With a new year on the horizon, Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover asked eight decisionmakers from across the Marketplaces Industry to share their proudest moments from 2022, a year characterized by strong retail traffic and sales, along with headwinds like the labor shortage, high construction costs and rising interest rates and inflation.

On a professional level, their accomplishments included things like launching a tech initiative for a top mall REIT, christening Ikea-anchored centers across Europe and North America, rolling out organic grocery stores in affluent California markets like Beverly Hills and partnering with a fast-growing fitness chain on its Texas expansion.

C+CT also asked sources to share some of their proudest personal accomplishments from last year. That list included diverse activities like diving into a master’s degree in theology, walking the talk on the shift to clean energy, a mindful approach to stress management and prioritizing health by hitting the gym and cutting back on sugar, salt and fat. After months of curtailed travel because of the pandemic, one busy exec even flew to the Ecuadorian Amazon for a fresh perspective.

Russell Glen Managing Partner and CEO Terrence Maiden

Terrence Maiden’s privately owned, Dallas-based real estate and investment firm, Russell Glen, boasts a portfolio of more than a dozen mixed-use, retail, office and multifamily developments and redevelopments. The former executive vice president of development for Corinth Properties focuses on underserved markets with high growth potential. His ongoing southern Dallas projects include the nearly complete redevelopment of Southwest Center Mall, now called The Shops at RedBird, as well as Rivulet, a 90-acre mixed-use community near the University of North Texas Dallas. The latter is in design and preconstruction.

ALSO CHECK OUT: From Old Mall to 100-Acre Live-Work-Play Community: Terrence Maiden Lifts Up an Overlooked Community

A 20-year real estate veteran, Maiden earned an engineering degree from Texas Christian University. He is an active community volunteer and chairs the Maiden Foundation, a nonprofit that invests in educational and community revitalization projects.

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Maiden:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

This past year was really positive for us. We continued to invest in communities, focusing primarily on the southern states. Generally, our focus is on mixed-use: some element of residential, grocery, office and healthcare. We try to figure out the amenities that different communities need and then incorporate them into our design. So at RedBird, we have pretty much completed all of the infrastructure work — new streets, all-new landscaping — and we are putting the finishing touches on our one-acre green space. I’m very proud of that project. This was a healthcare desert, and it has included opening up UT Southwestern Medical Center in a former Sears, which was a huge win for the community. We also expanded a major office tenant at RedBird and have started to gain a lot more interest on the grocery front, with restaurants and entertainment also coming in.

But the professional accomplishment from last year that I’m most proud of was our acquisition of 90 acres of property, located catty-corner to the University of North Texas Dallas, for Rivulet. It will be a master-planned community with multifamily townhomes and villas, and we’re pursuing a grocery store and other restaurants and retail. We closed in the spring, and we anticipate starting construction in late 2023 or early 2024. It's an area where nothing substantive has been developed for probably 50 years. We successfully worked with the family that had owned that property for decades and were able to get over the goal line with the acquisition. We also worked with the city of Dallas to get all of our entitlements done.

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

Prioritization of my health. I lost more than 30 pounds and am feeling a lot healthier. It involved a lot of exercise — being disciplined enough to show up every day to work out — as well as healthy eating.

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

One goal is just to stay focused on our mission despite whatever challenges may arise. Like everybody else in real estate, we spent a lot of 2022 navigating through inflation and, in particular, rising construction costs. This required us to be systematic and thorough, and I would imagine that we’ll need to continue to take that approach in the year ahead. I would also say that we’re going to continue to focus on being creative and entrepreneurial in attracting more tenants to our projects. And finally, we are hoping as a company to announce some additional new developments very soon, so moving the ball on those will definitely be one of our goals in 2023.

The Shops at RedBird

Baker Katz principal Jason Baker has worked with a who’s who of national retail, restaurant and entertainment operators over the past 20 years, including AMC Theatres, Best Buy, Darden, Fox Restaurant Concepts and Northern Tool + Equipment. But in addition to leading the firm’s tenant rep team, the veteran retail broker also puts on a developer hat to scout Greater Houston for acquisition and development opportunities. “We made a conscious decision back in 2008 and 2009 to go deep into those areas,” he said. “Ever since then, we have steadily been opportunistic in either buying existing assets or building projects from the ground up.”

