Stirling Properties Awarded Contract for Management and Leasing of Manhattan Place Shopping Center in Harvey, Louisiana
Stirling Properties has been awarded a contract to provide management and leasing services for Manhattan Place Shopping Center located in Harvey, Louisiana. The 137,315 square foot shopping center includes Target, Ross Dress For Less, Rue21, Lane Bryant, AT&T and more.
For leasing opportunities contact Rhonda Sharkawy at 504-620-8145 or rsharkawy@stirlingprop.com. For more information on Stirling Properties’ management services visit our website at stirlingprop.com/services/PropertyAssetManagement.
Stirling Properties Ranks Among Top 10 Commercial Real Estate Firms in Alabama
Business Alabama recently published their 2015 Top Rank issue and I am happy to report that just a year and a half after opening our first office in Mobile, Alabama, Stirling Properties is ranked among the Top 10 Commercial Real Estate Firms in the State of Alabama.
Since establishing our Mobile office in October 2013, we have worked tirelessly to expand our presence throughout Alabama and eastward into the Florida market. Here are a few highlights:
- CEO Marty Mayer delivered last year’s ACREcon keynote address, introducing Stirling Properties and highlighting the rise of the Gulf Coast.
- We acquired John Toomey & Company, Inc., a commercial real estate company in Mobile with over 20 years’ experience, integrating 1.8 million square feet into our existing managed and leased portfolio.
- Just last month, we relocated our Mobile office into a larger 5,100 square-foot space at One St. Louis Centre in downtown Mobile, a building we also manage and lease.
- At the end of 2014, we opened a new office in Pensacola, Florida, in SunTrust Tower, an office building we also manage and lease.
- In the beginning of this month, we were awarded a contract for leasing and property management of Santa Rosa Mall in Mary Esther/Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
We now total over 2.5 million square-feet of managed properties and 34 employees/brokers in Alabama and Florida – in just a year and a half. I am extremely proud of our latest Alabama ranking and, most importantly, what the Stirling Team has accomplished in the Alabama and Florida markets over this short time frame. We are strongly committed to serving the entire Gulf South and look forward to serving our clients throughout Alabama and Florida from our Mobile, Pensacola and Mary Esther/Fort Walton Beach offices.
Stay tuned for another exciting announcement in the next few weeks!
Stirling Properties Expands Asset Management Team
Stirling Properties is excited to announce two additions to its growing Asset Management Division. Charles Barclay joins Stirling Properties as Assistant Asset Manager on a variety of retail and office properties in the Greater New Orleans area. Mr. Barclay’s office is in the company’s Corporate Headquarters at 109 Northpark Boulevard, Suite 300 in Covington, Louisiana. Before moving to New Orleans, Mr. Barclay worked for CW Capital Asset Management in Bethesda, Maryland where he was involved in the management of over $500 million of REO multifamily assets across the United States. He is a 2009 graduate of the University of Maryland. Ryan Juneau, Project Manager with Stirling Properties since 2013, will transfer from the Development team to Asset Management. His transition to Assistant Asset Manager will occur over the next several months as he completes several of his development assignments. Mr. Juneau has worked as project manager on MacArthur Village, Perkins Row, Ambassador Town Center, River Chase and the Hornbeck Offshore office renovation at Northpark Corporate Center II, amongst others. These projects cover retail, office, multi-family, and infrastructure development. Mr. Juneau earned a Masters of Business Administration from Louisiana State University and currently resides in Baton Rouge.
Stirling Properties Awarded Contract for Leasing and Property Management of Santa Rosa Mall in Mary Esther, Florida
Stirling Properties has been awarded a contract to provide comprehensive leasing and property management services for Santa Rosa Mall in Mary Esther, Florida. Santa Rosa Mall continues to be the retail destination for Mary Esther/Ft. Walton Beach since its inception in 1976.
Anchored by Dillards, JC Penney, Sears, Planet Fitness and Regal Theater, this 734,000 square foot enclosed mall sits on approximately 75 acres on Mary Esther Boulevard. Additional tenants also include Old Navy, PacSun, Panera Bread, Shoe Dept./Encore, Starbucks, Rue21 and Victoria’s Secret.
