The Summit in Birmingham, Alabama, first opened in 1997. Bayer Properties is currently developing the fourth phase.

Twenty years ago, Jeffrey Bayer founded Bayer Properties in the unfinished basement of his Birmingham, Alabama, home. “We have grown slowly through the years,” Bayer says, “crawling before we walked, walking before we began to run.”

And today, his company is running. Still based in Birmingham, Bayer Properties employs 45 people, with two working in Atlanta. Bayer expects the company to expand with an office in the western United States as plans for new projects progress.

Bayer, who serves as a principal, started the company with a focus in the brokerage business to generate fee income. He started with partner Jon Rotenstreich, at the time corporate treasurer with IBM in New York. A non-operating partner, Rotenstreich served as a mentor to Bayer. Rotenstreich is still a principal with the company, as are David Silverstein, who joined in 1994, and Jill Deer, who joined in 1999.

From the brokerage business, Bayer Properties expanded with a property management division in the mid-1980s, in an effort to weather the crash Bayer and Rotenstreich saw coming.

“We started a property management division with the hopes we would be ready to manage assets that were being foreclosed by financial institutions at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s,” Bayer says. “As the real estate collapse took place, we became successful picking up property management assignments. Our goal was to take over these sick assets and nurse them back to health. We also started buying a few of them.”

In the mid-1980s, Bayer Properties built a few small projects, including shopping centers and apartment projects, and completed a historical renovation. In 1993, the company began focusing on a project called The Summit, then a new venue but now known as the lifestyle venue, according to Bayer. The Summit is a registered trademark of Bayer Properties.

The Summit opened in 1997 in Birmingham. Now in its fourth phase of development, the 110-acre mixed-use project currently has 800,000 square feet of retail space. Bayer is building another 100,000 square feet of retail space. In 2002, the project, which is surrounded by 700 apartment units, was named the largest lifestyle center in the country by the International Council of Shopping Centers.

The company took The Summit concept to Louisville, Kentucky, in November 2001. That 40-acre development, part of a larger mixed-use development, was built out in one phase with a total of 400,000 square feet of retail space.

P.F. Chang’s China Bistro is one of many restaurant tenants at The Summit in Birmingham.

The Summit projects offer convenient shopping with a quality mix of retail and restaurant tenants and an abundance of landscaping that enhances the shopping experience, Silverstein says. “Convenience is a key element to the success of The Summit projects,” he adds. “Location is strategically important.”

“The Summit projects [in Birmingham and Louisville] have become part of the fabric of the communities,” Silverstein notes. Beyond convenient shopping, the projects offer restaurants and entertainment as well as a meeting place for people.

In addition to The Summit projects and several other retail centers, Bayer Properties has built The Crescent, a 150,000-square-foot office building in Birmingham, and River Ridge, a power center in Birmingham.

“Our overriding goal is to bring to the market what the consumer or the user needs,” says Bayer, who describes his company as a niche developer and a long-term owner of real estate. “[We don’t necessarily] build what we want to build but we build to the needs of the market. We build projects of good design and good quality, but we are absolutely geared to what the customer wants — that customer can be the retailer, the consumer or the [office] user. To us, it is more than just building a project to be building a project.”

Bayer Properties is now taking its Summit concept to the West. According to Bayer, the company has a 200-acre site under contract in Reno, Nevada, and a 110-acre site under contract in Fort Collins, Colorado. The company is also negotiating for several more sites in the West and three sites in the East — all for Summit projects.

“We think there is an underserved market in some cities across the country and we think that our [Summit] product begins to satisfy that demand,” Bayer says.

He continues, “The main focus of a Summit project is the retail component — it is the retail component that drives us to the various markets. If there is an opportunity to acquire more land and create a synergistic mixed-use project then we will do so.” Bayer Properties is considering mixed-use components when planning the western projects. Both the Fort Collins and Reno sites have enough land to support residential and/or office components, and the Fort Collins site is surrounded by a sizeable, existing office development.

Well into pre-leasing the Colorado and Nevada projects, Bayer Properties is targeting the same type of tenants as are featured in the Birmingham and Louisville developments. Construction on the projects is expected to commence in 2004, with openings slated for 2005.

With the company’s venture into the West, Bayer anticipates company growth. “I imagine we’ll have an office in the western U.S. as we begin to expand The Summit concept to that part of the country,” he says.

It is just another step for the company as it builds upon its 20-year-old foundation. “We have developed a company with outstanding expertise in all disciplines within the company,” Bayer says. “Financially, we are on a firm footing, and we are taking it very slowly to make sure that we can go into other parts of the country to do business and have the right people and the financial fundamentals in place to allow us to succeed.”


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