This past June, Baker Katz acquired Pecan Park Plaza in the southeastern Houston suburb of League City. The 108,000-square-foot shopping center is in the middle of a rapidly growing commercial corridor. Meanwhile, construction is underway on the firm’s ground-up development of Texas’ Brenham Crossing, a 200,000-square-foot center anchored by Hobby Lobby, Marshalls, PetSmart and Five Below. “Thankfully, we got all of our numbers in just ahead of the crazy price increases in construction,” Baker said. “Brenham Crossing might just be the only ground-up development of its kind within an hour or so of Houston since COVID started.”

A Houston native, Baker earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University and is a past president of X Team Retail Advisors. He sits on business and nonprofit boards and is an active community volunteer.

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Baker:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

One of our big wins for 2022 was picking up the account for EōS Fitness. They’re a Texas-based fitness user that takes 40,000 to 50,000 square feet of space. We started working with them this past spring, and we now have four leases signed in this market, with more to come. During the worst days of COVID, the fitness segment was seriously disrupted, but it has bounced back nicely. EōS could not have had better timing coming into the Houston market. They have really turned the high-volume, lower-price-point fitness model on its ear by adding a level of quality, technology and service that has been missing in that space. They are very entrepreneurial and have been incredible to partner with as they have expanded into Houston and Texas.

Another highlight from 2022 is the continuing leasing, traffic and sales momentum of our acquisition, PlazAmericas, on Bellaire Boulevard in Houston. This used to be the Sharpstown Center regional mall, originally built back in the 1950s. Today, it has got a strong Hispanic customer base and we have seen our occupancy and traffic go way up, even during COVID when many regional malls saw big declines. We are as excited about that project as anything we own right now in terms of moving into the future.

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

There are so many great memories over the last year of being a husband and father. My wife and I just celebrated 21 years of marriage, and we’ve got these four children — all girls, all under 16. It has been just an incredible time. But another personal accomplishment I’m proud of was to start working on a master’s degree in theology in 2022. I have been hard at work on it, with about a year-and-a-half to go. I have always loved learning, and I believe it’s important to continue to grow in every area of your life. I have been putting in probably 10 to 12 hours a week of study. I had an hour-and-a-half webinar earlier this morning and I’ve got an hour-long call later this afternoon, all relating to the program, and twice a year I go up to Vancouver for two-week, 8-to-5 learning intensives. Taking a full month out of my schedule is a massive commitment. I have certainly needed to be more organized and careful with my calendar. For some people, this might feel like a part-time job on top of their existing responsibilities, but for me, pursuing this course of study has been well worth the effort. It’s something that I’m super excited about heading into this year.

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

I would like to make big progress toward the 85- or 90-project mark as we work toward a total of 100 acquisitions and developments. Right now, I’d say we’re somewhere north of 70. I think it’s doable because we are flexible and creative about the diverse types of opportunities that we pursue. A couple of years ago, after we closed on several empty, freestanding Payless stores, someone said to me: “What is your deal at Baker Katz? Is there a method to your madness?” My response was that each deal stands on its own. We are opportunistic. We believe in Texas and Houston over the long haul. It’s true that we’re at the tail end of a worldwide pandemic and might be on the front end of a depression or recession, but to me this disruption feels a whole lot like opportunity. It’s in periods of turbulence when you experience the most growth.

Pecan Park Plaza

Meredith Darnall combines data and technology with a big-picture perspective. “My focus is on understanding how the evolution of retail and consumer behavior impacts our retailers’ operating strategies and what it all means for Brookfield Properties,” she said. Based in Chicago, the 20-year real estate veteran provides strategic recommendations based on in-depth market research and site and consumer analytics. She also tracks tech trends to deliver new solutions to the company’s U.S. shopping centers, from Oakbrook Center in Chicago to Ala Moana in Honolulu.

She joined General Growth Properties in 2006 — Brookfield Properties acquired GGP in 2018 — and before that served as real estate research manager for Nordstrom Inc. The Kentucky native holds a master’s in public communication from American University and a bachelor’s in English and psychology from Transylvania University.

