Brian Gibbons is the CEO of Greenberg Gibbons, one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s premier developers of mixed-use, town center, retail and residential properties. Nevins & Associates President David Nevins recently spoke with Brian about how the pandemic has affected development and the several new and exciting projects they have underway.

David Nevins: You must be excited about your newest project – the transformation of Towson. What do we have to look forward to?

Brian Gibbons: The first phase is going to open this month, which consists of student housing and retail. It will be 700 beds of student housing, which is 100% leased already. It’s a unique time, obviously, not knowing if Towson University will be open or not, but I think they’d like to spread out the students rather than have them congregate on campus if they do open. We are 75% leased on retail already which is looking to open early winter. The Whole Foods building is under construction – that will open a year from now. That building will have more student housing and micro apartments also opening next year. The hotel has been delayed a bit but we’ll hopefully start In the fall and it will take roughly 18 months to build, opening hopefully spring of 2022. We are under construction in the Armory – I think that will be open early 2021. Parking has been completed for all the phases already so we won’t have to go back and add parking as we go.

DN: Everyone is excited about the Whole Foods – can you share any other name tenants that are signed on?

BG: There’s a wine store called Uncorked that will be directly across from Whole Foods. We will have Burger-Fi at the entrance of the student housing. We will announce more tenants shortly but that’s what we can announce so far.

DN: The pandemic, no doubt has caused your company some heartache. How are you working through it?

BG: When it first hit in April, it was a shock. Our collections were 50% of what they would normally be. After April things got steadily better. By July our collections were already back at 88%. We’re working with our tenants to help get them back on their feet, especially tenants of certain categories. The grocery stores and liquor stores have had phenomenal years, the necessity type stuff, but others were hit harder, like the soft goods, full service restaurants, theatres, and gyms. We’re showing special consideration for them, we’re working with all of them with modified rent agreements to give them a runway to get back on their feet.

DN: Given what we’re all going through, as a prominent area developer, would you say this has influenced your philosophy going forward with regard to leasing and development strategy?

BG: Yeah, it’s interesting. Before this we were essential and experiential – most of our projects have the essentials like grocery stores and drug stores and dry cleaners, but we also have the experiential like and the gyms, spas, restaurants. The soft goods were struggling before all this happened – the pandemic has just accelerated their demise. I think you’ll see some survivors and some that will go away forever. The biggest challenge in retail right now is regional malls. They have been historically been anchored by full service department stores and they are really being hit the hardest throughout all of this. They were already being hit, so the pandemic has really accelerated it. If you look at all the bankruptcies – Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s is tetering and even Nordstrom is closing stores. We’re going to continue to be essential and experiential. We believe the experiential will come back. The weakness will be with the soft goods moving forward, where we’ll have to work on new strategy.

DN: As people have been home for several months, Amazon, who was obviously doing well before, is doing even better now. And that probably won’t go away. For a long time it will have an influence on how people shop and live. Amazon can’t replace the experiential type stuff though.

BG: Right. Amazon is planning on rolling out brick & mortar. Instead of delivery, they’re going to want to have people come and pick up in-store more. I think many online retailers will be rolling out brick & mortars – it won’t fully be online.

DN: Anything else you want to share that you’re working on/excited about?

BG: At Hunt Valley we are in the process of developing multi-family and senior housing. Last year we bought percentage interest in the Sears there. We’re going to be adding fitness and additional retail in the existing Sears box. We’ll do multi-family and senior housing and additional restaurants in that parcel. We’re adding a 55,000 square foot fitness center to the movie theatre there. Our goal over time would be to consider Hunt Valley for additional uses beyond retail, but the next two projects will be those residential buildings and some retail. That will make this whole walkable community. We have the essential stuff also with Wegmans and others but the emphasis here is on experiential.