Redefining Residential

Luxury in multifamily

By Leah Etling on Apr 23, 2012 in News | 1 Comment

Yvonne A. Jones has had a long and accomplished career in commercial real estate. Currently Managing Director of Asset and Property Management at Chicago-based McCaffery Interests, Inc., she’s also serving as President-Elect at IREM Chicago, Chapter 23.

Recently The Balance Sheet had the chance to talk to Jones about her new foray into the residential sector, which is new for her. She spent almost nine years focused on the management, leasing, acquisition, disposition, and financing of commercial real estate assets at Zifkin Realty Group, LLC.

At McCaffery, she’s overseeing mixed-used projects like the Roosevelt Collection in Chicago’s South Loop, which the company acquired in June of 2011. (The development was initially constructed in 2007 by Centrum Properties.) McCaffery is changing the layout of the project’s 440,000 square feet of retail space and creating a vibrant community mixed use space for residents and shoppers to enjoy. The shopping center is anchored by the popular Kerasotes ShowPlace movie theater, one of the nation’s top three theaters.

Dan McCaffery, CEO of McCaffery Interests, is considered an industry and market leader in creating Class A living experience for residents of his company’s multifamily properties. His early projects, like The Bernardin, reflect a unique concept of high-end luxury living that residents adore.

“His idea and his concept at the time was to really bring the hotel experience to the apartment home community,” Jones said. “I think when you look at what he designed at the Bernardin and Flair (Tower) and what he’s done at The Morgan, his focus is really on making these communities a place people want to come home to, where they get that hotel service and quality. Everything we do is really about creating that experience, making people feel like they’re walking into that beautiful hotel lobby and getting that concierge service that they would expect in a five star hotel.”

Learning more about the residential market has been fascinating for the commercial expert. Jones is identifying areas where there are lessons to be learned from the multifamily sector that commercial interests, specifically the retail sector, can use. Social media and revenue management are two.

“We have hired a digital marketing manager to really focus on our social media platform for the residential portfolio. I’m also having him start to look at how we can start to introduce and grow those platforms into the retail world. Does it make sense to have a Facebook page for our suburban shopping center? Would that help in our leasing effort? Should we tweet about what some of those retailers are offering in terms of sales? We haven’t done any of it yet, but we’re starting to explore.”

Using a blog, McCaffery has created an open channel of communication with the public about the work they’re doing on the Roosevelt Collection’s retail space, which has been disruptive for residents. Dan McCaffery himself authors many of the posts about upcoming work, like a recent entry on garage escalator construction that doesn’t pull any punches. “.. it may be really annoying from day to day. We want you to know it will only be as such into the short term,” McCaffery wrote.

Jones said that it’s important to the company to communicate clearly with the public as they work toward a completed small shop retail center that will change the South Loop. Roosevelt Collection has a high occupancy rate (around 95-98 percent) for its 342 apartments, but the new shops will draw in more visitors who are seeing a show at Kerasotes ShowPlace or shopping at one of the area’s nearby big box stores.

“What we wanted to do with the blog was really to position the Collection as the anchor and the voice of the community in the South Loop.  If you look at that blog,we talk about what’s going on in the Roosevelt Collection, but we also talk about other retailers and what other happenings are going on in the area so that it actually becomes the focal point for information on the South Loop,” Jones said.

Observing market-wide retail real estate trends, Jones points out that urban retail shopping centers are making a much quicker comeback from the down economy than their speculative suburban counterparts.

“With retail closures and limited new tenants, it has been slow to lease up these green grass centers (developed in 2008-2009). If you’ve got urban retail real estate, that has been in strong demand,” Jones said.