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Darnall:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

In 2022, we piloted a program to provide a fully integrated curbside pickup service with Sephora. I am really proud that we collaborated with a retailer for the first time to implement a system to share data. This collaboration has never been done before with retailers and landlords. We showed them how we could work together to offer a seamless, smooth customer experience that provides great convenience. We launched the pilot at four of our Houston area malls, and very quickly, we showed that we could provide an online-order pickup service to the customer in under six minutes, which is really quick. In addition, we were able to provide real benefits to Sephora in terms of labor savings. In the past, when someone placed a pickup order, Sephora had to take a highly trained beauty sales associate off the floor. After picking and packing the order, that Sephora associate then had to go out and try to find the customer in our parking lot to deliver the goods. I love this as a case study of how we can evolve our relationship with our retailers. It’s not just about us being a landlord; it’s about us being an operating partner and really thinking about how our malls can function as an operating platform for our retailers.

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

I love to travel, but the last couple of years have been hard because of the COVID restrictions. So in 2022, my personal accomplishment was finally going to Ecuador and spending three days hiking in the Amazonian jungle. We saw tarantulas, all kinds of different birds and a caiman. We also went piranha fishing, which was really fun. One gentleman caught one and we were able to look at its teeth really closely — and then throw it back in the water! We also spent three days in the Galapagos Islands. My joke is that the cute animals are in Galapagos. At one point as we were coming up to an island, baby sea lions were sidling up to get a better look at us. They were as curious about us as we were about them. I was happy to be traveling again, just getting to see this whole beautiful part of the world that I had only seen in pictures. That was such a unique and special experience to have as my first post-COVID international trip. I believe it’s important to get outside of your everyday surroundings and see things that are bigger than all of us.

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

My goal professionally, being in this age of the importance of data, is to really continue to expand and enhance our data strategy. That includes how we use third-party data that we obtain but also our internal data, which is just so valuable and has so much potential. I think a lot about how to harness information that sits at the property level. I want to start putting together a road map for how we can bring more efficiencies by making better use of that data. Where can we find more opportunity and more productivity? Can we rethink some of our existing ways of doing things to enhance how we manage the portfolio? I believe that we can slowly start to bring automation and more-efficient management to a range of unexamined processes. We don’t need our associates spending time thinking about things that computers can do for them. We want them to be free to focus on high-value responsibilities.

Few know more about Brixmor’s community impact than the REIT’s senior vice president of marketing Kristen Moore. But last year, the 30-year veteran of commercial real estate literally gained a higher perspective on those efforts: “I finally went up on my first shopping center roof while filming a Brixmor team member talking about the company’s renewable energy goals and strategy,” she explained. Brixmor owns and operates nearly 380 retail centers across the country. A self-described “pun lover, gummy bear enthusiast and avid fiction reader,” Moore uses her creativity and communication skills to tell the company’s diverse stories. In her career, she has contributed to or shaped marketing and communication strategies for the likes of Kravco Co., General Growth and Regency Centers.

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Moore:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

Last year, we did a lot of work on video storytelling that shares Brixmor’s culture and the community impact of our shopping centers, but it was comments on those stories from some of our recently hired employees that underscored the impact of genuine storytelling. One person said: “I would actually stop scrolling on LinkedIn to watch Brixmor’s videos.” Another one told us: “The videos made me want to work for Brixmor, and I have found the culture to match what is shown.” The videos were part of our “At The Center” campaign, which uses employee photos, videos and selfie-taken interviews to provide insider insights into our retail landscape. To expand on that concept this year, we introduced features on the company’s culture that highlight different team members and allow their personalities to shine through. I love how these videos are authentic to Brixmor’s brand of “Our Center is You.” They really illustrate the company’s first cultural tenet of “Great real estate matters, but great people matter even more.” People relate to seeing and hearing real people like themselves, which is evident in the higher views, engagement and click-throughs on our “At The Center” social media posts.

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

My husband and I are on a quest to visit all 63 national parks, and we hit No. 20, or one-third of the way, this year. In January, we started the year paddleboarding above colorful fish and stingrays in Biscayne, Florida. [We] hiked canyons and The Narrows at Bryce Canyon and Zion in Utah after ICSC LAS VEGAS. And [we] hit a life goal by walking on a lava flow at Hawai‘i Volcanoes [National Park]. I’m amazed at the diverse landscapes that we have encountered across the country, even within the same park such as Yellowstone.

