What Makes A Successful Partnership?
Forest City discusses what a successful venture with another company means these days, and how to create a successful partnership.
Brian M. Jones

Brian Jones

Selecting the right partners in every category is the first step to ensuring a successful venture. The most important ingredient in that selection — the element that brings potential partners together — is mutual need. Without that critical element, any partnership is irrelevant and unnecessary.

Mutual need can create strong bonds between developers and bankers; rekindle romances between former competitors; and cement relationships with elected officials. It can marry the interests of large corporations and small organizations; transcend the gulf between one-time adversaries and surmount the challenge of changing economic times.

Forest City partnered with The Pruitt Family, a local landowner, to co-develop Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Virginia.

Nowhere is the standard of reliability more important than in a developer’s relationships with its institutional partners, be they banks, pension funds, financial consultancies or the myriad array of money managers who are instrumental in finalizing the funding.

The key to making an institutional partnership successful is creating credible expectations that lead to realistic advantages. Time and again, a developer with firm funding relationships hears the same refrain: “You deliver what you promise. You tell it like it is. You don’t exaggerate. You can be relied upon.”

These are the attributes that are reinforced year after year and project after project. These are the critical benchmarks that create a climate of trust between developers and institutional partners and ensure the most favorable consideration no matter the market conditions. Reliability is the attribute that helps overcome the hurdles when a project is delayed or when leasing is moving more slowly than anticipated.

Short Pump Town Center, Richmond, Virginia.

Reliability is intricately tied to reputation and is always a two-way street. While Forest City’s partnership in San Francisco with Westfield to unite the historic Emporium Building redevelopment with the existing center next door was based on sound business strategy, it could not have moved forward had each developer not been confident in the reputation of the other. It could not have come to pass had not San Francisco Centre’s reputation for excellence been legendary. Nor could Forest City have begun its initial partnership with Bloomingdale’s, owner of the building, had not the two companies been convinced that each would accomplish its ultimate goals — because of the respective reputations.

Surely Forest City could not have put its historic redevelopment expertise to work in San Francisco, had it not aligned with the esteemed Bloomingdale’s (Federated), owner of the building. For that matter, the two developers who created Short Pump Town Center could not have combined forces had the land owner, Tommy Pruitt, a long-time Richmond, Virginia, resident whose family’s reputation was beyond reproach, not believed in Forest City’s reputation.

The Pruitt family brought to the table the third important element to excellent partnership — resources, which include the land, the personnel and all the expertise brought to bear. Large, multi-use developers rely upon its partners who own or control the property. The large developer brings to the owner the resources to negotiate, build, lease and manage a property. One resource without the other cannot succeed.

In Simi Valley, California, John Gilchrist and Al Corti, former Trizec Hahn executives and currently well respected owners of The Corti Gilchrist Partnership, a much smaller company, had control of the land, which was owned by the city, but needed the resources of a larger company — a reliable one with a good reputation. Thus was born a partnership and an intimate lifestyle center made in Simi Valley heaven. It opened last year and fulfilled the expectations of all, most especially the city.

Forest City teamed with one of the oldest developers in the Inland Empire, The Lewis Retail Group, to co-develop Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

In Denver, the redevelopment of the former Stapleton airport is rooted in a manual called “The Green Book,” a multi-decade plan created by 12 community and governmental groups to develop 7.2 square miles within the city’s borders. Consistency of vision and concurrence among constituencies gave rise to a thriving partnership that is 6 years old and growing richer every day. The plan was a road map for the developer.

Cities also “own” the ability to help the developer fund the project with tax incremental financing and other tools that require city/community approval and votes. The developer needs every access to that resource it can command. And the people who know the people who can make it happen are the partners that developer’s need. These are the people with deep roots in the community.

Aside from access to the resources, the Corti Gilchrist partnership, in conjunction with another former Trizec Hahn executive, Wayne Finley, laid claim to the fourth R — roots in the community. For the past 15 years, these professionals, natives of Southern California, had been in negotiations with the city of Simi Valley. John, Al and Wayne knew the community movers and shakers  — their families and their hobbies — their passions and their ambitions — their hot spots and their weak points. They knew their way around the Simi Valley block.

Forest City teamed with The Corti Gilchrist Partnership to develop Simi Valley Town Center in Simi Valley, California, which opened in 2005.

Those residents who have lived in the cities all their lives, and especially the ones who have their roots in government, are also key to successful partnerships. Roots, in this instance, means expertise born of experience, a quality as important to the smooth functioning of government as it is to the successful running of a retail property. It is this expertise and total immersion in the governmental processes that command the two-way respect that is so critical to profitable partnerships.

The Lewis Retail Group, Forest City’s partner in the creation of Victoria Gardens, is a company that in essence built the city of Rancho Cucamonga, California. With roots in the Inland Empire, dating back to 1955, this company commands the respect of every city, every homebuilder, every owner of its well-built houses and every developer in Southern California and beyond. Deep roots lead to knowledge and trust, the basic values that enabled the developers to jump through the difficult California entitlement hoops. This is the kind of partner — one secure in its position and eager to mine the mutual need; one that wants the project to progress and uses its reputation to move its mission forward — that makes a venture successful.

Moving the mission forward — step by step — is what partnerships are all about. They begin with a mutual need. They build upon relationships fostered by respect, reliability and reputation. They are rooted in knowledge and expertise as the resources are brought to bear to bring the project successful fruition. When those elements are in place, the partnership can only succeed.

Brian M. Jones is the CEO of Forest City California, a wholly owned entity of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises.