New position: Vice president of development, West Coast division, LandMar Group, Tampa. Previous position: Vice president of development, Atlanta region, Crescent Resources, Atlanta
By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published April 19, 2004
In his new job of overseeing two huge developments for the LandMar Group, William Mallery is on the road daily, driving easily 100 miles round-trip between Brooksville and Tampa.
As the newly appointed vice president of development for the West Coast division, Mallery said he is responsible for all development and construction associated with two projects - Grand Hampton in Tampa and Southern Hills Plantation in Brooksville.
That means being on site for both projects daily, he said, plus working "early in the morning, late at night, weekends and everything else."
Both projects are years in development, Mallery said. "I do everything from conception to fruition" on projects, he said. "I get into the initial planning phases, concept phases and then make sure that permitting is done and that everything is done to the owners' satisfaction as well as municipalities' (satisfaction).
"We're busy building dreams," he said.
"It sounds kind of hokey," he added. "I may be an engineer but I think of myself more as an "imagineer.' Engineers are right-angle types of fellows. I've kind of smoothed out my right angles. I try and guide our engineers, surveyors, architects, other consultants and municipalities to buildout.
"I'm very excited about what I do. It's something different every day," he said. "You're constantly being challenged."
A native of Charleston, S.C., Mallery has been a consulting engineer for more than 15 years. Between high school and college, however, Mallery joined the Air Force, serving four years on active duty, followed by four in the reserves. In the service, he was a brick mason. "I loved it," he said. "I had a hard time leaving it."
But he did, choosing to go to college at the Citadel, a military college in Charleston, S.C., at age 23, graduating four years later, in 1987, with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. A year later, Mallery earned a master's degree in construction management from the University of Florida.
Directly out of graduate school, Mallery joined a firm near Washington as a consulting engineer. Less than three years later, he joined Mobile Land Development in Atlanta, where he stayed five years as a project engineer, overseeing projects including the 5,200-acre Sugar Loaf Country Club.
In 1994, he joined Crescent Resources, which purchased LandMar Group five years later, so Mallery's move to Florida is partly an internal transfer.
LandMar has been a community developer since 1987. Crescent Resources, Duke Energy's business unit, is a real estate development and land management company. Crescent Resources has several commercial, regional and multifamily projects throughout the Tampa Bay area.
LandMar, with projects throughout the Southeast, offers homes from the mid $100,000s to more than $1-million each and its communities offer a range of amenities, including signature golf courses by designers such as Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.
For Mallery, the rewards are seeing families move into new communities he has helped design and nurture to completion. "When I see people, especially children, enjoy playing at a tennis course or playing in a swimming pool I built, that really hits home because I have children," he said. "I can bring that into my heart and see that they truly enjoy what I've sweated over for years.
"I'm not one of those guys who sits in an office and shuffles papers from the inbox to the outbox and feels fulfilled at the end of the day."
Mallery, 44, said he is finding the differences between the metro Atlanta area and the Tampa Bay area more a matter of people than geography or climate. Mallery said he has found people in the Tampa Bay area "friendly (and) very professional. It's a different atmosphere. Atlanta is . . . a huge city. Tampa is kind of friendly. It's night and day compared to what I was used to," he said.
Mallery said he plans to relocate his family to the bay area in the next few weeks. He and his wife, Brendalee, have two children, Lauren, 6, and Kaitlyn, 2.
In his spare time, Mallery said he likes to hunt turkey and deer, something he did three or four times a week during hunting season while living in Atlanta.
