National Development Advisors, Inc. is a multidisciplinary team of experienced development professionals who are proven leaders in creating value through the redevelopment and repositioning of underperforming and opportunistic real estate assets.
Founded in 2012 by Paul D’Arelli, National Development Advisors provided development advisory services to Sears Holdings Corporation for three years, working nationally across the then-owned 900+ Sears and K-Mart portfolio to identify and commence development opportunities that could create value with the company’s real estate. During that time, project commencements by National Development Advisors on behalf of Sears Holdings included conceptualizing and orchestrating the design and entitlement submittal for the redevelopment of the 12.3-acre Sears site as the Esplanade at Aventura, an open-air village adjacent to the top performing mall.
National Development Advisors’ work was instrumental in informing the portfolio that spanned 49 states that was sold out of Sears Holdings into new publicly-traded Seritage Growth Properties (NYSE: SRG) in 2015. Given their extensive portfolio knowledge, the National Development Advisors team members were asked to join Seritage at company inception, with Paul D’Arelli joining the Management Team as the Company’s first Senior Vice President of Development to lead activities across the 235-property portfolio while managing the Florida office.
After five years during which National Development Advisors team members participated in and led key Seritage projects around the country, the market disruption from Covid-19 made it an ideal time to evaluate new opportunities as it became apparent that there would be an increasing number of challenged malls and department stores in need of transition. The result was a decision to put the band back together under the National Development Advisors brand and include some additional team members to establish a nimble highly-experienced redevelopment strike team with depth and credentials in planning, design and civil engineering; legal and entitlement; and development, construction and leasing.
The National Development Advisors team has been on the forefront of mall and shopping center transformation and worked together on projects ranging from downsizing an operating department store and reletting the excess space to retail and entertainment tenants, to total anchor box repurposing for entertainment, F&B, fitness, retail and office users, to complete scrapes and redevelopments. In addition to the Seritage-related work, team members have been involved in a myriad of large-scale projects from concept to delivery, including ground up grocery anchored shopping centers, hotel, office and industrial developments, and extensive residential and large-scale mixed-use development.
National Development Advisors believes experience matters. With time of the essence for mall retail players today, the company’s mission is to use their unique depth of proven experience to efficiently deliver meaningful results to preserve and create value for clients anywhere nationally in this time of retail transformation and beyond. In addition to third-party consulting, National Development Advisors also undertakes it owns select development activities.
