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Shopping Centers Today -> February 2003
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NELSON TAPPED FOR CHAIRMAN
BY EDMUND MANDER
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| Kathleen Nelson |
The nominating committee of ICSC’s Board of Trustees has announced that it intends to nominate Kathleen M. Nelson, who heads the real estate portfolio at the giant TIAA-CREF pension fund, as the organization’s chairman for the 2003-2004 term.
As managing director of the $40 billion mortgage and real estate portfolio — $6 billion of it retail — at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association- College Retirement Equities Fund, Nelson is one of the industry’s most important financial players. She has collaborated with the industry’s leading developers on the construction of many of the premier malls in the United States. Teachers is one of the country’s largest private pension funds.
If, as expected, she is confirmed as ICSC’s 44th chairman at its Spring Convention in Las Vegas in May, she will be the first financial services industry executive to head the organization. Nelson is an ICSC trustee and serves on the Executive Committee as treasurer. She would also be only the second woman to hold the post since ICSC’s founding in 1957.
Nelson, 57, who has worked for Teachers since graduating from Indiana University 34 years ago, would succeed Gary D. Rappaport, SCMD, SCSM, CLS, as chairman. The nomination comes at a point in the shopping center industry’s history that finds financial services firms not just funding centers, but also managing portfolios.
“One of my priorities would be to really impress upon the industry the role of the financial services company,” she said shortly after the announcement. “We’re more than the lender today; we’re the financial partner.” Indeed, the retail real estate business as a whole has changed, she noted. “Our industry has evolved from a development business to a portfolio management industry.”
Not only is Teachers one of the most active institutional investors in shopping centers, it was also one of the earliest, funding its first retail project, the expansion of Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Mo., in 1948. It also collaborated with the industry’s pioneers on just about all the landmark shopping centers in the United States, Nelson said.
Nelson’s involvement with ICSC goes back about 20 years, during which time she has represented the industry’s interests in the public and private arenas. Nelson recently lobbied Congress as part of ICSC’s successful effort to obtain a financial guarantee from the government to help with insurance claims in the event of future terrorist attacks, and she represented ICSC at the White House last year when President Bush signed the bill into law. In 1996 she was chairman of ICSC’s Spring Convention.
She says she plans to keep working to educate federal and state politicians about the importance of the shopping center industry to the nation’s economy, as well as calling their attention to issues important to retail development, such as taxation. This is especially critical at a time when states are looking to narrow their budget deficits by raising taxes.
ICSC needs to educate the public on the importance of retail and how it can be sensibly integrated in the overall development of communities, Nelson said. “Smart growth is a major issue for all of us in the shopping center industry.”
She is active with several organizations, including the Real Estate Board of New York, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the Urban Land Institute and the New York City Investment Fund.
ICSC’s only previous female chairman was Rebecca Maccardini, SCMD, a longtime shopping center marketing executive and now president of Rebecca Maccardini Resources, an Ann Harbor, Mich., marketing consulting firm. She served during the 1993-1994 term.
The industry is doing a better job of promoting women these days, Nelson opined, noting with a laugh, “I’m the second, not the first.”
Nelson lives in Long Island, N.Y., with her husband, Jeffrey, and her daughter and son.
 | Current Issue November 2008 |