Ada, Michigan, United States
The Schout Company is a holding company for a number of other companies. Our business is the organization and underwriting of large mixed use pojects all over the world as a contract developer. We currently have a 3,000 acre 35,000 DU project in Baton Rouge La. We also have projects in Mexico, Santo Domingo, Panama, and Michigan. Our experience in finance and market research helps with this process. Over time with the underwriting of over 100 million square feet of retail space mainly in regional centers we have developed other skills as a company. We prepare market research and economic studies to underwrite the financial feasability of projects that clients call us about. Projects which are in trouble because they don't work on a financial or economic basis are also part of our business. For example we have worked on large mixed use projects all over the United States and outside of the country since starting our firm in 1981. The skills we learned in putting projects together using the right professional team alllow us to reverse our pre-development skills and use them on broken projects. Lenders and private money people use us to do just that because we can do this quickly. we also do extensive financial analysis for sites we do retail research on to develop key items of the iron logic of sales projections based on key demographic factors based on drive time, zip code and mile radius factors. recent projects in self storage , car washes and several restaurant chains. reposition advice for downtown merchants association. most successful project in this area is a complete renovation of downtown Holland michigan . this has been a 40 year project. other projects in last 5 years have in included large mixed use project analysis for projects with 5 and 10 million ft of office 3.5 and 4.0 of residential. several hotels retail and parking. there have been 3 main projects in Orlando florida, the chicago cbd..mc cormack place south on the michael reese site, and another large mixed use project in fort worth CBD on panther island a 900 acre project just north of downtown. the orlando project was at the entrance to Disney completed workouts and restructuring of a broken mixed use project in Kiev ukraine, and then brought in ING to finance it. we also assisted the porsche family in the initial planning of a new headquarters building in Stuttgart Germany, with full project plans and market analysis. we secured up to 800 million in finance from ING for the project.
A third of our income as a company comes from market research that proves a project will work in simple and concrete ways. For example our skills allow us to transfer demographic data into a variety of useful tools for retail development. These tools include the ability to accurately project sales over a ten year period along with rent per square foot or meter, and also recommend the proper mix of tenants in a retail project. This mix which we call the "merchandise mix" allocates retail space over 22 categories of retail stores. Having a balanced mix is the key to optimizing sales and therefore rents. Our cash flow projections and operation income projections are normally for ten years and include sales and rent by tenant for the entire period under the merchandise categories we recommend space be placed in. In Michigan, we used this system to re-merchandise stores in The Holland Michigan CBD with great success. A result is the award winning Holland downtown mixed use project. Our market research reports cover a variety of countries outside of the United States. We have provided to our clients market research reports on projects in the Dominican Republic, Germany, Russia, Australia, Thailand, Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Bahamas. These studies include maps using our ArcGIS system to show demographic data. In some cases such as the Dominican Republic we have grown market feasibility studies into full scale reports on the history and prospects for the country itself. These studies are complete economic base studies which define the direction of the entire country. The Dominican Republic study also included a complete analysis of the residential, office, and retail sectors in Santo Domingo. In Kiev Ukraine, we completed a redesign and releasing plan for a 1.5 million sq ft retail office project which increased net rental income by 8 times the amount which would have been achieved under the original plan, which was 50 per cent constructed when we were engaged.
We also work as a contract developer. This activity is carried out by professional project managers who are given entire projects to build, lease, and finance. These projects tend to be done under a fee agreement which is part of the development agreement with the owner. In some cases we build projects for institutions without any paperwork between us and our client or the contractor and architect. In these cases we keep the team together by paying them monthly within a few hours of billing for each construction draw. Our contract development team allows us to take over a project that is in trouble or organize a project that is difficult to visualize for what might be a major national developer in the United States. We discreetly do our job and disappear once the problem is solved.
Demographic & Economic Research, Site Selection, Department Stores Studies, Financial & Cost Projections, Trade Area Research, Land Acquisition. Started when the company had built one mall, when I left, we had 19 malls under ownership. Over the years, the owners of the company A Alfred Taubman, and Richard Kughn let me learn and mentored me. During my time at the company, I sat in on construction meetings , went to make department store deals with Taubman, and with him developed an understanding of retail math and demographics. I wrote an article on mapping computer graphics with two harvard professors who got the article published in Harvard Business review. In 1977, we completed the acquisition of the Irvine Ranch. We defeated so to speak Mobil Oil Chairman Raleigh Warner, who was rather desperate to buy the ranch in order to access an El Paso natural gas pipeline which ran adjacent to the ranch in riverside canyon. When we closed on The Irvine Acquisition in 1977 August, we had raised 344 million in 15 days. In September, 1977 Mobil started construction of an alternate pipeline through northern panama. By January 1981, I left Taubman for a very unusual reason. My wife and I wanted to move back home to western michigan and adopt more children. Taubman, always, both as my mentor and friend, became a strong supporter of what we were doing. He remained a friend and supporter of my unusual life mission until he passed away. After 1981, We adopted another 8 children, something impossible to do without the support of the extended families we both had in west Michigan. We never looked back.
Credit Underwriting, Board level investment memos for finance of aircraft hulls, locomotives, structured real estate finance, industrial finance, Main frame computer lease funding, general commercial industrial finance as part of 6 man team. Herb Mercer who trained me was a McNamarra whiz kid who came from GE Capital to Ford Credit. In 1968 the year I workef our little group in commercial and industrial finance generated 60 percent of Ford Credit Profits. One of our group, Bill Odum was later for many years the Chairman of Ford Credit.