About
Village Solutions Company is a professional collaboration of real estate strategists with a single mined vision of creating world class developments with our expert marketplace crafting skills. We research, plan, analyze, estimate, project, market, promote and sell.
We build and enhance real estate values for our clients through a deep knowledge of real estate filtered through the eyes of the consumer, retailers, contemporary culture and the global economy.
We are a creative company, yet pragmatic and deliberate. We collect knowledge, best practices and ideas gained from our association with major projects from around the world and then filter, cross-pollinate and curate.
Our team is made of the real estate professionals with backgrounds in anthropology, architecture, construction, design, entertainment, finance; land planning, marketing and retail. As a team we create industry leading retail strategies and communicate through rich visual graphics and illustrations, economic models and data points, photographs and the well spoken and written word.
Philosophy
Our primary objective is to enhance real estate values while restoring true community in the marketplace. We provide or manage and direct all necessary skills, services and knowledge required to create leading mixed-use developments with retail, restaurants, and entertainment as a primary focus.
Process
We provide or manage and direct all necessary skills, services and knowledge required to create leading mixed-use districts and developments with retail, restaurants, and entertainment as a primary focus.
Our process of marketplace crafting places Village Solutions Company in the role of curator, orchestrator and coach. In this capacity we integrate our core skills with the talents of highly creative individuals and firms. This process allows us to unbundle the services of major collaborating firms and to reassemble a highly diverse group with the absolute best talents to answers the needs of an assignment.
Experience
Village Solutions Company has a clear view of the marketplace. We have years of experience with cutting edge developments and marketplaces with the most innovative retailers in the world. In total we have created plans for 117 real estate developments; created the vision and concepting of dozens of projects; and directed the leasing of over 10,000,000 square feet.
Examples include bringing the first IKEA in the United States; the first redevelopment of a U.S. regional mall into an off-price center; creating retail strategies for Four Season and Ritz Carlton luxury hotels and resorts; planning retail for the Sears Tower in Chicago; creating the sponsor villages for the1996 Atlanta Olympic Games; creating the original retail plan for the new town of Kentlands; developing events for Nike; and leading the retail planning process for the redevelopment of Gulfstream Park in Miami, and New York's Coney Island.
History
We have a complete and detailed knowledge of the commercial real estate industry based on years of hands-on experience. We have spent our careers analyzing and studying consumer behavior and crafting multiple store marketplaces in districts and projects to answer their needs and have developed the skills to attract and develop the uses necessary to answer those needs.
In 1983, Rick Hill, founder of the company, resigned his position as Group Manager of several malls with The Rouse Company to form J. Richard Hill & Company, later named Hill Partners Inc. The firm primarily managed and redeveloped specialty retail properties for institutional owners nationwide. Between 1983 and 2000 the company redeveloped 33 shopping centers, managed well over $100,000,000 of capital improvements and leased several million square feet of retail space.
In 2001, the company was renamed Village Solutions Company and the property management division of the company was sold to focus resources solely on value creation as opposed to asset management. In 2002, Village Solutions was relocated to Anchorage, Kentucky, the only equestrian village designed by the firm of Olmsted & Olmsted in the early 1900s following the principals of its founder, Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park.