By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

Gene Beaudoin said the trick to being a good real estate consultant is to always be one step ahead of his clients. With more than 20 years in the business, he has worked on everything from retail and supermarket developments to mixed use projects, and said it’s gotten easy to predict.

“I am usually understanding where [developers] want to be before they know they want to be there,” he said.

The largest project Beaudoin has worked on: the $74 million Cabela’s shopping plaza on the Haigis Parkway in Scarborough.

“It was one of those situations where the planets just aligned,” Beuadoin said. “They wanted to be below the [I-95] and 295 split and right at a ramp. The town of Scarborough was wise enough to put the infrastructure in already so it was a great fit.”

The Cabela’s project may be the largest Beaudoin has helped come to fruition, but certainly not the first. After earning his undergraduate degree in environmental studies and a masters in urban planning from the University of Vermont, Beaudoin participated in what he called “the beginning of the environmentalist movement” in the 1970s.

“It was an activist time,” he said. “We were talking about things then that are now actually happening, like green designs and [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] standards.”

Beaudoin said he worked briefly with former presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) before beginning his career in the commercial real estate business in the 1980s. At first, Beaudoin said he worked exclusively with large, national retail chains throughout New England. 

“If you can drive to it, you can work on it,” he said. “It’s a tenant-driven business; if they say ‘We’re going to Maine,’ you have to work in Maine. Same thing if it’s Connecticut or Rhode Island.”

Eventually Beaudoin became the vice president of First National Supermarkets, Inc., where he worked on projects resembling the recent Whole Foods Market project in Portland. It wasn’t until 1994 that he broadened his list of clientele to all commercial developers, including those interested in mixed-use projects, and partnered with Barry Feldman to form FELDCO Development Corporation in New Canaan, Conn. – Beaudoin’s home state – and have been assisting clients with their commercial development proposals ever since.

“Barry does a lot behind the scenes,” Beaudoin said. “I’m usually the face of what we do but it’s definitely a team effort.” 

Beaudoin says he typically starts each day reading the local papers from the communities where FELDCO has ongoing projects before going into “crisis management mode” by midday. 

“It’s a lot of interacting with the towns and various agencies that are involved in the project,” he said. “There are always going to be concerns, whether it’s traffic or environmental impacts, but 90 percent of the time if you go and talk directly with people they quickly understand.”

Sometimes, sitting down face-to-face and going over the facts isn’t enough to gain the favor of people who are strongly aligned against a particular project, said Beaudoin, who is assisting the Scarborough Village Partners with their Scarborough Village racino proposal.

“There can be a small number of an opposition that knowingly misstate the facts,” he said. “That’s very hard to combat.”

Not every project goes as smoothly as the Cabela’s development; Beaudoin, said resident concerns and planning board requirements are often easier to satisfy than developers’ inherent desire to grow beyond their financial bounds. He said fighting this “project creep” can be frustrating but is key in moving forward.

“‘Project creep’ is when you get bigger for the wrong reasons,” he said. “Costs are always higher and things always take longer than you expect; you have to find the right project for the right sight and stick with that vision.”

When looking at the benefits a particular development can bring to a community, Beaudoin said he doesn’t necessarily subscribe to the typical views of many developers.

“In economic development 101, they would tell you high-tech, office-type development is most desirable,” he said. “On the other hand, when you have places like Maine where tourism is the number one industry, destination retail would be just as important.” 

Whatever the scale or type of project, Beaudoin said he and Feldman put their clients through a thorough screening process before agreeing to move forward with a development. He said they now only consider the cost of initial construction, but the overall viability of the project including employee wages and benefits and any special tax arrangements with local municipalities such as tax increment financing district for Cabela’s in Scarborough.

“We have to evaluate the tenant to make sure we want to be in bed with them for 25 years,” he said.

Despite the obvious financial rewards offered by the commercial development industry, Beaudoin said projects such as the Cabela’s shopping plaza offer an amount of “self-actualization.”

“We usually have a real long horizon and have to put in a lot of work, but at some moment you go to the ribbon cutting and say, ‘This is fun,’” he said.

When it comes to the future of commercial development, Beaudoin said FELDCO has managed to survive the current economic downturn by being “long-horizon guys” but he has noticed a change in the face of the industry. In addition to a lack of new construction projects and some clients “pulling in their wings,” he said 85 percent of those in the commercial real estate business in Maine have gotten out of the industry.

“The credit markets are hurting,” he said. “Nowadays you need a tenant with some real horsepower.”

Beaudoin compared the current market to those following with the interest rate hikes in the 1980s, the stock market crash of 1987 and other “hiccups” in 1991 and again in 2000, and said he believes the next 12 months will be “difficult.”

“Those times feel like today, but we could be right on the edge of this,” he said. “We just don’t know where we’re going.”