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From the window of her office, Loretta H. Cockrum can watch her company’s new building go up across the street.
“I was a tenant at 600 Brickell for 20 years before we purchased the property to build Brickell Financial Centre,” says the founder and CEO of Foram Group. Throughout those years, Cockrum watch Brickell and downtown Miami grow up around her. That expansion directly contributed to her latest development project: an energy efficient sky-scraper and 30,000-square-foot plaza.
“We could not have done this type of project even five years ago, because the condominiums would not have been there. It is important that there are people in the neighborhood to make this project successful,” she says. “Otherwise we would just have a big, open, empty plaza and that would be useless,” she says.
Foram’s much-anticipated Brickell Financial Centre broke ground last April. The first phase, scheduled for completion in early 2010, is a 40-story building with retail, parking, Class-A office space and the public plaza. The second phase currently encompasses a 300-room hotel, office space and retail in a 68-story building.
Phase two could be altered to meet demand, says Cockrum, noting that the original plans included 130 residential units. “It’s hard to sit here today and say we are going to build more condominiums on Brickell,” she says. Phase two is slated for completion in 2015.
Cockrum had two main requirements for Brickell Financial Centre: the public plaza and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certifications. In 2006, it became the first commercial building in South Florida with pre-certified silver accreditation from the U.S. Green Building Council. That means the development site, design, resources and materials create a sustainable, energy and water efficient structure that complies with USGBC criteria.
“At that time, practically no one had really heard of green building,” say Cockrum. “It was something that Mayor Manny Diaz was just beginning to promote and push, but I don’t think it was broadly understood.”
Brickell Financial Centre’s huge public plaza, she envisions, will become Miami’s version of New York’s Rockefeller Center – iconic, interesting and instrumental to city life. It could become a venue for major international events like the South Beach Wine and Food Festival and Are Basel, she notes, and will be decked out to reflect major holidays.
“I wanted to do something like that for Miami, and to be honest it’s my legacy.” That is very much keeping with one of Foram Group’s key goals: stewardship. “This is one of the words that we have always used to describe our ownership and management practices. It means being responsible not just for your own property, but for your property in the context of the neighborhood, whether that’s a farm in the middle of Iowa or a building in the middle of the city.”
Born in Miami, and raised in Jacksonville, Cockrum says real estate was not among her future plans when she attended West Liberty College in West Virginia. “My mother always said it’s good to have something to fall back on, so I don’t know how I ended up with a degree in dental hygiene.” She worked as a flight attendant for a couple of years after graduation, eventually settling in Atlanta with a husband and children.
When she started Foram Group in 1978, she provided fiduciary real estate services to high net worth clients in the Southeastern United States. She was in her mid 30s and “all by myself, with no employees. I was the bookkeeper and the salesman.” She recalls getting up at 3 a.m. to drive to properties she managed some 150 miles from home in order to meet with clients, go over management plans, “and then drive back into Atlanta by 3 p.m. in time to pick up my kids from school.” An initial focus on farm, ranch and timber properties subsequently expanded to include construction management and real estate brokerage.
Looking back at her accomplishments, Cockrum says she views success not in terms of financial growth, but in terms of perseverance and determination.