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

Launching a collaboration tool for our property-level teams that helps stimulate creative thinking on how to deliver on our mission, which is to be the center of the communities we serve in a way that feels more like play rather than work.

Atlanta-based Woodvale acquires and develops commercial real estate across the Southeast and provides services related to real estate investment, equity capitalization, debt restructuring and more. Managing partner Rahim Charania also is the founder of Three Ring Studio and happens to preside over one of the largest campuses in Georgia’s burgeoning film and TV production industry. Located in Covington, east of Atlanta, his Cinelease Studios-Three Ring has served the likes of Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media. It boasts more than 250,000 square feet of sound stages and post-production facilities, along with more than 100,000 square feet of office space. This past April, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and various state and local officials joined Charania to break ground on a $144 million expansion of the Covington campus. 

Charania sits on the board of the business school at his alma mater, Georgia State University, as well as the board of GSU’s Center for International Business, Education & Research. He is an active philanthropist and mentor.

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Charania:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

Our successful recapitalization of our media portfolio and the fact that we were able to expand our current media assets in Georgia, the largest of which is Cinelease Studios-Three Ring. After the expansion is complete in 2023, it will be the ninth-largest movie studio in America, totaling over 600,000 square feet on 90 acres. The studio has already made a big impact in Covington, which is an outlying, rural city in metro Atlanta. In part because our studio has been doing so well, we’ve seen other neighboring projects come to fruition. One example is Covington Town Center, a large mixed-use development with multifamily housing, retail and hospitality.

It can be difficult to capitalize deals in up-and-coming cities like Covington because so often, the lending environment doesn’t look to the future; it looks to the past, which in these outlying areas hasn’t always been that attractive. Developers­ — we look to the future. We have to convince lenders to do the same. Fortunately, when a development like Cinelease Studios-Three Ring brings thousands of people to the site on a daily basis, all of a sudden doors that were once closed begin to open.

While I am proud of my own developments, I am first and foremost a community advocate, and I always want my projects to be net positive for the neighboring community. That has certainly been true in this case, which is deeply satisfying.

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

I have been mentoring young businesspeople and analysts for a large part of my career. And in 2022, I saw those efforts — the time I have spent mentoring those students — really begin to blossom. The majority were Georgia State students when I started working with them. In some cases, they were sophomores who didn’t know how to tie a tie. Now they are young executives at places like Blackstone, Merrill Lynch and Ernst & Young. Many of them were first-generation college students. In fact, I have actually hired some of these mentees to come work with me at Woodvale, including our investment analyst Bashir Mansour. I have seen him grow as a professional and am so proud because he has accomplished so much. These days, our investor base, which is made up of very high-net-worth individuals, will go and speak directly to these 23- and 24-year-old young people instead of wanting to speak only to me. Another example is Qazi Haq. He was a student at Georgia State when I first met him. This year, he was promoted to senior associate at Ernst & Young-Parthenon — one of the youngest senior associates in E&Y’s Atlanta office. It has been very fulfilling to see how well these mentees have done and how ready they are for a dramatically changing future.

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

Inkga Centres Managing Director Cindy Andersen

With 392 stores across 32 markets and more than 4.3 billion annual visits, Ikea is a household name all over the world. But parent company Ingka Centres also maintains a growing shopping center division with 45 Ikea-anchored properties across the U.S., Europe, China and India. Retail and supply chain veteran Cindy Andersen took the helm of Ingka in February 2021. Over the past year, the executive and her team have moved forward with plans to redevelop malls on Market Street in downtown San Francisco and in downtown Toronto, as well, the latter in partnership with Ikea Canada.

Andersen holds a master’s degree from the University of Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law. She joined Ikea in 2008 after working for supply chain and logistics giant A.P. Moller-Maersk Group. An avid hiker and runner, she lives in Copenhagen, Denmark, with her husband and three children.

