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Growing up in Silver Spring, MD, Herb Miller knew at age 12 that he wanted to be a developer. “Everyone in my family was super educated,” he says, “but nobody made any money.” Miller decided not to follow in their footsteps.
He was a college junior when he started working for real-estate brokers. He was 24 when he declared himself a developer, created Western Development Corporation and made a deal for a venture with Olga Mazza to build Mazza Gallerie at the corner of Wisconsin and Western avenues.
To make Mazza possible, Miller needed a hotshot anchor store. He convinced the president of Neiman Marcus to move into the Washington market. Mazza Gallerie showed what Miller was made of: imagination, audacity, and focus.
Aware that he still had a lot to learn, Miller went to work for national developer Al Taubman. He helped investigate sites for 28 Taubman malls, including Fair Oaks in Springfield, VA, and Lakeforest in Gaithersburg, MD. But he was living on airplanes. Once again, Miller went out on his own.
While working to develop the Marshalls discount chain nationwide, he realized that high rents in shopping centers made it hard for small retailers to make money. You need a critical mass to draw people, he reasoned. Why not create a big regional mall with nothing but “value” stores offering lower prices all the time, not just on sale days?
Miller already owned a site for an industrial park in Dale City. It was to become Potomac Mills, the first of the outlet megamalls. To make it work, Miller and his team had to convince “value” retailers to come to the Virginia countryside. It took two years to talk the Swedish company Ikea into moving into the United States. Miller also persuaded American retailers to think big – and to think discount. One small home-furnishings store took a chance on a much bigger space, and the Bed Bath & Beyond chain was born.
The success of Miller’s outlet malls with their “category killer” stores was only part of his game plan. While an urban-planning student at George Washington University, Miller had created a project called Georgetown USA. Although the land along the Potomac River was an industrial backwater, it took Miller 23 years to develop Washington Harbour.
Since 1994, the Mills Corporation, an investment trust, has owned and managed the nationwide network of value megamalls Miller built. Now he is concentrating on mixed-use projects like the mall at Gallery Place in DC. “I’m doing them because I love the city,” Miller says. He’s talking about development around the new baseball stadium, too, to provide more opportunities for DC residents.
“You have to build people as well as buildings,” he says.
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