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(Since Oct. 7, 1999)

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Every leader needs an agenda, a platform of goals and ideals that they believe strongly in and can vocalize. NAIOP National President Eric Eicher has a full plate.

"I have several concerns as I travel around the country," says the Tampa-based developer. "One is trying to get developers to work collectively on improving our image. The only way we can do that is by giving back to our communities our time and our talents. I also believe we ought to do a better job to improve the quality of what we build. The reason some developers are not too well liked in their communities is because they haven't built the best products at the best locations and preserved the environment. I think we have to do a better job doing that."

Eicher takes his responsibilities as 1989 national president of the 8,000-member association very seriously. He has committed almost 50 percent of his time to traveling on NAIOP business, speaking to regional chapters, meeting with elected officials and lobbying federal legislators in Washington. All of this he must balance with his responsibilities as president of the Sabal Corp, developer of Sabal Park, the largest mixed use project in the Tampa Bay area.

"I have a phone on my ear all the time," according to Eicher. "I do a lot of business by phone and I have a good staff." Has frequent travel made him a better delegator? No. "I don't know that any developer delegates well. I guess I delegate adequately because I'm having a good year."

Eicher, who is married and has five children, built single family homes, shopping centers and industrial parks in Michigan and in the Kansas City area before moving to Tampa 10 years ago.

If he had his way, Eicher would no doubt require all developers to take their inspiration from the aesthetics and amenities that have made Stone & Webster's Sabal Park a huge success. It wouldn't be a bad model. The industrial/office park -- begun a decade ago besides 1,000 acres that eventually became an Interstate 75 exit -- has grown from two buildings when Eicher arrived to nearly 60 and 3.1 million square feet of developed space. The 160 companies doing business here with 4,000 employees include Coca-Cola, Xerox and TRW. At total build-out, another 4 million square feet will be developed and 25,000 people will be in the park daily.

Developers needs to improve their collective image with better projects, says Eicher, and he naturally believes Sabal Park is one of the best examples of a thriving, publicly recognized and accepted commercial master planned development.

"I think the public's perception of your project is important," says Eicher. "All developers can effect it because in reality, you have to rise to meet the marketplace. If you were to look at the original buildings in Westshore and look at the buildings that have just recently been built, there's a world of difference in the materials, the landscaping, the lobbies, the parking facilities. It's an entirely different product.

"Les Rubin is also a good example. Rubin ICOT has made it hard for competitors to build junk. As a result of that, I think you'll find that as the lead developers take the lead and develop better projects and better images, the competition is going to have to follow. Bearing in mind that our buildings last 30 to 50 years, which is a lifetime for some of us, the reality is that if we have the opportunity to build at all, we better not value the opportunity lightly. We better try to improve everything we do."
Some of the biggest problems facing developers are overbuilding, the cost of money, and an inability to get permitting, in Eicher's estimation. And shifting demographics should also be a concern of developers, he says. "The United States is not the same United States it was 10 years ago. The lack of labor is going to become a major problem facing the United States in the next 10 years. If an industry can't hire labor in the amounts it needs, they're not going to move. One of the things that drove the growth in Florida was the movement from the north to the south, out of the rust belt into the sun belt. Unemployment in Boston is 3.3 percent, New Jersey, 3.5 percent, Charlotte, N.C., 2.8 percent. We're at full employment. If I wanted to hire 2,000 workers today, I'd have to raise labor rates by 30 percent to attract them from other companies already here in Tampa."

On the subject of overbuilding, Eicher favors market forces rather than restrictive permitting to control the nationwide glut.
"The market has a tendency to correct itself," he says. "Trying to get permits to build in Westshore today is so far removed that even if you had a site and the funds to build, why would you want to put up another building to go with the 30 percent sitting empty now? The other side of it is that the financial community is waking up to the overbuilding and is making it difficult -- if not impossible -- to get funds for new construction.

"Developers are not able to lease at what they thought were pro forma rents or the interest carry and expenses are a lot heavier than they thought they would be," says Eicher. "A lot of buildings are going through second and third years of non-occupancy. That fact alone is driving a lot of developers out of business. It's a market situation."

It's obviously a very trying time to be a developer. Eicher expects to see an industry-wide downsizing of 30 to 40 percent in the next few years. "There's no need for the kind of construction we've seen in the last 10 years," he says. "There's going to be a tremendous refocusing of our efforts and our energies. Those developers involved with NAIOP are going to get back more than they put in. Those developers that are not involved in NAIOP are not going to be as well informed about changes in our industry and are not going to be as competitive as we are."

Eicher has belonged to NAIOP for the last 18 years. He has been on the executive committee for three years. Why does he think it is so important to devote so much time to NAIOP?

"All of us become too parochial in our views," says Eicher. "We tend to focus on our own little communities, our own little jobs and our own little workplaces and we lose the bigger picture. I'd like to think if all developers belonged to our association, we'd have a better reputation. I think NAIOP has always been active in trying to give us the bigger picture and exposure to what other developers are doing, why they're doing it, and how. I believe the individual can make a difference in their own business life and in their own community, as well as on the national scene. I don't know whether I can make a difference or not. But I'm trying."
Washington, D.C. is one of the places Eicher is making his voice heard.

He has frequently visited with congressmen, impressing upon them the depth and breadth of the construction industry and the impact any legislation can have upon it.

"Sometimes, Congress acts without knowing what the ramifications are," he says. "Our industry as a whole -- combined with homebuilding -- is four or five times larger than the auto industry. When our industry is affected by legislation, the ripple affect of it is felt in every nook and cranny of the United States."

Eicher says that under a capital gains proposal that President George Bush has sent to Congress, he recommended stocks, bonds and land for preferential treatment but not buildings. "That's an example of why I would go lobby," says Eicher. "I don't understand why you would give preferential treatment for stocks and bonds and land and not to buildings."

The challenges that come with leading NAIOP into the 1990s are time-consuming, but Eric Eicher is enjoying every minute.

"It's a lot of fun; it's a learning experience," he says. "The guys who have been president generally have been people who have been fortunate enough to have had the time to be involved. I'm making a commitment of my time this year to be spent away from home, trying to do something to effect change in our industry. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

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