspects of the real estate business,” Weitzman says. “That’s why we focus on training.”
One unique training effort the company employs is a weeklong Broker Boot Camp that is conducted several times a year. The programs, which are open to everyone in the company, better familiarize new brokers as well as senior associates with all aspects of the company and the real estate industry. Key executives and partners speak on various subjects, ranging from tenant mix to the development process to online marketing to research. In addition to the boot camps, Weitzman/Cencor supports it employees and associates to pursue the CCIM, CPM and CSM professional designations, as well as the MAI program.
As to why the company is so pro-active in its associates and employees’ development and education, Weitzman says, “Strong leadership also requires leaders to learn how to follow. We empower people because they are our best assets.”
Looking forward, Weitzman is confident that his company will meet whatever challenges and opportunities the future may bring. But one thing will remain a constant: the focus will be on the major Texas markets.
In both up and down markets, Weitzman/Cencor — with its foundation of excellent customer service, the quest for knowledge and the best employees and associates — has what it takes to continue on the path of success.
“We were founded in a down market, and we understand how the bottom of a cycle can often offer as many opportunities for our clients as an up market,” Weitzman says.
“Thanks to a history of over 40 years of focusing in retail,” Weitzman says, “we think we’ve earned the designation of The Retail Specialists in Texas.”
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