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URBAN AMBITION

Retail real estate success isn’t just about money, says scholarship winner

By Donna Mitchell

Henry Flores, winner of this year’s ICSC Barry M. Davis Memorial Next Generation Educational Scholarship, left his neighborhood in New York City’s East Harlem eight years ago with plans to study medicine.

But as things turned out, it is the economic health of urban neighborhoods that ultimately captured his interest. Now Flores is putting in long hours learning how to heal ailing communities with business salves — he wants to make his mark in the real estate industry through urban development.

The Davis scholarship, which pays for classes at the ICSC John T. Riordan School for Professional Development, is named after Barry Davis, who served as ICSC’s divisional chairman for government relations and New York state director, as well as being a longtime member of the Program Committee for the New York Conference. In 1995 the ICSC Board of Trustees awarded him its Distinguished Service Award.

“I want to go as far as possible in the real estate business,” Flores said on a December afternoon at his 31st-floor office at UrbanAmerica, a real estate investment firm that focuses exclusively on urban markets, overlooking New York City’s downtown. “My eventual goal is to have my own development company or run my own shop that focuses on urban community development.”

At 26, a year and several months into his second job out of college, Flores is laying a foundation on which to realize that dream. As a business development associate at UrbanAmerica, he scouts deals and oversees management of the company’s development pipeline. Before this, he was an analyst in the structured products group of New York City-based Morgan Stanley, which he joined after graduating from Middlebury (Vt.) College, one of the country’s top liberal arts institutions.

But for Flores, a first-generation immigrant from the Dominican Republic, this is not just about fulfilling his own aspirations; he is intent on realizing his parents’ dreams for his life too. Flores came to East Harlem in 1982 with his mother and older brother to join his father, who immigrated here five years before. Flores, who still lives in East Harlem, was 3 years old at the time.

His describes how his parents, Anna and Porfirio, lived for their children in those days, even sacrificing their personal advancements to push Henry and his brother ahead. Porfirio, who spoke no English, took low-wage jobs to support the family. First he worked in a restaurant as a busboy and then as a doorman at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, until he died in 1992. In the Dominican Republic, however, he was an educator who traveled the rural interiors establishing schools and teaching in them. Anna still works with the elderly as a home health care aid.

“I give my mother all the credit in the world, because if it were not for her backbreaking labor, I wouldn’t be where I am sitting now,” said Flores.

The scholarship will allow Flores to continue his education in retail real estate, but he got his first lesson on the challenges of commercial real estate investment and development as a youngster. While walking through Manhattan’s Upper East Side with his parish priest, Flores noticed that there were almost no attractive retail offerings in East Harlem, not far uptown. The more-affluent portions of the Upper East Side, on the other hand, had plenty of stores, and posh ones at that. Flores asked the priest why this was the case.

“He basically explained to me that … there is no retail there because people don’t shop there and investors believe the residents have no money,” said Flores.

At the time, Flores was a high school sophomore, so he did not fully appreciate the weight of that observation. But he did recall the exchange during his sophomore year at Middlebury, after reading about real estate as a catalyst for economic development in blighted cities and neighborhoods.

“Then I saw the transformation of central Harlem and everything that was going on there, and I said, ‘Wow, I think this is the time for East Harlem to really pick up and ride the crest of the wave that’s coming,’ ” said Flores.

He credits professional and personal relationships — not to mention a string of scholarships — for putting him in his current position. He attended the All Hallows High School, an all-boys Catholic school in the Bronx, on a scholarship from a student-mentor program called the Student Sponsor Partners. That program put him in touch with mentor Dirk Leisure, who was then a head of fixed-income trading at Goldman Sachs. Leisure took Flores on a tour of the Goldman Sachs trading floor, which sparked Flores’ interest in a Wall Street career.

Flores interned at Morgan Stanley for two summers while at Middlebury, which led to a full-time job after graduation. The job gave Flores little personal fulfillment, however, so he moved to UrbanAmerica. Established in 1998, UrbanAmerica broke new ground because it targeted institutional investors for investment in inner-city projects. Through its first fund, UrbanAmerica LP, the company has already placed $120 million in 28 office and retail properties, totaling 3.7 million square feet of space, and is currently raising funds for its second group of targeted investments.

“I enjoy working for a company with a double bottom line — you do good socially, and you do well financially,” he said.

Flores is likely to face tough competition in urban commercial real estate redevelopment, because, as he himself says, the specialty is increasingly popular among development firms seeking new markets. But he exudes confidence all the same.

“I think I found a good balance, with a job that allows me to focus on my community as well as my work,” said Flores. “My work and my community are one and the same.”