About Gregg Goodman

Gregg Goodman is a recently retired C-suite executive in the retail real estate field. He has a wealth of experience in all aspects of the business including malls, power centers, high street locations, and entertainment centers. He has been an industry leader in the location-based entertainment sector, working with world-class media companies such as Disney, Warner Bros, Merlin Entertainments, and Pure Imagination Studios to help them bring their intellectual property to life in the bricks and mortar world.

In 1985, Gregg graduated from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication with minors in Business and Journalism. He began his career in Kansas City, Missouri as a commercial real estate broker for Roger Cohen & Company, and quickly found success working on retail real estate projects. This led to a position with Leo Eisenberg & Company in St Louis, Missouri where he honed his skills in Landlord and Tenant representation, working on his first ground-up development projects.

Gregg was approached in 1989 by Western Development, a Washington, D.C.-based company, to work on a new development they had planned for the Chicago market, Gurnee Mills. He accepted a position as Leasing Executive and relocated with his family to Chicago, where they would spend the next 15 years. He led the leasing team in both transactions and square footage leased, and was quickly promoted to Senior Leasing Executive. He subsequently left Western in 1992 for a Regional Vice President position with Balcor, a real estate division of American Express.

In 1994, he returned to the newly public successor to Western Development, The Mills Corporation, as Vice President and Director of Leasing for Ontario Mills, the company’s first planned development on the West Coast. Gregg built a leasing team and took the largest enclosed retail development in the country from no tenant commitments to a fully leased opening. This success led Mills to promote Gregg to Senior Vice President, heading up the leasing on all new development projects for the next six years, encompassing eight new enclosed Mills projects, the largest retail development pipeline in the world over that time. In 2001, Gregg was promoted to Executive Vice President of Anchor Leasing, assuming responsibility for all leasable boxes over 20,000 square feet which comprised 60% of the company’s inventory and half of its net operating income (NOI). This responsibility expanded as Mills acquired portfolios of traditional regional malls creating a need for new relationships with the major department store chains such as Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Gregg also began to deal with the major media companies at the same time, working with them on creating physical places to bring their brands to life in some of the highest footfall properties in the country.

In 2007, Mills was acquired by a partnership of Simon Property Group and Farallon Capital. Gregg was recruited to stay with the company by David Simon and Rick Sokolov, with the promise that the focus would be on internal growth of the properties versus the new development focus of Mills. He joined Simon as Executive Vice President of Development and the following year was named President of The Mills. In this role he had full responsibility for the Mills Platform Division of Simon, the largest public real estate company in the world, reporting directly to CEO David Simon and President and COO Rick Sokolov. To give scale to the size of Simon, if the Mills Platform was an independent retail real estate company it would be the fourth largest in the United States.

As President of Mills/Simon, Gregg led the development, leasing, property management, marketing, and business development functions on a daily basis. He was a shared services client from Simon on other functions such as accounting, accounts receivable, and legal. Gregg led the Mills Platform to unparalleled EBITDA growth over the next decade, from $320,000,000 in the first year of his term to almost $800,000,000 at the time of his retirement. All through internal growth of the properties, in fact the number of properties went down during this term yet through expansions, re-developments, re-merchandising and simply having an intense focus on changing the projects to meet the needs of today’s consumers the Mills were more successful than ever. Sales per Square Foot were doubled (from $300/sf to $600/sf) during his term.

In addition to his tenure at Mills/Simon, Gregg has worked on some of the most high profile entertainment projects in the world including Universal CityWalk Hollywood, Madrid Xanadu, and Meadowlands Xanadu, also known as American Dream Meadowlands. He has collaborated extensively with companies of all sizes in the film, television, and print media businesses as well as emerging technologies, including Virtual and Augmented Reality. He has served on the Board of Directors for Premier Exhibitions, Georgetown University School of Real Estate, and Simon Youth Foundation.