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Shopping Centers Today -> April 2003
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EDENS’ PRESIDENT, 34 AND FEMALE, BREAKS THE MOLD
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Jodie W. McLean
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Last year, when Edens & Avant founder Joe Edens made room at the helm of the fast-growing firm, he tapped its own wunderkind, Jodie W. McLean, for president, making her one of only a few women in the top executive ranks of the shopping center industry.
McLean is a 34-year-old Chicago native who joined the company fresh out of college in 1990 and within seven years rose to chief investment officer. She has retained the title. A quick study who puts in long hours on the job, McLean has been the driving force behind most of the acquisitions and ground-up development projects that have propelled the Columbia, S.C.Ðbased company from a regional shopping center developer to one of the industry’s biggest firms in less than a decade.
“We would not be where we are today without her having made a lot of the right decisions,” said Terry S. Brown, who became CEO (a position that didn’t exist previously) last April at the same time McLean was named president. Edens, who was chairman and CEO at the time, continues to serve as chairman.
Brown credits McLean with being the rainmaker who engineered the company’s two biggest acquisitions ever: the $275 million buyout late last year of 36 centers from Konover & Associates, and the $300 million acquisition in 1998 of 22 centers from Samuels & Associates. Edens was among dozens of companies that competed for the Konover portfolio.
Ironically, McLean only planned to stay a couple of years when she joined the firm as a management trainee in 1990 after graduating from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor’s in finance and management. But she soon became the company’s top financial analyst at a time when it was preoccupied with turning around properties that had been slammed by Hurricane Hugo and a troubled economy.
McLean expanded beyond that role by persuading Edens to give her the opportunity to prove her entrepreneurial skills by turning around a struggling property, Florence (S.C.) Mall. She put together a team that embarked on a successful redevelopment of the 38-year-old mall and went on to work on hundreds of other projects, including many ground-up developments.
“My experience with real estate has been hands-on, dirt-under-the-fingernails kind of experience,” said McLean.
In 1997 she helped the company secure its first major infusion of investment capital when the State of Michigan Retirement System invested $146 million in the firm. A year later she became responsible for helping to oversee the strategic growth of the company.
Edens & Avant has been a successful acquirer of grocery-anchored centers in such a competitive environment largely because of its ability to act quickly to close a deal, said McLean. Today her biggest challenge is ensuring that the firm retains its entrepreneurial drive now that it is a much bigger company than when she started. It has decentralized operations in an effort to do just that by opening offices throughout the eastern United States. The company now employs almost 400 people, up from only 120 five years ago.
“Preserving that entrepreneurial spirit is very important to me,” said McLean. “That means empowering people, knowing your markets and knowing your tenants.”
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