Rebecca Root Email & Phone Number

Greater Philadelphia Area

Responsible for managing both Spencer Gifts and Spirit Halloween real estate assets including overseeing the lease processing staff and portfolio analyst. IRR review, analysis of individual deals, oversight of Temporary Leasing and developing strategy for Landlord negotiations and prospective real estate sites. Manages Real Estate weekly and monthly reporting to guide and understand the business and drive strategy.• Run IRR on all deals and prepare base files for IRR’s and store P&L• Key Date Management and “Light Renewals”• Oversee Temporary Leasing• Landlord meeting organization and preparation/deal comparison on renewals and new stores• Manage Real Estate reporting weekly and monthly (battery of directional and informational summaries will be created to help guide and understand the business)• Create and maintain key landlord history and provide direction in advance of portfolio meeting• Re-engineer existing process in effort to streamline and distribute lease processing workload more effectively and efficiently.

Directed lease-related critical dates, such as lease expirations, renewal notifications, and lease terminations for Fashion Bug, Lane Bryant, Catherine’s, and Outlet brands to ensure appropriate lease action was taken to maximize EBITDA potential for each brand’s portfolio. Prepared weekly deal packages for real estate committee review and approval, and communicated store closings to various company functions.• Negotiated additional renewal options and renegotiated existing renewal options at favorable rents for existing locations. Negotiated extensions of lease expirations and rent reductions, resulting in $126M savings for leases of underperforming locations.• Completed co-tenancy and other women’s wear reviews for all shopping centers and communicated findings to vice presidents of real estate finance, legal, deal makers, and brands. To date, findings have resulted in $5M savings. • Maintained and created reports to ensure proper delegation and monitoring of critical date-related workflow. Used tools that included Microsoft Excel, Real Estate Manager (REM), Business Objects, and Store Lifecycle Manager (SLM).• Collaborated with deal makers on lease-related questions and provided information and support to deal makers as requested, related to critical date process.

Generated new leads and concepts for assigned centers, negotiated and closed deals, and maintained relationships with existing accounts. Worked closely with existing accounts to expand retail operations to additional centers within company portfolio.• Held responsibility for enhancing value of assigned centers through leasing of temporary space to meet income budgets and goals on center-by-center basis. Increased revenue 38% in 2006.• Attended ICSC Temporary Tenant and SPREE conferences to generate new customer sales and negotiate existing customer sales.• Kept abreast of current competitive specialty leasing trends in industry and canvassed areas of all assigned centers.• Ensured specialty leasing retailers adhered to company operating procedures and visual guidelines. • Collaborated with assigned centers on rent collections, visual merchandising, and problem tenants.• Presented and clearly communicated all deals and leasing activity to general manager, marketing manager, specialty leasing coordinator, and regional vice president of business development.• Monitored year-to-date leasing progress, identified areas of opportunity, identified additional areas of income generation, and developed leasing solutions with vice president of business development.

Responsible for short term leasing of carts, kiosks, and temporary inline stores of assigned centers to ensure income budgets and goals were met on center-by-center basis. Generated new leads and concepts for assigned centers, negotiated and closed deals, and maintained relationships with existing merchants. • Kept abreast of current competitive specialty leasing trends in industry and canvassed areas of all assigned centers.• Ensured that all specialty leasing retailers were adhering to company operating procedures and visual guidelines.

Liaised with all real estate functions, store design/construction, and brands relative to construction projects and store closings. Coordinated follow-up activity and issued appropriate resolution to maintain targeted store opening schedules for new stores, remodels, and relocations, focused on minimizing controllable costs. Developed relationships with mall specialty leasing representatives to negotiate deals for all reconstruction projects that required temporary spaces. Developed and improved existing process/reporting tools for tracking and monitoring all project development activities. • Supported deal-making group by assisting real estate vice president with special projects. • Worked closely with other department and center functions in team atmosphere to establish major real estate initiatives and goals. • Completed special projects, such as key competitor benchmarking studies, industry trend analysis, post-audit analysis, occupancy cost matrix targets, CapEx strategy analysis, deal forecast reporting, and developer portfolio reviews.• Streamlined store closing process using Seagate Crystal to provide clear communication flow between all real estate functions, center functions, store design/construction, and brands to ensure accurate closing and redeployment timelines.• Developed real estate pipeline process using Microsoft Excel VBA to enable remote deal makers to more efficiently and effectively submit deals via email in .pdf format to Columbus corporate office and track respective productivity.

• Abstracted tenant leases, reconciled receivables, computed overage rent payments and prepared annual recovery summaries for common area maintenance, insurance and taxes. Assisted tenants with a variety of billing inquiries. • Analyzed recovery ratios for mall capital improvements.• Resolved outstanding receivables in a team effort with tenants, attorneys and collection representatives. • Automated various daily and monthly reports using Microsoft Excel VBA to speed up the administrative process. • Developed a database in Microsoft Access which interacted with our MRI system that enabled us to collectively house the outstanding tenant receivables in an effort to create a condensed monthly report which would allow us to analyze outstanding balances and resolve issues as a whole as a team.

• Analyzed monthly variance in marketing income, recovery income, late fee income, base and overage rent income, and bad debt expense in order to prepare quarterly income statement.• Reconciled escrow and mall depository accounts. Researched deposit discrepancies with mall general managers and marketing assistants. Prepared journal entries and cash flow statements.• Automated escrow and mall depository account schedules using Microsoft Excel VBA to speed up the administrative process.

• Acted as an analytical and technical liaison between home office and store management. Assisted store management with company policy and procedures as well as POS equipment problems. • Coordinated all parts and service for our IBM equipment in the field which involved troubleshooting to resolve minor malfunctions with store cash registers and computers, and also included POS installation for all new stores. • Designed a training manual that detailed troubleshooting procedures for common equipment malfunctions.

• Reconciled store depository accounts and researched discrepancies with store managers and bank representatives, as well as escalated issues to store security. • Prepared journal entries, calculated projections, and prepared profit/loss statements. • Developed a database in Microsoft Access to reconcile sales journal discrepancies and also created a report to analyze reoccurring deposit discrepancies from the bank reconciliation system.

• Reconciled various accounts: payroll, payables, tax, home office and store cash, and corporate funding on a monthly basis. • Maintained daily store automated clearinghouse process and prepared weekly bounce back analysis. • Prepared weekly deposits for cash entering the home office, as well as escalated issues to home office security. • Prepared journal entries, calculated projections, prepared profit/loss statements, prepared seasonal budgets, and maintained the daily sales flash report.