Each issue, Midwest Real Estate News profiles a successful commercial real estate professional. This issue, we look at the long career of Paul Bryant, principal and senior vice president in the Chicago office of Mid-America Real Estate Corporation, the brokerage division of Mid-America Real Estate Group, which has offices in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and Milwaukee.
Midwest Real Estate News: How long have you worked in the commercial real estate business? Paul Bryant: I’ve been in the business since October of 1987, almost 24 years. My thought when I was in school was that I would eventually go to law school. But then I ran out of steam with school. The idea of three more years of intensive school wasn’t going to work out.
MWREN: What led you to commercial real estate? Bryant: My father had a contracting business. I did the general grunt work for him, cleaning, running errands, picking stuff up, that sort of thing. My brother had moved down here, too. He was a couple of years older than me and was working as an office leasing agent for downtown office buildings. I saw what he was doing. It seemed attractive. I decided to focus on getting a real estate job.
MWREN: Once you did break into the field, you must have enjoyed it. You are nearly on 25 years in real estate now. Bryant: My first job was with a retail development company. It gave me exposure across the board, though it was primarily a suburban focus. That’s what got me my initial exposure to retail. I liked that more than office/industrial. That job also quickly made me realize I didn’t like driving to Olympia fields, Naperville, Lake in the Hills or other Chicago suburbs. That company folded in the fall of 1989. I then went to Grubb & Ellis as a retail broker. I found a mentor there who helped me get listings in Waukegan and other far-based suburban locations. That again drove home the point that living in the city and driving to work in the suburbs isn’t what I wanted to do.
MWREN: What do you enjoy so much about working in Chicago? You seem to like working the urban markets. Bryant: I like walking the busy retail streets like Clark and Halsted, Wells Street in downtown Chicago. You can call on mom-and-pop tenants when you do that. They are always in the store. Ownership is often working right behind the counter. In the off hours, you can get their attention. They’ll listen to what you have to say. That was how I grew my business. I was at the cusp of urban renewal, loft redevelopments and people moving back into the city. Retailers were discovering the buying power in the city. I started in the infancy. I was in the right place at the right time.
MWREN: How important was that personal, face-to-face contact as you were building your business? Bryan: It’s a people business. It’s not rocket science. People try to make brokerage into more than it is. It’s an information and a people business. You need to get information. You need relationships to put that information to work. That personal contact played a big part at the end of the day.
MWREN: Do you think your personality is particularly well-suited to your career? Bryant: Absolutely. I am a people person. I like meeting people and hearing their stories. I like getting information. I like the fact that if you don’t enjoy somebody you don’t have to work with them. You can move on to the next person. It’s human nature; not everyone is going to like me, and I’m not going to like everyone. Fortunately, most of the people in the business are good people. There is a lot of friendly competition. I like competition, so that’s good.
MWREN: What has kept this career so interesting for you? Bryant: No day is the same. Repetition isn’t for me. There are new opportunities on every call. It’s a;; about the endless opportunity. That’s what I like about it. No two days are the same. No two deals are the same. No client requirements are the same. There is always a basic common denominator, but the means to the end are different.
MWREN: What do you think has helped Mid-America survive for so many years, especially in an economic environment as tough as this one? Bryant: It’s truly focused on retail. Coming from a background with a development company that had multiple disciplines, I can tell you that this focus has made an important difference. We are everything to do with retail, from management to investment sales, tenant rep, assemblage, leasing, you name it we do it, and we do it throughout the Midwest. Three is not much knowledge I can’t find if I need it between our offices in other cities or our management office. There’s not much we can’t figure out. We are all working for the same common goal here. I’m not sitting next to someone who is trying to lease up an office building in the suburbs.
MWREN: What do you enjoy so much about working the retail end of the commercial real estate market? Bryant: There’s so much variety with retail. It’s so site-specific to what people need. Office and some other specialties are very much commodity driven. Retail, though, is that proverbial, location, location, location formula. The reality is, there is only one Michigan Avenue in Chicago. There is only one corner of Michigan Avenue and Chicago Avenue in the city. You can have a retail establishment on one corner and be wildly successful. You can be 50 feet away from that corner and die on the vine. For a broker, it’s all about knowing traffic patterns. Who lives there? Is there an ethnicity breakdown from one side of the street to the other? Are there barriers keeping people from a certain location? Especially in the city, neighborhoods change quickly.
MWREN: Retail was particularly hard hit by the economic downturn. Are you seeing this market improve? Bryant: I’m an eternal optimist. But I know that we are one calamity away from a problem again. It could be the debt ceiling, terrorist activity … You can name a multitude of things that can cause it. The general perception, though, is that people are active again. They want deals. They’ve stayed on the sidelines long enough. If it is core A-plus real estate, the demand will be high. If it is B real estate in a C submarket in Chicago, it will still be a challenge. Every step you take away from the city, as the population thins out and you get to the Collar Counties, retail is not as high in demand.
MWREN: What do commercial brokers have to do in today’s economy to succeed? Bryant: In good times and bad, the theory I have is that when I go to work I work as hard as I can and as smart as I can. Then I do it again the next day. At the end of day, even a market like the one we’re going through still leads to opportunity. Whether that’s working with banks and REO properties, there are opportunities. You just have to know the guys who want to grow and who want to roll out stores.
