“We need to get ahead of that curve, the Rio Grande Valley is resilient, we overcome the challenges,” – Roger Stolley
By Roberto Hugo Gonzalez
As originally published by Texas Border Business newsprint edition March 2018
The real estate world is an exciting industry; you find realtors of all calibers. Most of them eager to serve their clients and make it a successful day. Today, Texas Border Business had the opportunity to talk to one of them, particularly, because he brings a set of skills, that few in the industry have all together.
He is Roger Stolley, a realtor with NAI Rio Grande Valley and Commercial Real Estate company. According to Roger, they are focused on commercial real estate brokerage, consulting, development and syndication firm serving the Rio Grande Valley from their base in McAllen, Texas. He said, “Our mission is to transform real estate opportunities into profits for owners, users, and investors.”
Roger is a well-rounded professional in his field, he sells, searches for properties for clients, leases retail, commercial and industrial buildings. He also has management experience. However, that’s one thing he does not do anymore.
As a professional of his caliber, he managed one of the largest and most successful shopping centers in south Texas for nineteen years. Yes, we are talking about La Plaza Mall, McAllen’s pride and tax revenue producer. Roger took over the management of La Plaza Mall in 1986, precisely ten years after it was inaugurated. Some of you remember that the opening of La Plaza Mall changed the face of McAllen and gave the region an experience to shop in an enclosed mall.
Even today, with multiple stores that compete directly, the mall continues to be a fabulous place to shop, especially with the multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion just recently done.
To give an ample perspective on who Roger Stolley is we have to go back to when he was 22, sitting in the back of an end-loader, putting a water system for the city where he lived. His hometown is Lake Okoboji, Iowa, a summer lake resort. At that time, he was working in heavy equipment and doing construction jobs. A friend of his approached him and said, “I’m looking for somebody to help me renovate, I want to make that into a shopping center.”
His friend’s family owned the Marina and had an old dance hall that had been converted into boat storage on the lake. As Roger recollects his thoughts, he said, “We took this old turn-of-the-century dance hall; we converted the dance floor to shops, and then we leased all the shops, and we did the construction. It was a beautiful building on the lake, part of it was built in 1876, and the rest of it in 1925.” To top it off, they added a bar, a restaurant, and a dock for the summer. “It was a small town, but a popular big summer resort. And that’s how it started,” he told Texas Border Business in Exclusivity.
Now we know that Roger’s first experience with leasing came from the ground up. After ten years of doing it every summer, he asked himself if this could be done full time. So, he applied with a company called General Growth, one of the largest developers in the United States based out of Des Moines, Iowa and he was hired. He went through training and placed in North Grand Mall in Ames, Iowa.
He said that Ames is the home for Iowa State University, similar to Texas A&M in College Station. The mall was the only one in town. That’s how he started in regional shopping malls.
But when you work with large entities, sometimes you get traded, and that’s what happened to him. Roger was traded to Rouse Company out of Columbia, Maryland. He said that James Rouse, the founder, was considered the father of urban renewal projects around the country. “Anybody that studied city planning knows that James Rouse was kind of a guru in the 60s and 70s,” he said.
After working several years for Rouse, he was transferred to Marshalltown, Iowa and eventually with Melvin Simon and Associates when they came looking for executives. “The day I interviewed, we had 25 below zero weather that winter, and I said, ‘It’s time to leave Iowa. I’m going south,” he said.
“My wife and I took off to Lafayette, Louisiana and I ran the mall there for a couple of years, but then I was offered a transfer by Simon Primary Group to La Plaza Mall, and that was about December of 1986.”
When he was managing La Plaza, he faced great success as well as economic downturns, but always business came back stronger. Roger oversaw essential events like the arrival of Dillard’s, and when Jones & Jones left the space, it opened an opportunity to become Macy’s. The presence of these two stores was and still is essential for the mall but also for McAllen and the region. They are super anchors.
Between 1999 and 2000 the mall renovated to which Roger says, “It was a lot of fun, I mean, I enjoyed that time. We opened up a new area, and the economy was booming, everything was great.” At that point in his professional career, having been in mall management since the 70s, he said to himself, “I think I’ve had enough of corporate America, I just decided I wanted to do something different.”
With his background and experience, opportunities for him were not a problem. In 2005, Mike Blum the managing partner for NAI-RGV invited him to be part of that business, he obtained his real estate license and became part of NAI.
Giving back to his community is an integral part of his life. He has been a member of the McAllen Rotary Club for the last 25 years. He has also served as a McAllen Chamber greeter and participated as a board member of the chamber for two terms.
What he loves about his business is to serve his clients, to answer their questions wisely, to save them money, and to help them acquire what they want in their real estate needs. “Initially when Melvin Simon and Associates were searching for a manager for La Plaza Mall, most executives opted not to take the job. They didn’t know where McAllen was,” Roger said. “When I looked at the map, the only city showing in bold letters was Brownsville.” He felt like it was a great opportunity and accepted the job. He and his wife, Deborah, packed up and moved to McAllen.
“In Lafayette, Louisiana I was dealing with French and Cajuns, and I loved it there, the culture and the food.” He continued, “The similarities between there and here is that both are big on family values and the food is also great and unique.” But most important for him is that he was going to continue to be in a warm weather area.
When you met your wife, was it love at first sight? “I was attracted to her pretty early on, and we started dating. We were both single and never been married, we were in our 30s, and both interested in our careers. Things progressed very quickly, yes, so it was.”
Roger said that it’s clear that the Rio Grande Valley is changing on many levels. “I think it’s important that we look to the future and embrace some of those changes.” He continued, “For instance, Mexican shoppers are not coming as often and not spending as much money as they used to, but that could change, and they could come back.”
He foresees lots of challenges ahead, and to that he says, “We need to get ahead of that curve, the Rio Grande Valley is resilient, we overcome the challenges,” he finalized.
