Gordon Horsman continues to pursue a demanding career in real estate and financial services.
Cadillac Fairview
Immediately following Mr. Horsman’s graduation from UBC with degrees in Applied Science (Civil Engineering) and a Master of Business Administration, he moved to Toronto to take a development position with Urban Group of Cadillac Fairview (then Fairview Corporation). For the next eight years Gordon was involved with the development of Toronto Eaton Centre, one of North America’s largest downtown mixed-use projects. After three years at the firm Mr. Horsman was appointed Assistant General Manager, Development of the first phase of that development, then took on the position of General Manager, Development of the second phase of Eaton Center.
Cadillac Fairview remains one of North America’s largest developers and landlords, owning some 73 properties encompassing 50 million square feet. Cadillac Fairview is owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
Toronto Eaton Centre
The first phase of Eaton Centre opened in 1977, and was a co-venture of Cadillac Fairview, Toronto Dominion Bank and The T. Eaton Company. The scale and much of the interior design was based on The Galleria of Milan. The property includes space for a major department store, three office buildings, and a three-level shopping mall with some 220 stores and restaurants. This property is considered “the busiest shopping center in North America”. The design architect for Eaton Centre was Eberhard Zeidler.
California Plaza
During the completion of the second phase of Eaton Centre, Mr. Horsman was promoted to Senior Vice President, Urban Development Group. His was responsible to initiate large scale downtown redevelopments in the major cities of Canada, and the major West Coast cities of the United States. A major project, called California Plaza in Los Angeles, was brought to the company by two Los Angeles developers.
Cadillac Fairview became the lead General Partner for a partnership called Bunker Hill Associates. A number of years later Cadillac Fairview sold its interest in California Plaza to others in order to finance a share buyback.
California Plaza includes two office buildings, the MOCA (Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art), the Los Angeles Omni Hotel and housing. The project was designed by the late Arthur Erikson, one of Canada’s leading architects.
During the year prior to leaving Cadillac Fairview to form his own company, Mr. Horsman worked with other executives at Cadillac Fairview, and with the Erickson design team, to further the design concepts and functionality of the project.
Vancouver Partnerships
Mr. Horsman returned to Vancouver to become a partner in a firm which had been acquiring multi-family projects in the US. Over the next ten years that company, The Strand Group, acquired some 4,000 residential units. During that same period Mr. Horsman built approximately 600 multi-family suites in the Vancouver area on behalf of the company.
Pan Pacific Development Corporation
While at the above-noted company, Mr. Horsman and two other partners recruited Kenneth Bream to join in the founding of Pan Pacific Development Corporation. Mr. Bream had been the Executive Vice President of Cadillac Fairview, leading the Urban Development Group, the same unit Gordon was part of in Toronto. Mr. Bream had just completed Canada Place in Vancouver, a Federal Government project which included a new cruise ship facility, hotel and convention center.
Over seven years Pan Pacific completed 16 grocery-store-anchored shopping centers, mostly in the US. The company had offices in Vancouver, Seattle and San Diego. Ken Bream was the Chairman of the Company, and Gordon Horsman was the President and CEO.
Pan Pacific merged with Revenue Properties, a Toronto-based public company which also owned many grocery-store-anchored shopping centers. The merged corporate entity converted into a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and in turn merged, in a $3 billion transaction, with Kimco Properties. Kimco is an $11 billion enterprise, and is publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Some of the Pan Pacific properties which were developed under Mr. Horsman’s guidance are shown below.
City Square, Vancouver – above
Loma Square, San Diego – below
Sahara Pavilion North, Las Vegas – middle
Chino Hills Marketplace, Chino CA – at bottom
Vancouver Co-ventures
Over a period of 15 years Westone Capital was a co-venture partner with The Bastion Group, undertaking residential condominium projects in Vancouver. Westone was an equity partner and development partner in some 10 projects, some of which are shown below. The three projects below were designed by James Hancock.
Qtrade Investor
While undertaking real estate projects at Westone Capital, two entrepreneurs approached Mr. Horsman with the idea of creating, from scratch, an online securities platform to compete with the on-line broker subsidiaries of the big five chartered banks in Canada.
Over a period of four months, it was determined that to make this venture a success, Qtrade would need a captive source of customers, rather than compete for each customer on an individual basis, since most were already customers of the big banks. Mr. Horsman became a co-founder of Qtrade and developed a business plan which focused on becoming a white-label securities platform for the 230 Credit Unions in Canada. Notwithstanding that the Credit Unions were in the beginning stages of creating their own platform, Qtrade’s platform was superior which allowed it to enter into contracts with dozen of such financial institutions. Over nine years Qtrade grew to become the largest provider of such financial service to the Canadian Credit Unions, and was approached by the Desjardins Group to consider a merger.
Qtrade completed a merger with the $422 billion Desjardins Group at a valuation near $200 million. Desjardins now reports that Qtrade has Assets Under Management (AUM) of more than $11 billion.