Originating mergers. Assembling IPOs. Reshaping portfolios. Positioning employees for success. Volunteering to advance the ICSC community and its members. During his accomplished 29-year real estate career, James Taylor, known well as Jim, has infused a culture of ethics and outperformance into the companies and teams he’s led.

Trust, team building and nurturing new and diverse talent all have been requisites in the success model of the Brixmor Property Group CEO, who was gaveled in as 2024 ICSC chair on Dec. 6. “I’ve always believed that great real estate matters but great people matter far more,” he said. “The greatest gift for me is watching teams outperform.”

Taylor, who oversees Brixmor’s 365 marketplaces, takes the reins from Glenn Rufrano, who served as two-term ICSC chair in 2022 and 2023, following his CEO role with VEREIT until its 2021 merger with Realty Income. Stepping into the ICSC vice chair role that Taylor is vacating is Angele Robinson-Gaylord, Starbucks senior vice president of store development for the Americas.

Before Brixmor

Virginia native Taylor describes his career as a “journey of discovery.” He started as an accountant with Price Waterhouse, now known as PwC, where his very first audit client was the former Giant Foods of Landover. Taylor recalls a chance encounter with founder and CEO Izzy Cohen in the company cafeteria: “I couldn’t believe how generous he was with his time explaining the grocery business and the strategy Giant employed to outperform its competitors. His leadership and clarity of focus made a lasting impression on me.” While auditing was a solid stepping stone, it wasn’t Taylor’s calling, he realized, so he ultimately returned to his alma mater — the University of Virginia, where he had earned a Bachelor of Science in
Commerce — to earn a law degree.

Emerging as a fresh attorney in 1994, Taylor faced a choice between litigation and corporate law. He opted for the latter with Richmond, Virginia-based Hunton & Williams. There, he’d specialize in securities law with a focus on equity REITs, shepherding numerous real estate firms through the labyrinthine initial public offering process. “I enjoyed law,” he said. “It opened so many doors for me. But your incremental value in law is your time and how many hours you bill, which are necessarily finite. I also became very interested in the underlying business reasons driving the transactions I worked on.” Already a tested numbers guy thanks to his accountant days, Taylor segued in 1998 to a pursuit far more computational than law. “I made the leap into investment banking,” he said, a push that landed him in managing director and group head roles for nearly 15 years with both Wells Fargo/Eastdil Secured and their predecessor companies, Wachovia Securities and First Union Securities.

Taylor became a top producer, completing more than $100 billion in diversified deals, including public debt and equity offerings, mergers and acquisitions, asset and portfolio sales, private equity placements, mortgage financings and bank loans. He helped expand the firm’s investment banking practice during his tenure, elevating to the top three nationally in market share.

As a banker during the 2007-08 financial crisis, Taylor learned an ethics lesson he’d carry the rest of his career. After watching several financial firms, including Wachovia, “fail primarily because of an erosion of confidence in decisionmaking, it really left an impression on me,” he said, “and it made me keenly aware of the economic value of trust and transparency.”

Investment banking was rewarding, but it kept Taylor on the road, a grind that proved tough for him, his wife and his two young daughters. He also had a strong desire to move to the principal side of the business. So in 2012, Taylor came aboard at Federal Realty as executive vice president and CFO.

In addition to his CFO duties, Taylor also helped lead investments, develop new business and identify and evaluate strategic opportunities. When he left the company to join Brixmor, Federal CEO Don Wood lauded Taylor as “a trusted friend and adviser to both me and the entire Federal Realty management team; we’ll miss his wise counsel and leadership.”

Developing Talent at Brixmor

Brixmor named Taylor its president and CEO and a director in April of 2016. He took over for close friend and interim CEO Daniel Hurwitz, who had stepped in to provide critical interim leadership following a management shakeup until a permanent CEO could be found.

Taylor spied an especially big upside at Brixmor. “As Dan and I discussed Brixmor, I was immediately intrigued,” Taylor recalled. “Brixmor had a great team and a portfolio of well-located but undermanaged and underinvested centers, some of which needed to be sold to delever the balance sheet. But most of the centers presented opportunities to drive double-digit returns through accretive reinvestment, bringing in better tenants at better rents and literally transforming them in the process.” Ultimately, Taylor viewed Brixmor as a unique turnaround opportunity that would allow him “to reset expectations and build a culture of outperformance and trust, with a purpose of creating and owning shopping centers that truly are the ‘center’ of the communities they serve.”

