5 Questions With Jaime Sturgis of Native Realty

Jaime Sturgis is founder and CEO of Native Realty, a Fort Lauderdale-based firm with 35 brokers.

While Sturgis has built a company that includes a residential real estate brokerage, much of his focus is on infill projects in blighted neighborhoods, first in Maimi’s Wynwood district and more recently in Fort Lauderdale submarkets such as Flagler Village and Studio Village.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

Commercial Observer: How did you develop an interest in urban redevelopment projects?

Jaime Sturgis: I was born and raised in South Florida, which is where the name Native Realty came from. When I graduated from Florida State University and I moved back down, all my friends were moving elsewhere. They were going to Los Angeles or New York. I asked myself why, and it really came down to culture. A lot of those people didn’t necessarily want to move across the country. If these neighborhoods were available then, maybe they would have moved to South Florida instead.

I cut my teeth down in Wynwood about 15 years ago. You couldn’t really give away property down there. I’ve gone on to curate properties in the urban core and emerging neighborhoods throughout my career. Now there are a lot of tenants contacting us from across the U.S. who want to be down here.

You often use words like ‘curating’ and ‘placemaking,’ which makes you sound more like an urbanist than a commercial real estate broker.

If somebody wants to come in and put a CVS on Main and Main, anyone can do that. I don’t want to say there’s no skill or effort involved, but to us, that’s boring. We’re more focused on finding the artisanal coffee maker, or microbrewer, or next award-winning restaurant, and really improving where we live, work and play. It’s a little bit self-serving, but we’re also the customer. We live, work and play here.

What are some up-and-coming neighborhoods you’re looking at now?

Studio City in Fort Lauderdale is just starting to get going. It’s 13th Street just north of Flagler Village. Sistrunk in Fort Lauderdale is starting to become a cool area. We’re doing some ground-floor mixed-use projects over there, and you have 1,000 residential units coming on.

Those areas are turning a corner, but other pockets of South Florida have been trying to redevelop for decades. What separates the success stories from the neighborhoods that aren’t making progress?

Getting everyone to row in the same direction is very important, as simple as that sounds. When we went into Flagler Village, I got to know every single property owner and their needs and wants. Same thing with Studio City. We went in and were able to represent all the owners and have a cohesive message. When you have super-fractured neighborhoods, and shareholders who are unwilling to all row in the same direction, that’s when areas stay blighted. There’s a risk-reward relationship, and you have to spend money to make money.

Focusing on these long-term redevelopment projects seems like both a promising opportunity and a really difficult way to build a business.

It’s definitely not the path of least resistance. But it’s the passion.

Jeff Ostrowski can be reached at jostrowski@commercialobserver.com.