Having a solid game plan is more important than ever to retail property managers, comments Coreland’s Tanya Keshishian.
Shopping Center Business, page 31 | By Nellie Day | April 2022
Ask any property manager out there about what the past two-plus years have been like in their profession and they’re likely to answer with one word: challenging.
“Truthfully, being a property manager during the pandemic was terrifying at first,” says Sandy Sigal, president and CEO of NewMark Merrill Companies in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills, California. “This wasn’t like a recession when things slowly declined. This was ‘on Friday our businesses are fine, and by Monday the world is shutting down.’”
The obstacles haven’t subsided, unfortunately, as the pandemic transitions to an endemic. Health and safety are still of paramount importance, while a perfect storm of raging inflation, labor and materials shortages and the popularity of omnichannel solutions are the new obstacles. Fortunately, the same strategies that got shopping centers through the pandemic can see them through now. Namely, a little creativity and a proactive approach.
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Feeling the Shortages
Tanya Keshishian, vice president of real estate management at Coreland Companies in the Orange County suburb of Tustin, California, adds that lean times — both in terms of staff and dollars — often require a dose of creativity.
“The pandemic forced managers to outline creative strategies for property maintenance, primarily to ensure that common area expenses billed to tenants were manageable,” she says. “Property services were assessed on a weekly basis across our portfolio to consistently balance need and expense. When labor shortages began to dramatically affect the availability and performance of some vendors, managers addressed new strategies. Non-urgent maintenance was deferred and service schedules modified, but security and cleanliness remained a top priority.”
These sentiments echo the “Jack of All Trades” title that Sigal believes property managers must embrace in chaotic times such as these.
“Being a retail property manager requires the management team to wear a lot of hats,” he explains. “They have to know the market, know the community, know their tenants, know the center performance relative to the marketplace, control the controllable and minimize the impact of the uncontrollable. So, the property manager of today is a lot more than a facility manager — yes, they need to understand landscape, lighting, security and common area maintenance — but they need to have expertise in data analysis, communication, marketing, community outreach and a lot more.”
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