Jim Kramer started his retail career managing a grocery store to pay his way through college, moving into mall management in 1978.
Several states, mall management jobs and other endeavors later, the 67-year-old has taken the lead at managing Regency Square Mall, once Jacksonville’s venerable shopping-center giant.
Kramer earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a minor in business from Marquette University in Milwaukee, which he brings to Regency along with 36 years of shopping-center management experience.
“I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve pretty much been able to do what I wanted to do,” Kramer said.
He was a paper-delivery boy at 12 and then became a retailer when he worked at 15 in the grocery business as a bagger and a stocker. He began managing a grocery store at age 20.
For six months in 1984, Kramer was brought in to manage Jacksonville’s Grande Boulevard Mall, which had been marketed as the mall that’s not for everyone, and many seemed to comply.
“It had some great shops, until the marketing alienated customers,” he said.
Kramer has worked in several states with several malls, including managing Glynn Place Mall in Brunswick, Ga., from 1999-2011.
He left when the mall was placed into receivership. It has since been sold.
He operated some seasonal calendar locations and then was connected with the new owners of Regency Square through a tenant. A New York-based investment group paid $13 million for the mall on Valentine’s Day.
“They called me, we talked twice and I took the job,” he said.
Regency’s buyers also own the DeSoto Square Mall in Bradenton, where they sent Kramer and his team to take over until a new general manager could be hired. He and his staff take turns commuting there.
Kramer considers Brunswick home. He and Patti, his partner of 17 years, live there, although he rents a place in Jacksonville for work days. He has two children, she has two, and together they have eight grandchildren.
His workdays are Monday-Friday, starting daily between 7:30 a.m. and 8:15 a.m., and they wrap up at 4-4:30 p.m. He has security and maintenance on staff seven days a week, with security there 24/7.
Total full-time staff numbers 25.
First, he checks the parking lot and exterior of the mall. “Then, I walk in the door and see what happens.”
Kramer realizes the challenges at the 1.4 million-square-foot Regency Square, which had dropped to about 38 percent occupancy when it was sold this year.
The plan was to concentrate the retailers in the East Mall and position the West Mall for nontraditional tenants, like Torch Bearers Church, which is taking 15,000 square feet; a possible charter school; and the potential game-changing catch of Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which is looking for about 230,000 square feet of space to consolidate its Jacksonville claims operation.
This week, Citizens narrowed the sites for that to four bidders, including Regency. Site visits and presentations are expected in early October.
Regency proposes space that could include the Belk Inc. store that will close in February and would include space from there to Sears on the south corridor of the West Mall. The East Mall, from Belk to JCPenney, is 75-85 percent leased to retailers.
“I think it’s in a great position for resurgence,” Kramer said.
He said it demands patience, reaching out to customers and making it clear it is a great place to shop.
“It’s going to take time,” he said.
And at 67, he has it. “I’m not ready to retire,” he said.
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