ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9608300075
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
Louise Dudley, Valley View Mall's new property manager, doesn't have a hat rack in her office.
If she did, it would have to be a large one.
Dudley is the mall's official spokesperson. She supervises the security staff. She's the liaison between her employer, the management company Faison Associates and the construction crews and housekeeping contractors it hires. She advises tenants on renovations of their stores. She collects rent. She files financial reports. She cheerleads.
She spends seven days and 70 hours a week changing her hats.
Judy Tullius, who manages Roanoke County's Tanglewood Mall for Raleigh, N.C.-based Kane Realty Corp., can empathize.
"When I first started here, I worked 60, 70, 80 hours a week," Tullius said. "I was crazy." That's what happens when you're new, she said - you want to make your mark, get everything just so. Now, after seven years at Tanglewood, she usually puts in just 50 hours a week and takes Sundays off.
The mall manager's job has expanded over the years. When Dudley joined Faison Associates of Charlotte, N.C., in the early 1980s, the company's headquarters handled rent collection for nearly two dozen regional shopping centers. Mall managers were responsible primarily for keeping their properties "clean and green," Dudley said.
Then, five years ago, Faison decentralized its system. Now property managers are responsible both for day-to-day operations and for the mall's finances.
"In the '80s, [the manager's job] was very, very marketing oriented," said Rudolph Milian, a senior vice president at the International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York trade association.
As the economy worsened in the early 1990s, managers focused more on cutting costs. Today, a manager's job is income-driven, he said. Managers help leasing agents attract successful tenants, and then help the tenants sell themselves to customers. Rent is based partially on tenants' sales, so the more successful a mall's merchants are, the more rent a developer can collect.
Because they juggle more responsibilities, managers typically receive more training today than they did 10 years ago, he said. The ICSC offers educational seminars and certification to teach managers about financial reporting and merchandising and security.
Mall management was a male-dominated field in the 1970s, Milian said. But some women who started out as marketing directors then slowly have worked their way up through the ranks, he said. The change has been positive for the industry, he said, because female managers tend to have a better understanding of what their customers - who are, by and large, women - want.
Today, many mall managers are responsible for several properties, a result of efforts by companies such as Faison and Kane to streamline operations even as they expand their holdings.
Dudley, for instance, manages First Union Tower, an office building on Franklin Road, both in Roanoke, and Marketplace shopping in Christiansburg. Tullius oversees University Mall in Blacksburg, Stonewall Square in Lexington and Towne Square in Roanoke.
Faison, which handles both retail and office space, is the exception in the industry, Milian said. Most management companies specialize in one or the other, not both.
Managing two office buildings means one more hat for Dudley.
"You learn to juggle," she said.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB