Score at least one Jacksonville shopping center investment for Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan.
Developer Scott Gendell, who recently bought the Monument Landing shopping center in Arlington, is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
As such, he is familiar with one of what he calls its most revered alumni.
“One of the reasons we chose to invest in Jacksonville is if it’s good enough for Shad Khan, it is good enough for me,” Gendell said April 6.
“If you are a graduate of the University of Illinois, Shad Khan is someone you look up to and certainly want to emulate.”
Gendell is active at the university and has friends in common with Khan. They’ve met a few times.
Gendell is a 1979 graduate of the university with a bachelor’s degree in advertising.
Khan is a naturalized U.S. citizen who left Pakistan in 1967 at age 16 to attend the university. He graduated in 1971 with a degree in industrial engineering.
He later bought and built up the Urbana-based global Flex-N-Gate Corp. automobile parts manufacturer.
Khan purchased the Jaguars in 2012.
Gendell went on to receive a law degree from the Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1982 and began his career as a real estate attorney in Chicago’s northern suburbs.
In 1985, he and his wife, Lisa, formed Terraco Real Estate Development & Management, based in Wilmette, Illinois, a North Shore suburb of Chicago.
Terraco specializes in developing, buying and managing retail, office, medical and mixed-use properties with an emphasis on neighborhood and community shopping centers and single-purpose retail stores.
Terra is Latin for land. “My two semesters of college Latin had to be good for something,” Gendell said.
Terraco has developed or managed more than 120 properties, primarily in the Midwest.
It began buying in Florida in the past decade in Orlando, Tampa and Vero Beach.
“And now Jacksonville,” Gendell said.
Terraco branched into Jacksonville with the March 19 acquisition of Monument Landing for $13.7 million.
The 66,780-square-foot retail center is on 8.85 acres at 2485 Monument Road in the Fort Carolina area of East Arlington. Major tenants include Walgreens, Bailey’s Health & Fitness, UF Health Family Medicine and Dollar Tree.
The center was developed in 1988 and Walgreens was built in 2008.
Terraco bought the center from The Josephs Group of Orangeburg, New York, which paid $12.2 million for it in June 2017.
Gendell said Dennis Carson of CBRE in Miami facilitiated the transaction, representing the buyer and seller.
“This property is in an excellent neighborhood, is close to the water and it has tenants we are familiar with,” Gendell said.
The location is near the St. Johns River in the Fort Caroline area and near the beaches by way of the Wonderwood Expressway.
The center is fully occupied. David Gallagher is the Terraco property manager.
Gendell said he has built more than 35 Walgreens pharmacies and multiple Dollar Tree stores. He said Terraco is familiar with Jacksonville-based Bailey’s, and “the University of Florida medical group is something we thought was an asset to the city and the area.”
Terraco expects to make more area acquistions.
“This is going to be one of several properties that we either own or develop in Jacksonville,” Gendell said.
“We are real estate developers but we will buy a center that we think is a good, stable asset that we can upgrade over time.”
Gendell said Terraco wants to look at Downtown and other areas.
“We are actively looking for opportunities in the Jacksonville market,” he said, requesting that anyone who wants to reach him do so at [email protected].
Downtown, he would look at a project with ground-level retail and entertainment, with apartments on upper floors.
In suburban areas, Terraco would take more of a conventional shopping-center approach, he said.
With his experience with the chain, “where there isn’t a Walgreens and there is a corner, we would like that.”
Gendell said Terraco is not afraid of building where there is not as much residential density because “we understand the car allows you to broaden the radius of a target market.”
Terraco wants to grow its footprint and portfolio throughout Florida.
While its properties are concentrated in Illinois, it also has locations in Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin as well as Florida.
The company grew from a neighborhood retail development business to a real estate development and management company with a portfolio of more than 5 million square feet of retail and office properties.
Terraco owns and/or manages 75 properties in nine states.
In Florida, its properties include two retail centers in Orlando, 300 apartments in Tampa and residential acreage in Vero Beach.
Gendell thinks Jacksonville will draw more interest from investors.
“Jacksonville has a bit of an undersized reputation in the Midwest and I am not sure why that is, but I think that will change in the next decade,” Gendell said.
He looks at the community and the climate – and the fact it has an NFL franchise with “a proactive owner and now they have one of the great coaches in college football history.”
“That might not seem like a huge deal, but it gets people to notice.”
The Jaguars hired Urban Meyer as head coach in January. He coached collegiately at Florida, Bowling Green, Utah and Ohio State. He went 187-32 as a college coach, the Jaguars noted.
Jacksonville, Gendell said, “feels like a Midwestern city on some levels.”
“There is a Midwestern sensibility. People work hard, they are not showy and they are interested in a good life,” he said.
Gendell said Terraco is “really, really happy to be part of the community.”
“Don’t develop in a community that you don’t care about.”
