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THE NEW URBANIST

From lawyer to retailer to developer, David Zoba has seen all sides of the business

By Steve McLinden

David Zoba’s curriculum vitae reads like some kind of road map to success: Wall Street lawyer; senior partner of a top Southwest law firm; head of legal and real estate, first at The Limited and then at Galyan’s Trading Company; president of a major Midwest shopping center development firm. That’s a bio few in either retail or law can match, to say nothing of any others who, like him, have made their mark in both.

Yet just about a year ago, this Ohio native was feeling there was more he needed to accomplish to come full circle, as he put it. Then an old pal and associate came calling. That friend, retail master planner and engineer Yaromir Steiner, offered Zoba a prize of a role: COO and principal at Columbus, Ohio-based Steiner + Associates, a developer of town centers. Zoba, who says he developed an affinity for creative retail after seeing what he calls too much industry sameness over his 26-year career, jumped at the chance.

Much like Steiner, Zoba says he was inspired by retail pioneer Leslie Wexner, founder of the Limited (now Limited Brands), a man who long contended that retail must convey “desired social experience” in order to flourish. In fact, it was Wexner, sensing that indoor regional malls were going stale, who brought in Steiner in the mid-1990s to make his vision for a New Urbanist-style, retail-entertainment complex in Columbus a reality.

Zoba, then senior vice president and real estate counsel at the Limited, was liaison with Steiner on the now-famous Easton Town Center, which quickly became a hit.

As Steiner’s industry reputation grew, Zoba was deeply immersed in the 30 million square feet of real estate holdings the Limited owned. But in 2001 the Limited spun off 60 percent of its up-and-coming sporting goods concept, Galyan’s, and Zoba seized the opportunity to run the chain’s real estate, store planning and legal practices, all the while helping take the concept public.

“I was used to store sizes of 2,000 to 10,000 square feet, and here comes Galyan’s at 80,000 square feet,” he said. Zoba was a quick study, though. He helped expand Indianapolis-based Galyan’s from five stores to 53 as it evolved into one of the most highly sought-after lifestyle tenants around. “That’s when I stopped practicing law and grew more on the business side,” said Zoba. In fact, he says his legal swan song came when he chaired the 2002 ICSC Shopping Center Law Conference.

More change was in store. In 2004 Dick’s Sporting Goods bought out Galyan’s, and Zoba considered that was the time “to get into what I felt was the core of the real estate business: the development side.” He joined Indianapolis-based Premier Properties USA as president and COO, overseeing day-to-day operations of an open-air center development firm that owned 1 million square of retail and had an additional 4 million square feet in the pipeline.

But less than two years later, Zoba accepted the Steiner post “to help complete the circle,” he said. “I guess you might say I’m a sheriff here — the guy who makes all the trains run on time.” Zoba concedes that the risk-aversion mindset inherent in lawyers is not always compatible with the risks of developing one-of-a-kind centers. “I stay awake at night worrying about those types of things. I guess that’s part of my job.”

Steiner, who describes Zoba as “a no-nonsense executive,” said his new hire’s focus on execution and accountability “will be a great complement to our company’s creative and outside-the-box thinking.” Steiner never hesitated about hiring Zoba. “When we heard he may be available, it was someone whose strengths were very clear to us,” Steiner said. “And so far we have not been disappointed.”

Zoba was born in the small steel town of Warren, Ohio, to blue-collar parents. Though his father, a fireman, and his mother, a homemaker, never attended college, they placed a very strong focus on education as their son grew. Zoba would thrive both in and out of the classroom at Warren Western Reserve High School, where he was an all-state quarterback and an honor student. He received several football scholarship offers, including one from Purdue, but he opted to attend Harvard on the strength of his academic prowess. Zoba would graduate cum laude in 1973 with a degree in social relations and economics. “I got to Harvard in 1969 at the height of the hippie days, and that attracted me to social studies,” he said. “I met people from social classes that I never dreamed existed, with incredible intellect and talent.”

Zoba’s graduate studies took him to the London School of Economics, after which he returned to the U.S. to earn his law degree at Case Western University. But before the trip home, Zoba spent part of a year teaching English in France and seeing the European countryside. It was during that stint that he learned much about the importance of the social experience in everyday European life, he says. “I saw the sense of community and how critical it was in virtually everything they did, especially retail,” he said. “And a lot of what Steiner does is classical urban planning, which they’ve been doing in Europe for hundreds of years. And now with the appreciation of land, higher gas prices, pollution and congestion, our own society is starting to turn around and say, ‘We want back some of what we’ve lost.’ ”

Today Zoba is as passionate about the planned Glorypark development in Arlington, Texas — a New Urbanist, mixed-use project Steiner plans to develop around the Texas Rangers baseball team’s Ameriquest Field — as Wexner and Steiner were about their initial plans for Easton. “A lot of real estate people look at it [the 235 acres in Arlington] and shake their heads,” Zoba said. “We look at it and see the full-flowered, mixed-use powerhouse it’s going to be.”

Zoba calls such town center projects “there-theres,” because of the sense of place they create. “I like the serendipity of walking around the corner and seeing something that’s surprising,” he said. Playful touches, ranging from circa-1950’s wall murals to old-fashioned soda machines to parking meters to quirky restaurants like Easton Town Center’s Café Istanbul (a nod to Steiner’s Turkish heritage), delight shoppers. “Who expects to see a Turkish restaurant in an Ohio shopping center?”

Among the most significant changes in the retail industry has been consumers’ instantaneous connection to world culture by means of the Web and other media. “Ohio people, for example, have much higher expectations of coolness and hipness now,” he said. “They think, ‘Why do I have to go to New York? Why can’t I have it all here?’ ” And the same technology “has raised the bar for expectations that we like to deliver in our centers.”

Zoba and his wife, Elizabeth, have three grown children. He says he is “basically a worker bee, though I do enjoy reading, good movies and better movies. I was a bad golfer, but the Steiner organization cured me of that.”

Though no longer a litigator, Zoba will remain in touch with his roots by coordinating some of the Steiner firm’s legal work. Zoba launched his own law career as a securities lawyer at the Wall Street firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, switching to retail before latching on to two small Dallas law firms and then settling in as a senior partner at Dallas-based legal powerhouse Hughes & Luce.

Over the years, he worked several large retail deals with Dallas developer M.G. (Buddy) Herring, now CEO of The MG Herring Group and a man Zoba calls “one of my retail mentors.” Herring always stressed the importance of professional meetings and networking. “And he was right,” Zoba said. “It’s a people industry and one that is built on contacts.” Zoba has attended every national ICSC convention since 1984.

“David grasped the shopping center business very quickly,” said Herring. “We did a lot of joint venture projects with some big, very sophisticated companies, and he was a take-charge person who always made his deadlines. He also had the type of personality that makes him an excellent negotiator.”

Zoba, Herring and Steiner are all ICSC trustees. At the 2001 Las Vegas convention, Zoba was honored with an ICSC Distinguished Service Award for his contributions as an officer, program chairman, speaker and instructor. Despite his hectic schedule, Zoba remains active as vice president of ICSC’s central division and as a member of the Executive Committee. “ICSC was the best thing I ever got involved in,” he said. “It’s an easy thing for me to give my time, because I have received so much back. It has been tremendously satisfying.”