Taylor’s background in accounting, investment banking and portfolio management came in handy as he plotted Brixmor’s growth. “Those previous roles gave me multiple perspectives on how to address challenges and opportunities with a strong underlying emphasis on the importance of leadership and integrity,” Taylor said.

As a kid, Taylor had aspired to be a carpenter, a goal that one day would manifest in a different sort of construct, team building, which he’s effected at Brixmor and through all phases of his real estate career. “I was always interested in business and building great teams and watching them grow and succeed,” he said.

Taylor and his team are also known for innovating talent-development programs. “We believe that everyone who’s in a position to lead others has a fiduciary duty to ensure the growth of the team members they lead,” Taylor said. “We see our leaders as talent farmers who help people grow by offering actionable feedback, setting ambitious goals and regularly reviewing their development progress, separate and distinct from year-end performance and compensation reviews.” Taylor called this strategy an “investment in the individual” that not only provides opportunities for growth and support but also “creates personal accountability — and accountability for the leaders in whom we have been entrusted with their growth.”

Enhancing the talent development programs are a cross departmental mentorship program, regular ERG meetings, a Director Lunch Series and Big Brain Day sessions featuring inspirational speakers like The Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin and former ABC anchor Dan Harris speaking on mindfulness.

Getting Involved with ICSC

Taylor, an ICSC trustee and a member of ICSC’s executive board, got involved in the organization when he worked for Eastdil. His ICSC roles grew over the years. He served on its Audit & Finance, Nominating & Governance, and Investment committees and in other capacities both formal and informal. “I quickly realized that ICSC is a fundamentally unique organization with a high degree of collaboration that drives the growth of the industry. I also found that the real power of ICSC has been the enduring relationships ICSC has fostered with people who are now some of my dearest professional mentors and colleagues,” he said.

Asked about favorite nuggets of wisdom, Taylor recalled a few from Jonathan Gray, president and COO of Blackstone, whom Taylor described as “a great leader and an incredibly thoughtful and principled man.” Among Gray’s gems: “Those who maintain a sense of wonder also maintain an unshakable faith in what is possible,” and “Do not discount the incredible here and now. In doing so, you might lose what now feels like in all its joy, in all its singularity, in all its wonder.”

But Taylor’s foremost influence was his prominent father, James Taylor Sr., a Navy commander who reengineered nuclear safeguards after the Three Mile Island disaster in Pennsylvania. He retired from the service after 25 years in its nuclear-propulsion program to lead the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as executive director. Not long after joining the NRC, Taylor Sr. became the first American to travel to the Soviet Union site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. “I remember he was devastated by the condition of the conscripts there involved in the cleanup,” his son said, “and he raised hell with the U.S. State Department to release a shipment of iodine to them.” Taylor saw his father demonstrate a deep and abiding respect for his team and their wellbeing, and that focus on doing what’s right for the people around you is a lesson Taylor has carried with him throughout.

He strongly encourages ICSC participation and volunteerism. Among his Brixmor colleagues who are active within ICSC are senior executive vice president and COO Brian Finnegan, who serves as the ICSC Foundation board of directors vice chair and sits on the ICSC Security Task Force; director of national accounts Evie Gross, an ICSC Foundation Mary Lou Fiala Fellow; executive vice president and president of the South region Matt Ryan, an ICSC 4 Under 40 honoree two years ago; and national account representative Thomas Washington, a hire made through ICSC Foundation’s Launch Academy.

The Launch Academy is a particular Taylor passion. “Its ability to bring diversity and talent from many backgrounds to the industry is a key ingredient for our strength and growth” he said. “It gives young people encouragement early in their careers and broader exposure to such things as retail brokerage, operations and real estate that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Another passion is nurturing industry talent through ICSC’s 4 Under 40 and Next Generation programs. Each is essential in keeping up-and-coming talent in tune with the rapidly changing retail field, he said. “These programs represent great opportunities for our young leaders to gain exposure. We need to keep a strong emphasis on them because they’re the future.”

Taylor’s term as ICSC vice chair has given him a view of “how well run ICSC is with great leadership that’s as strong as ever.” The organization’s mission of inclusiveness and strengthened roles for its executive board and chair positions are other pluses, he said. He has picked the brains of past chairs Rufrano, Hurwitz and John Morrison about the nuances of the role. “Clearly, ICSC continues to strengthen its position to align itself with the needs of the industry,” he said. “It has survived and is performing well from a financial standpoint, quite the accomplishment after what the industry has been through.”

