Live From ICSC: Day Two
The retail frenzy that is ICSC continues through today, and Bisnow is still on the scene in Vegas. At the big DC booth yesterday, we caught up with Mayor Gray, who tells us that as he leaves office, improvements in job creation, education, public safety, and of course, real estate development (in large part thanks to Deputy Mayor Victor Hoskins, third from right) are his proudest accomplishments. We also asked Victor, engineer of $6.8B of new development since coming to DC, what's ahead. He won't say whether he's stepping down, but did tell us that "48 months is one of the longest periods I've ever held a position." They were joined by the DC Economic Partnership's Keith Sellars, InvestAtlanta's Chris Leutzinger and Kent Spencer, Atlanta councilmember Cleta Wilson, WDCEP's Jennifer Boss, and Capitol Riverfront BID chief Michael Stevens.
Steve Wynn's Encore Beach Club hosted the big annual Maryland Party last night, complete with pool fireworks, Revolutionary War marching bands, and Abe Lincoln impersonators. (If you're Honest Abe, and somebody asks you "What happened in Vegas," does it still stay in Vegas?) Pausing briefly amidst the action: Miller Walker's Bill Miller and Alex Walker (repping clients such as AMC Theaters and new diner concept Silver) with Rappaport's Henry Fonvielle and Michael Kang, who manned one of the show's bigger booths.
It seems everywhere we turned, a DC-area company had a frenzied booth. Here's Chris Weilminster and Wendy Shear of Federal Realty, next to a lit-up display of the firm's Pike & Rose development. (CEO Don Wood was hard at work in meetings right behind them in the booth.)
Not far away from Federal, we found Saul Center's Zachary Friedlis, who spent much of the convention talking to retailers for the firm's Park Van Ness mixed-use project on Connecticut Avenue. The project delivers at the end of 2015, Zachary says, and Saul is hoping to lock down a sit-down restaurant soon. (Is it too early to make a reservation?)
It seems every company was looking to one up the next in the booth game. Jamestown went with an exotic tent-like structure, complete with a crepe station operated by Peter Tondreau and Troi Lughod of NYC's Bar Suzette (pictured hard at work in the back). Bar Suzette is a tenant in Jamestown's Chelsea Market, and serves up 300 to 500 crepes every day of the conference.
The days are long here at RECon, and the hundreds-deep shuttle lines back to hotels don't shorten things up.
