SMR: More commercial control could mean more leases

Here's a potential solution for Gulf Coast developers and landlords wrangling with how to survive the commercial real estate downturn: Take more control.

That's what Manatee County development firm Schroeder-Manatee Ranch has done with Lakewood Ranch Main Street, the largest retail-based thoroughfare in the giant master-planned community. To get that control, SMR recently acquired a 50% stake in Main Street from Casto Lifestyle Properties, a Sarasota-based retail and shopping development and management firm.

Now SMR holds full ownership of the project.

“You have to start with the central reason we did this — Main Street is a key element of the equation of our success,” SMR's chief executive Rex Jensen told the East County Observer, the Review's sister paper. “Controlling such a key asset, we have an interest in probably doing some things with it that some other companies would not do. Now we don't have anybody to talk to about how to do it.”

SMR and Casto had been joint venture partners on the project since 2002, when Casto began guiding the development and management of the Main Street on land provided by SMR. The 158,000-square-foot mixed-use project, which includes a movie theater, restaurants, retail space and residential condos, opened in 2005.

Jensen says SMR, through its Lakewood Ranch Commercial Realty subsidiary, will try to make Main Street more family-friendly and better able to meet the day-to-day needs of residents, rather than trying to make it the destination spot it was once envisioned to be. The recent announcement that a miniature golf course and an accompanying golf-and-novelty store are coming to Main Street is just one example of the company's change in direction.

Lakewood Ranch Commercial Realty President Brian Kennelly also tells Coffee Talk that another element of control is that now the firm's own agents run the leasing side of the operation. For that task, the firm recently hired a pair of Sarasota-area commercial brokers: Diane Lawson, a well-known agent who previously worked for Abbey Realty & Management and Anthony Homer, who recently left Hembree & Associates to work for Lakewood Ranch Commercial Realty.he Lawson hiring has already paid off in terms of supplying new contacts. Says Kennelly: “Her addition to the team has helped us open some doors to retail and restaurateurs that we didn't have access to before.”