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Andersen:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

I am immensely proud of how my team has bounced back from pandemic challenges, with tenant sales hitting a year-on-year record at constant exchange rates. New financial highs have been driven by lots of new ideas, including new Ingka Centres properties, which we like to refer to as meeting places. For example, we broke ground on a new meeting place in India, opened our first center in the U.K. and, in Sweden, launched our first circular hub, a retail space focused on educating and supporting visitors with repairing, reusing, renting and recycling goods. Overall, 2022 was a huge step forward in our journey to go beyond shopping and bring improvements to the everyday lives of people around the world.

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

2022 was an exciting year for me personally, thanks to the opportunity to once again be able to travel and see our many meeting places and colleagues all around the world. I’m sorry that it’s meant I’ve had to spend more time away from my family, but on the upside, it’s added a lot of variety to my jogging, and I’ve even managed to shave a couple of seconds off my 10K time, though not as much as I may have liked!

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

For the year ahead, I want to continue to put the light on my team, for the difference they make every day. I feel privileged to work with such an amazing group of people, by the leadership, resilience and the commitment to deliver and develop our business in a way which creates a positive impact on people and our planet.

My mind is always buzzing with ways in which our meeting places can help the local community. I really feel that as a business, we are perfectly positioned to drive the transition toward a greener future. Our goal is to secure 100% renewable electricity in all our buildings worldwide by 2025. With us having already achieved this across the common areas of our European meeting places, I’m determined that 2023 sees us accelerate this vital change.

A Few of Ingka Centres’ Current Projects

Upscale grocery store Erewhon has been sprouting new locations across California under the guidance of Yuval Chiprut. Popular with Instagram influencers and Hollywood celebrities, Erewhon offers a visual feast of artfully arrayed fruits and veggies along with soups, sauces, juices, wraps, bowls, coffees and other options for those who eat vegan, gluten-free, organic foods or are otherwise health conscious.

In addition to his decade-long senior real estate role at Erewhon, Chiprut in 2009 founded Santa Monica-based real estate investment, design, construction and brokerage firm Slated Projects and continues to run it. In 2016, he and his wife, Rachael Blumberg, launched the fitness concept Platefit, which has three metro Los Angeles locations.

A 26-year business strategy and real estate veteran, Chiprut earned Master of Business Administration degrees in finance from Fordham University in New York and SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan. He holds bachelor’s degrees from the University of California San Diego, where he studied psychology and Spanish, and The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied international business.

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Chiprut:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

I opened up Erewhon’s Beverly Hills location in August, and it was by far the most challenging project I’ve been involved with to date. The city of Beverly Hills is our landlord and they were incredibly supportive, but making this store happen was nothing short of an engineering and architectural marvel. Our store replaced a Williams Sonoma. We essentially put a grocery store in an 11,000-square-foot space in a public parking garage that is still operated by the city of Beverly Hills. I installed two brand-new elevators from ground level through four levels of basement. To go to the roof and put rooftop fans and all my grease ducts, I used existing shafts that had been installed for fresh-air intake for the garage. It was an 18-month process from lease execution to the opening in August. The traffic in Beverly Hills has been phenomenal, with the most transactional volume of any of our stores. This was our eighth location. In 2023, I’ll be opening up Culver City in Q1 and Pasadena in Q2, so Erewhon will have two store openings in the next six to nine months, bringing our total portfolio to 10 stores.

What I am most proud of is that, despite all of the sourcing, procurement and bureaucratic challenges that existed through COVID and into last year, we have managed to continue opening successful stores. For example, we opened our Silver Lake store in 2020 and our Studio City store in 2021. Studio City is at a center called The Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge that is anchored with us and Equinox. It was a beautiful project, and it has been a wild success.

ALSO CHECK OUT: The leasing strategy behind the remake of a Los Angeles classic into The Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

Last year, I learned to handle and process stress more effectively. Essentially, I figured out a way to channel the energy so that it feels more comfortable even when things get most challenging. So instead of feeling concerned about stress, I have learned to stay present, be humble and keep things in proper perspective. More-effective stress management has really fueled me in many ways and made me both more productive and a better team member. It allows me to keep feeling joy. I love what I do every day and am super passionate about my projects. That’s why I’m able to manage multiple projects, deliver them on time and on budget and make everybody proud.

