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The Rouse Company

Defunct American real estate development company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rouse Company
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Not to be confused with Rouse Properties.

The Rouse Company was a publicly traded shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when General Growth Properties (GGP) purchased the company. It was founded by Hunter Moss and James W. Rouse in 1939.

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Beginnings: Moss-Rouse Company

The Moss-Rouse Company was founded as a FHA mortgage company with a loan from Hunter Moss's sister. Rouse leveraged his knowledge as loan guarantee specialist at the Federal Housing Administration to establish a Baltimore-based mortgage company specializing in FHA backed loans. Moss-Rouse hired a World War Two Navy friend, Churchill G. Carey from Connecticut General, who in turn provided capital for future projects. Carey would hold positions ranging from president to CEO of the mortgage company subsidiary.[1] In 1952-1953 the company built one of the first modern architecture office buildings on Saratoga Street in Baltimore, while also dropping its commercial lending business line. Jim Rouse hired his brother, Willard Rouse II, in 1952, and partner, Hunter Moss, phased out of operations, selling his shares of the company, while remaining temporarily on the board of directors.[2] The firm was renamed the James W. Rouse & Company, Inc., with Rouse owning 50% equity, his brother, Willard, 10%, and 40%, to company officers.[3]

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The James W. Rouse Company

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The James W. Rouse Company built some of the first enclosed shopping malls, and it pioneered the development of festival marketplaces, such as Jacksonville Landing in Jacksonville, Faneuil Hall in Boston, South Street Seaport in New York City, Harborplace in Baltimore, and Bayside Marketplace in Miami. It also developed The Shops at National Place in downtown Washington, D.C., which opened in 1984–85.

On 20 June 1966, The James W. Rouse Company was renamed The Rouse Company.[4] The company has been credited with opening the first successful food court in an enclosed shopping mall: the Sherway Gardens Mall in Toronto in 1971. It followed an unsuccessful attempt at the Plymouth Meeting Mall in 1968, which reportedly failed because it was "deemed too small and insufficiently varied."

The company moved its headquarters to the Cross Keys development, then to its project in Columbia, Maryland, in December 1969.[5]

Its community projects include the Village of Cross Keys in Baltimore and the planned communities of Columbia, Bridgeland Community, Texas, and Summerlin, Nevada. To develop these projects, in 1962 Rouse brought on Bill Finley, who built a planned "company town", Ravenswood, West Virginia, was a former planner with the National Capital Planning Commission proposing planned cities, and was a proponent of public-private partnerships.[6]

In 1956, the company founded Columbia Research and Development, a public company; and Howard Research and Development (HRD), a Rouse subsidiary, to raise capital for four mall projects and later to facilitate the Columbia Project with Connecticut General and Chase Manhattan as stakeholders with interest-deferred loans.[7] In 1966, the company was restructured as the Rouse Company; adding HRD as a separate entity shielded Rouse Corporation from the debt liability of the Columbia development. HRD lost money, with new rules affecting the parent company as well. In 1974, HRD was refinanced.[8] Columbia Development Corporation was formed a subsidiary of HRD using subcontracted Rouse Company employees. In 1985, CIGNA (Connecticut General) divested its interest in HRD and the project back to Rouse for $120 million at a net loss.[9][10]

Rouse created the subsidiary company The American City Corporation to take advantage of the National Urban Policy and New Community Development Act of 1970, A HUD program which granted developers incentives and loans to build Title VII "New Towns" with mandatory percentages of low income housing projects. Rouse's former ACTION member, Leo Molinaro was selected to run the subdivision.[11] The symposiums held by the company gathered together investors like George Mitchell, who would go on to develop Woodlands, Texas using the Columbia model.[12][13] The subsidiary was based at "Two Wincopin" in the second office building in built in Columbia in 1968. It was renamed the American City Building, using the subsidiary to lease the empty space and develop the system of Public-Private partnerships that Rouse would use worldwide to minimize risk in developments using public debt.[14] The business was given its own postal office, the American Cities Station in 1977.[15]

The Columbia development was marketed as a progressive community for all races. In 1971, the company responded to pressure from the NAACP that the company was absent of African Americans at all management levels and its businesses in Columbia were predominantly white owned. The company responded with an affirmative action program in November 1971.[16]

In 1973, the former assistant attorney general of Maryland, Mathias J. DeVito, left the Rouse-owned legal firm of DLA Piper to replace James W. Rouse as president of the Rouse Company, and Rouse became chairman.[17] DeVito cut staff from 1,700 to 500 to keep the company afloat in 1975.[18] In 1974, the Columbia development got a political boost when the population of Columbia supported a slate of at-large council candidates with Columbia interests, including Ruth U. Keeton, Lloyd Knowles, and Columbia's city manager, Richard L. Anderson.[19]

In 1979, Simon H. Schuer acquired a 7.5% interest in the Rouse Company. He was the creator of "The Shrink", a method where an investor buys an interest in a company, then has the company buy more of its own stock to make the interest more valuable. Schuer died the day after the purchase, and Trizec Properties then acquired the shares and bought a 25% stake. In 1986, the company attempted to purchase a majority share.[20][21][22]

In 1985, The Rouse Company absorbed all of Connecticut General's interests in the Howard Research and Development subsidiary. In 1986, former general manager of Columbia and executive vice president of development Micheal Spear became president as a successor to Rouse. In 1990, Spear died in a crash with his wife and one daughter in his Piper PA-31T Cheyenne attempting a single engine missed approach near Logan International Airport.[23][24]

In 1997, Anthony Deering took over as CEO of the company.[25]

On November 12, 2004, the Rouse Company was sold to General Growth Properties.[26]

In 2012, General Growth Properties spun off 30 "class B" malls into Rouse Properties, a new real estate investment trust named after (but otherwise unrelated to) The Rouse Company.[27]

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