In his latest letter to shareholders, Howard Hughes Corp. CEO David Weinreb clearly feels an affinity with the company's namesake's background as a movie producer.
Yes, Weinreb reported the numbers: Consolidated master-planned community revenues totaled $475 million, with operating income and income from non-consolidated affiliates rising from $76 million in 2012 to $118 million last year. Most important was that the company, spun off in 2010 from General Growth Properties as part of the latter's bankruptcy, launched some of its signature retail projects, which Weinreb continues to liken to motion picture production, an apt analogy given Howard Hughes' own career as a maverick moviemaker (Hell's Angels, The Outlaw and the original Scarface).
“In last year's letter, I compared the development of our company to the process of making a film,” Weinreb wrote. “In 2012, we wrote the script, scouted locations and cast the talent. In 2013, the cameras began rolling.”
Construction has begun on Hughes Landing in The Woodlands near Houston, with some 122,000 square feet of retail, including Whole Foods, and the Village of Creekside Park, with 75,000 square feet of retail; the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan; the Shops at Summerlin in Las Vegas; and the conversion of Ward Village in Honolulu into residences and vertical retail.
The redevelopment of the Outlet Collection at Riverwalk in New Orleans into the first upscale urban outlet center in the United States (opening in May) also and the conversion of the Columbia, MD, former headquarters of The Rouse Company (a predecessor firm) into retail also are under way. In fact, look for more development in Columbia, Hughes Corp.'s oldest master-planned community, originally built by Jim Rouse in the 1960s and 1970s.
“Since that time, very little development has occurred in Columbia and most of its commercial buildings are dated,” Weinreb noted. “Downtown Columbia is poised for new development, and during 2014 we expect to unveil our master plan for its redevelopment.”
Weinreb noted that he's encouraging his staff and consultants to “think big,” not unlike Hughes himself, a pioneering aviator and aerospace engineer as well as a film producer before retreating into eccentricity and seclusion in his later years.
“We love real estate, but our brand is about so much more than bricks and mortar,” Weinreb wrote. “We are about creating something great and transformational that will outlast us.”
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