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

For our new store in Pasadena, I got the opportunity to be the developer of the building itself. It’s the first time that I have syndicated and been responsible for fully occupying a building. We’ll probably have that asset stabilized by the middle of 2023, so in the year ahead, I’ll be focused on delivering my first development project.

Erewhon Silver Lake

CallisonRTKL Principal and Mobility Initiative Leader Jorge Beroiz

London-based architect Jorge Beroiz designs mixed-use, retail and transit-oriented projects across Europe, the Middle East and Asia for CallisonRTKL. The certified LEED Green Associate puts a strong focus on sustainability and is increasingly incorporating lower-carbon materials like multilayered mass timber into his designs. He earned architecture degrees from the University of Buenos Aires and London’s Kingston University. “Generally, we are doing fewer retail-only projects these days and are more into mixed-use,” Beroiz said. “It’s no longer just about the building type; it’s more about the mix, including mass transit and synergies between the different uses. In my view, that makes it all much more layered, challenging, interesting and complex.”

Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joel Groover spoke with Beroiz:

What’s your proudest professional accomplishment from 2022?

At CallisonRTKL, our focus is on people, the planet and positive design. Yes, we build buildings, but at the end of the day, we build places for people. So it fills me with joy to see people appropriating and enjoying our projects in a positive way.

Last year, we had the opportunity to open for Seef Properties a project called Al Liwan, a mixed-use project in the Hamala neighborhood of Bahrain. It was a bit of a gamble. The climate in Bahrain is, of course, extremely hot, but along with the client, we took the decision to make this project an open-air city center instead of just an indoor shopping center. There are three levels of residential and a full level of retail. We created streets within the project, and we used evaporating cooling, water fountains, shading and heavy landscaping to make the outdoor areas as comfortable as possible.

I was able to visit it recently and observe how the project is becoming a very well-used place. I hear that in the mornings, moms go and drop their children at the adjacent British school and then go to our place to do yoga classes or use the project as a running track. In the evening at dinnertime, you see people socializing with a real sense of community, whereas there really wasn’t much for them in this area before. It makes me feel extremely proud that people are finding the project scalable and approachable. We have created a place for locals to enjoy and, because of the residential, it’s also a new community where people actually live. That level of community engagement is very satisfying to see.

What’s your proudest personal accomplishment from the past year?

I have continued to make progress on a major life goal: being so consistent about the [environmental] sustainability of my work and in my life that there are no longer two ways of doing things; there is just one way. On the personal side, I have looked at my house’s insulation and I also have solar panels and an electric car. I calculate my own personal carbon footprint: the effects of what I eat and how I travel. But when it comes to sheer environmental impact, the carbon footprints of major commercial projects are in a different league.

That’s why I found it so personally satisfying to be so involved in projects like Merlata Bloom, in Milan. It is a 75,000-square-meter retail project under construction as part of a new urban district. The project uses over 3,000 cubic meters of mass timber. While I have used mass timber for office, this was the first time I have used it on a retail project. We are producing what is essentially a 200-meter-long skylight that spans and connects two parts of Merlata Bloom Milano, creating a winter garden. The amount of carbon-sequestering timber that we are using in this project allows us to offset seven or eight years of operational carbon. I have a dream that before I retire, we will be doing fully mass timber projects in Europe and the Middle East, along with solar panels and the full palette of low-embodied-carbon materials. Our project in Milan is the first step. Making a positive impact professionally and personally — seeing those two come together more and more — is something I’m very proud of.

How about a professional or personal goal you plan to pursue in 2023?

Just to continue pushing and increase the number of opportunities that we have to prove that we can provide healthier, more sustainable projects that make people happy. Part of our focus will be on serving more clients in northern Europe, along with our existing, longtime clients in places like Melbourne, where we’re turning Chadstone shopping center into a mixed-use city. Overall, I believe we’re seeing an acceleration in understanding about sustainable buildings. There used to be this impression that they just cost you more, but people are starting to understand that in the long term, they cost a lot less. Part of my goal in the year ahead will be to help increase that understanding. The more we use these methods and materials, the more the costs of low-carbon solutions will continue to come down.

A Few of Jorge Beroiz’s Current Projects