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LIZÁN PLANS GROWTH STRATEGY FOR ICSC IN LATIN AMERICA

By Molly Knight

As retail developers grow busier in Latin America, so does ICSC. Accordingly, the organization hired a director of business development who is responsible for boosting its presence and membership in the region.

“This region is a booming industry with many major economies, like Brazil, Mexico and Argentina,” said Jorge O. Lizán, who took the job in July. “As their political and economic climates get better, malls are popping up all over. There is a lot of money going to the development of new shopping centers. It’s a great time to increase our visibility now.”

Though ICSC is an international organization, 95 percent of its members are based in the U.S. and Canada. That will change, Lizán says, as ICSC raises its profile overseas. “There is just so much more potential for growth in Latin America than in the U.S., because for a very long time development [there] was very slow,” said Lizán. “The first mall in Mexico was built in 1970. The second one wasn’t built until 10 years later. Now it’s becoming crazy.”

Today even midsize cities in the region are getting large malls with two to three anchors, says Lizán. As a further sign of maturation, Latin America’s retail concepts are starting to cross borders. Colombia’s Crepes & Waffles restaurant has gone into Ecuador, Mexico, Panama and even Spain. And Guatemala’s Pollo Campero operates hundreds of chicken restaurants across not just Latin America but also the U.S. “Now is the time to act,” said Lizán. “We’ve never seen growth like this here, and this is a critical, critical area.”

Lizán will be based in New York, but he is no stranger to Latin America. He was born in Mexico and has a bachelor’s in architecture from the Universidad Iberoamericana, in Mexico City. He also earned an MBA from Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management, in Arizona.

Lizán joins ICSC from Yum Brands (parent of the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains), where he was development manager for Latin America and the Caribbean. He has also published articles about his experiences in the roughly 60 countries he has visited.

“Jorge brings 15 years of experience in Latin American retail real estate on the developer and the retail side,” said Scott Harris, ICSC’s head of international development. “This positions him well for understanding challenges and opportunities there and how ICSC can best serve the needs of its members in the region.”

Lizán says his goals are to amplify ICSC’s brand awareness, increase its membership and boost the number of events in the region. “We are trying to become a global organization,” he said. “We need to be strengthening relationships with key industry players there. We need to be reaching out with industry events.”

One of the main hurdles Latin America faces is that its retail real estate professionals must learn to share their expertise, Lizán says, as their U.S. counterparts do within ICSC. “Developers are self-made persons who think they know everything,” said Lizán. “There is a real resistance to share their practices and information with other developers.”

Further, Lizán says he will be building relationships with government and community officials to encourage their understanding of and cooperation with the shopping center industry. “Organization has to start somewhere,” he said. “We have some presence, but it’s not enough. There is real potential for ICSC to get in on the ground floor and help.”