“We are excited to welcome the entire Santa Rosa team, led by David Macdonald, to the Stirling Family,” stated Will Barrois, Vice President/Regional Manager of Stirling Properties. “In addition to the local group, we have assembled a great leasing and development team and will work to make the property vibrant again in the local community.”
“Stirling Properties brings forty years of experience in the Gulf South with them and we look forward to being a part of the exciting changes in store for Santa Rosa Mall,” says David Macdonald, General Manager.
Stay tuned for exciting news on Santa Rosa Mall! For national leasing prospects, contact Rhonda Sharkawy at 800-330-4481 or rsharkawy@stirlingprop.com and for local/regional prospects please contact Jason Scott at 850-418-6783 or jscott@stirlingprop.com.
End of Life (EOL), Have you made your plans?
Thanks to the overwhelming media hype last year, we all know by now that Windows XP went End of Life and out-of-support by Microsoft on April 8, 2014, but did you know that Microsoft Windows 2003 is going End of Life on July 14th of this year?
Do you have a file server in your office that is still running on Windows 2003? Are any of your key control systems, hvac or other automation systems running on Windows 2000 or 2003? Seems like every time Stirling starts managing a new property, we run into a slew of Windows XP computers and/or an old Windows 2003 Server or two.
What’s the big deal? Why should we care if software goes End of Life? We all see the sensationalized hacks that are publicized in the media which are sometimes just hype, what they miss is the whole industry that’s grown up around exploiting your operating systems and software. It’s the old game of cat and mouse or whack a mole, but updated for our digital world. Criminals find holes that they can exploit and then companies like Microsoft release a patch to fix the hole. If you stay up-to-date with the patches, you’re in ok shape. The problem comes when a product goes End of Life – the criminals are still finding and exploiting the security holes, but Microsoft is no longer issuing patches to fix the holes so if you’re running an Operating System or software that’s no longer supported, you’re throwing a big neon sign out to the world that says please exploit my systems.
Running an old version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office or some other productivity software that’s no longer supported? Same problem, probably need to look into upgrading.
Is your automation system running an old version of Windows? Might want to check with your vendor to find out what needs to be done to get you up-to-date. Looking at installing a new Automation System? If the dollars add up, ask about systems that run on proprietary hardware and software, instead of Windows. Windows is a great general purpose operating system, but part of what makes it so versatile, also makes it a huge risk for security exploits.
We no longer live in a world where we can put systems out and forget about them. We need to stay up-to-date on the patches, know the End of Life dates and keep your automation systems under contract so you can keep them up-to-date.
First Steps for Property Services and Information Technology
We’ve received a lot of feedback from an earlier Stirling post (Property Management, Information Technology and the New Paradigm) about the amount of work required to update Information Technology Infrastructure for today’s world. A few people keyed in on the amount of work required when their Information Technology Projects had taken a back seat to other priorities in the last five years, ten years or forever.
Some had asked for a cheat sheet on what they should do first or what questions they should be asking their property services company about their Information Technology Systems. This list is far from comprehensive – merely first steps, but if Stirling had just taken over a new property or if I was starting from scratch, this would be my initial list of things to check or you can hit your Property Services company up to find out what they were doing in regards to Information Technology:
Do I have a next generation firewall at my offices?
Are my automation systems firewalled and segmented away from my office computers (i.e. postage machines, hvac systems, video directories, card access systems)?
Not very effective anymore, but still a first step, do all my computers have anti-virus protection?
If my computers haven’t been running anti-virus, who will format the hard drive and reset it back to the factory default image, then add anti-virus protection and load all my documents back?
Do we have, at the very least, basic spam filtering to try and eliminate the ZeroHour emails and do we have Sender Policy Framework (SPF) setup?
And finally, this really isn’t about security, but to offer up some lagniappe for the New Year, check into finally getting rid of your old analog telephone system to see what features you would gain and how much you would save with a Voice over IP (VoIP) System. Check into either a legitimate cloud provider or see if your property services company can add you to their system – adding your property to their system should be simple.
Obviously this is a very basic list, but whether your property is managed by Stirling or not, feel free to shoot me an email if you have questions and I’ll try to point you in the right direction. When it comes to Internet Security, we’re all in this together.
