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JDM Associates helps real estate developers and investors capture sustainability's triple bottom line by Jeff Link
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july–august 2015
the late 1970s, a young real estate broker and developer named John Klein was running out of money. He’d built several speculative warehouse buildings adjacent to the Great Valley Corporate Center in suburban Philadelphia. He was trying to find tenants in a lean, Carter-era real estate market. That’s when inspiration struck. “When we finally got tenants for the building, it was almost impossible for them to pay their heating bills. That’s when I had an epiph-
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any,” Klein says. “If you are not concerned about the operational costs in the buildings that your tenants occupy, you can’t keep them.” One of Klein’s early mentors was James Rouse, founder of The Rouse Company—a real estate developer credited with building the Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland (the first enclosed shopping center east of the Mississippi River)—who planned residential communities such as the Village of Cross Keys in Baltimore and the entire city of Columbia, Maryland. From Rouse, Klein took another important lesson. “The most important thing I learned at a young age from Jim Rouse was always take care of gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: COURTESY OF JDM ASSOCIATES
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