‘Visionary’ Mfi founder awarded ULI Lifetime Achievement Award for 2012

Roger Weiss, founder and chairman of German shopping centre developer Mfi, has been awarded the ULI Lifetime Achievement Award for 2012.

Weiss, 69, is one of four winners in the leadership category, along with Kurt Zech, CEO of conglomerate Zech Group, architect Julia Erdmann at Stephen Williams Associates, and Regula Lüscher, chief urban planner for Berlin. The award is a personal award recognizing sustainable, future-oriented leadership and recipients are chosen for being pioneers in their field and for their ability to think ‘outside the box’.

Weiss was chosen by the jury because of his ‘visionary’ nature and his ability to devise projects that will complement local communities, Claudia Gotz, executive director of ULI in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, told PropertyEU. ‘His ideas are future-orientated and his projects are a very good fit for local communities. His dialogue with them is what makes him so distinctive; it’s become his trademark and is part of the reason why Mfi has been so successful’.

And, for Weiss, the award recognizing his lifetime’s work makes him feel ‘very honoured’: ‘The German shopping centre market is smaller than in the US or the UK (our biggest competitor is ECE) but we started from zero 25 years ago and have come a long way. I think that our success is down to our professionalism and the close way we look at the market,’ he told PropertyEU.

In addition, Weiss attributes Mfi’s success to its commitment to inner-city developments. ‘We do not build on green field sites. We build where the heart of a city beats, where people live and work. With our shopping arcades, we ensure that inner cities are retained as a world for living and shopping,’ he said.

Mfi’s ability to entice shoppers of all generations has also contributed hugely to its success. Just last month (April), five of its Berlin-based Arcaden shopping centres were awarded a seal of quality by Nils Busch-Peterson, general manager of the Trade Association of Berlin-Brandenburg, who called the centres ‘outstandingly generation-friendly’.

Today, Mfi is active across the real estate spectrum, including project development, planning, construction services, leasing, long-term centre facility management, asset management and portfolio creation. It is currently refurbishing Germany’s largest shopping centre, the 120,000 square metre Ruhrpark in Bochum. The firm is also developing a further four shopping malls in Germany with an estimated combined value of around €530 mln. This includes shopping centres in Mönchengladbach and Recklinghausen that are due to be completed by the end of 2014. In addition, MFI also manages 20 centres for other companies.

Last year, a fund managed by private equity group Perella Weinberg Partners sold its 51% stake in Mfi to Europe’s largest publically traded company Unibail-Rodamco for €297 mln. (Unibail has a three-year option to buy the rest of the shares for €288 mln.) The new financial partners make it easier for Mfi to promote its projects, said Weiss.
The one-man firm that Weiss founded 25 years ago now employees almost 600 people and manages €5 bn of real estate assets, including €1.3 bn of its own assets. Since becaming chairman six years ago, Weiss had stepped down from some of his more active duties but still retain an advisory role.

The shift in his day-to-day duties has also opened up new opportunities for him. Indeed, he is broadening his business interests since founding the Elephant Hill Estate Winery on the Te Awanga coast, in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, in 2001. ‘My wife and I decided at the time that we would prefer to live somewhere warmer during the winter. We liked New Zealand a lot but my wife said that I would need something to do there if I planned on staying for more than three weeks,’ Weiss laughed. Previously a deer farm, the vineyard now produces around 500,000 litres of wine a year from the 65 hectare site.