Jessica McLinden Brown of Sterling Bay.

CHICAGO—Sterling Bay and Mid-America Real Estate Corp. have just forged a formal partnership whereby Mid-America will serve as the retail leasing agent on the developer's portfolio. The Chicago-based developer is perhaps best known for transforming a former cold storage building in the city's Fulton Market neighborhood into Google's new regional headquarters, and has plans to expand to new markets such as Miami, Portland and Nashville, among others.

Mid-America's principal Paul Bryant and vice president Andrew Becker will join Sterling Bay's vice president and head of retail leasing, Jessica McLinden Brown, in leading the lease-up of the majority of the firm's retail space throughout Chicago.

McLinden Brown, who will also oversee Sterling Bay's retail strategy in the new markets, tells GlobeSt.com that even though retailers may occupy a relatively small portion of the firm's mixed-use developments, they can establish a building's reputation and play a key role in filling it with other tenants.

“It's the face of their building,” she says, “and that means tenants are associating their brand with the brands on the ground floor.” Furthermore, modern office tenants also show tremendous interest in the ground-floor retailers because they now consider it an amenity for their employees. “It's one more way to help recruit great talent.”

And securing deals with the right retailers is even more essential for a firm like Sterling Bay, which frequently works on a massive scale. “When you are developing a whole city block of new buildings, it's a mini-neighborhood, and you need to be conscious of how all this will change the pattern of the neighborhood, including how the neighborhood's residents will use this retail.”    

Over the last five years Bryant and Becker have partnered on nearly 30 transactions valued at $110 million, including deals with Champs Sports for its flagship location on State St. and Labriola Café on Michigan Ave. They are also familiar with Sterling Bay's platform having leased Fulton Market's 1000 W. Randolph and 945 W. Randolph alongside McLinden Brown. Together the trio helped shape the neighborhood's retail landscape, completing leases with Starbucks Reserve, Anthropologie, Sweetgreen, Umami Burger and Nando's Peri Peri.

“It's an edgier group of retailers,” McLinden Brown says, “and that's what we're looking for. Retail is part of a building's DNA, and we don't want to just fill up our ground-floor space with anybody, just so we can say we checked off a box.”

And sticking with one retail team will make those leasing efforts more efficient, McLinden Brown adds. “It's rare for a tenant, especially in Fulton Market, to come to us and say, 'I want a space in this building and only this building.'” Instead, most want to look at a range of options across the portfolio, and a unified leasing team won't exhibit bias toward one property.  

Bryant and Becker “set the standard for excellence in retail leasing and together I believe we can execute a dynamic tenant line-up for our developments.”