Eddie DeBartolo Jr., former owner of the San Francisco 49ers and heir to a mall empire, has recently reorganized his company and purchased a 5,500-square-foot building on N Florida Avenue in Tampa.
So after three years of having headquarters in both Tampa and his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, is it safe to say DeBartolo's company now calls only Tampa home? "Yes, we're all moved here," said Jerry DeNicholas, chief executive of DeBartolo Holdings LLC, which has shifted the last of the company's 60-person headquarters staff to rented office space near DeBartolo's Avila home in Tampa.
DeBartolo has an 8 percent stake in Simon Property Group, one of the nation's biggest regional mall owners and operators. But he does not play an active role in management.
While DeBartolo is seeking to bolster his investments in other businesses to balance the portfolio, he still wants to remain a player in shopping center development. DeBartolo Holdings has a $400-million revolving line of credit with some equity partners for real estate projects.
DeBartolo is working to create an entertainment complex at Pier 48 near the home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team, a $50-million shopping center in Chardon, Ohio, and a $112-million conversion into retail space of a dilapidated former Farah apparel plant (once owned by Tropical Sportswear Int'l Corp. of Tampa) in El Paso, Texas.
"We've done a lot of build-to-suit projects for retailers like Wal-Mart, but we're going to expand our retail development operation exponentially over the next few years," DeNicholas said. "I see us having four or five projects in the pipeline at any given time."
