Mark Gittler
“I sat me
down to write a little story, which maybe in the end became a song.” That is the opening line of one of my friend
Mark Gittler’s favorite Procol Harum song.
It’s sad that early this morning I’m writing a little story about Mark
who died on Tuesday apparently of a heart attack while driving in West
Virginia.
The vast
majority of you don’t know Mark but those of you in the shopping center
industry have had, unbeknownst to you, a slim connection with Mark. In his career, he was the general manager of
the highest volume A&S (Abraham & Strauss) Department Store (now long
gone) in Manhattan. His career in retail
real estate (on the retailer side) spanned more than 30 years. And, while Mark was a very hard and dedicated
worker, his job was not his life.
I was Mark’s
summer camp counselor in 1967 or 68, his first year at the wonderful Camp
Walden on Trout Lake, up the hill from Bolton Landing and Lake George, NY. Mark was part of the camper-waiter group, a
bunch of guys who were around 15 years old.
Those were special times – those years and a few more afterwards.
Mark was a
competitive basketball player and Walden, although not a ‘basketball camp’ in
the true sense of the definition, had a serious basketball personality. The camp was then owned by Mel Besdin, who
played varsity basketball at Syracuse University and Dolph Schayes, voted one
of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA (National Basketball Association) history. Also a counselor in those days was Jimmy
Boeheim, the long-time coach of the Syracuse Orangemen basketball team. Thinking back on that time, we had a lot of
fun – and played some great basketball!
Mark was
also one of the most dedicated fans of Bruce Springsteen. He and his good friend Irwin Cohen, saw, I
don’t know how many Springsteen shows.
The one I shared with them was in about 1974. Mark, who then lived in Long Beach, NY,
organized a party at his house, which was followed by a chartered bus trip into
New York for a Springsteen show at, perhaps, The Academy of Music. I will not go into any details about that
night – think about the time and use your imagination.
Mark was one
of the most generous souls on the planet.
Not just with his family but with others as well. Sadly, Mark and I had a falling out after the
now legendary Camp Walden reunion in Montreal in the summer of 2003. That night, Mark sang lead with The Arcade
Love Machine, a camp rock and roll band that reunited for one last gig (three
months after that show, lead singer Dave Florendo died of an aggressive
cancer). That night was the last time I
saw Mark.
I kept up
with him via Irwin. His retailing odyssey
took him to senior positions with a number of well-known chains. His passion for retailing was likely only
overshadowed by his love for The Boss – Bruce Springsteen.
In connection with Mark's death, a memorial
page in the Winter 2017 issue of the PREA Quarterly (Pension Real Estate
Association) for Michael J. Humphrey, who recently and unexpectedly died,
included this message:
His family would like to stress that heart
disease and heart attacks can happen to anyone at any age and fitness level,
and there are many preventative steps people can take to stay heart
healthy. The family encourages everyone
to visit a doctor regularly for a health screening, which can determine if
further action needs to be taken.
Mark was
carrying around a bunch of extra weight for a number of years and I learned
that he suffered from Type-2 Diabetes – which is many times directly related to
being overweight. But both Michael
Humphreys and Kevin Lynch, co-founder of The Townsend Group who also died
recently of a sudden heart attack, were not overweight and we should all heed
Michael’s family’s message.
In ending
this piece about Mark Gittler I want to mention to two good stories about people in
the industry. Ray Torto, co-founder of
the legendary real estate research firm Torto/Wheaton and currently a professor
at Harvard University, has substantially recovered from a terrible car accident
about a year ago and is back to his teaching gig. Mike Clarke, London-based
senior exec with CBRE Global Investors is also ‘this close’ to going back to
work full-time after also being involved in a bad car crash a little more than a
year ago. As Sam Cooke sang, ‘Ain’t that
good news!”
My
condolences go out to the family and large entourage of friends of Mark
Gittler.
I hate writing these pieces - except for the good news!
 |
| Mark Gittler |
Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da live goes on
University of North Carolina Real Estate
Development Case Challenge
Last week, thanks to the gracious invitation of Dave
Hartzell, director of the Leonard W. Wood Center for Real Estate Studies at
Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
(boy Dave, that’s some title you have!), Susan Drake and Jim Spaeth, I once again served a judge for the
annual real estate development case competition.
15 of the top graduate real estate university programs sent
their teams and the case was a real doozy.
It’s always an honor to be part of this event. The students are smart and creative and
pretty darn good presenters (and this comes from a professional presentation
coach!). The team from Columbia
University was the winner, however, I can tell you that in the judges
deliberation of the four finalists, it was not a runaway for Columbia. I’ve received the resume booklet of all the
students who participated. Some of them
are graduating this spring and are looking for jobs. There’s a lot of talent and passion for the
industry, which, as a life-long commercial real estate veteran, is
heart-warming and exciting to see.
Those of you who are looking to add to your teams have some really good
candidates in the Real Estate MBA graduating class of 2017.
Felix / Weiner Workshops
On Tuesday
of this week, in New York City, we ran another of our Behavioral Presentation
Coaching Workshops. These four-hour
interactive sessions are limited to 6 participants from different commercial /
institutional real estate firms. For
example, in this week’s workshop were folks from UBS, AEW, Ackman Ziff, Oxford
Property Group (owned by OMERS (Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System)
and Stockbridge. In these workshops
there are no speeches by my partner Liz Weiner or I, no presentations and no technology (nothing can go wrong!). It’s all interactive exercises.
The feedback
we’ve received about these workshops has been extremely positive – and, more importantly,
participants have taken the time to give us some great suggestions on how to
make this workshop even more valuable.
Our schedule of these and our Women’s Leadership Workshops can be found
here. Btw, today, we are conducting our
23rd Women’s Leadership Workshop in New York City. Liz and I have run these across the U.S. and, as of a
few weeks ago, in London. Women from
more than 90 different industry firms have attended.
PREA
(Pension Real Estate Association) Spring Conference
This week
PREA held one of it’s semi-annual conferences at the Waldorf Astoria in New
York City. Attendance is estimated to
have been 900 of my closest friends in the industry!
While I got
to run into a good number of folks I know, what interested me is the number of
younger folks wearing conference badges. It’s great to see what is
starting to amount to the changing of the guard in the pension fund real estate
world.
The senior
executives in our industry generally aren’t going anywhere fast. Yes, there have been some retirements or
semi-retirements of my peers over the past few years but those founders of
private equity and investment management firms are still very actively involved
– not only in their businesses but in nurturing the next generation of industry
leaders.
Congratulations
to Gail Haynes, President of PREA, her long time colleague Amy Laffargue and the
entire PREA staff for hosting another great event. If you are someone who would like to immerse
themselves in the institutional real estate world, check out the next PREA conference,
which is in October in Chicago (there's a good chance the 'Unofficial PREA Band will be performing the night before the conference...stay tuned).
On the Road with Steve Felix…
March 1-2:
San Diego, CA to attend the
NAREIM Spring Executive Officers Meeting
March 3 –
8: New York City
March 9:
Dallas to conduct and internal Women’s Leadership Workshop for 29 women
March 13-17:
Arden/ Asheville, NC
April 3-4:
New York City to conduct a Behavioral Presentation Coaching workshop for a real
estate investment management firm
May 23: London to conduct our Women’s Leadership
Workshop