Equally essential, he said, is ICSC’s robust advocacy role in public policy, “always making sure we’re on solid legislative footing.” One crucial emphasis of his term, Taylor said, will be strategizing how to curtail the spate of organized crime that’s crippling U.S. merchants, retail districts and property owners.

He’ll also build on another ICSC goal: educating municipalities and the public more broadly on the role landlords and retailers play in improving communities through creating jobs, generating critical public revenues and creating vibrancy and relevance. This directly aligns with ICSC’s rebrand focused on the Marketplaces Industry — where people shop, dine, work, play and gather — and the impact the organization and its members have on communities and commerce. Brixmor, too, strives to reposition properties “so people see our centers not as Brixmor properties but more as their community centers,” he said.

Sustainable practices in those centers have never been more important for ICSC members and will continue to be a priority, he added. “Good capital stewards understand that things like low-water landscapes, solar power, reuse of materials, and charging stations are all financially justified, with continued opportunities to embrace these and other practices.”

What Matters to Jim Taylor

One of Taylor’s operating principles “is that the best ideas come from those close to the real estate.” He spends significant time visiting Brixmor properties, tenants and team members. “They’ll tell you what’s really happening, what their challenges are and what their needs are,” he said.

“You have to spend time in the field to assess what’s going well and what’s not. I love to walk the stores, speak with tenants and even go behind centers to see what’s happening with the trash bins!” On these visits, he generally sees the positive impacts of the company’s investments in its properties but occasionally witnesses “matters that fall short of our standards,” he said.

Brixmor properties are well-positioned to thrive in the face of ongoing retail disruptions, industry observers have noted. Among those watching is Mad Money host Jim Cramer. During Taylor’s appearance on the CNBC show late last year, he told Cramer about Brixmor’s value-add strategy, which includes redevelopment of its centers, development of excess outparcels, recapture of anchor space and mitigation of restrictive provisions to create opportunities for additional development. “We’ve put over $900 million to work impacting over 170 centers,” Taylor said.

Retailers gravitate to centers with consistent histories of reinvestment because such properties connect better with customers, Taylor told Commerce + Communities Today. “That and an affordable cost of tenant occupancy are key elements in positioning yourself for success.”

Taylor is married to Alice, whom he describes as “the light of my life for over 30 years.” The couple’s daughters, Mary Lyle and Gracie, are 23 and 26. Gracie is following in her dad’s footsteps, working as a marketing data analyst for Federal. During ICSC LAS VEGAS in May, a proud Taylor dropped by the Federal booth to be greeted by his daughter.

Among his non-ICSC volunteer activities, Taylor serves on the executive board of Nareit and on the board of a Washington, D.C.-area private school; is a member of the Urban Land Institute; and is a supporter of the Alzheimer’s Association, inspired by his father’s battle with the disease.

The incoming ICSC chair enjoys a wide spectrum of books. His latest read at press time was Simon Sinek’s Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Taylor also is partial to historical nonfiction, while the attorney in him enjoys John Grisham thrillers. And he carves out time to tinker with the classic cars he owns and drives, including a 1964 Ford Thunderbird his grandfather gifted him.

He remains a devoted University of Virginia Cavaliers fan and enjoys the occasional round of golf. But his true relaxation place is the meditative habitat of the St. Marys River off the Chesapeake Bay in Southern Maryland.

Looking ahead for the Marketplaces Industry, Taylor said the recent flow of finely detailed trade-area data is “giving us all greater assurance that store openings are going to be profitable. We’ve come a long way from the days of the concentric circle,” he said. Though the industry has faced many rapid-fire changes, “most negative ones are largely in our rearview mirror,” he said. “ICSC has been a big factor in helping correct the narrative of the retail apocalypse when so many were counting out bricks-and-mortar.”

Taylor is heartened by the role physical stores play in the post-COVID retail world. Stores have proven to be “a critical and profitable channel to connect with customers in multiple ways to shop, order and pick up goods,” he said, noting that traffic and occupancy at Brixmor properties is up from pre-pandemic days. “The successful store is a hub of that activity. It’s what presents the brand, gets the customer excited and reinforces loyalty,” he said. “One thing the pandemic did was actually accelerate the realization of the store’s importance.”