>> My name is Art Fuccillo and I am a Real Estate Developer in Washington, DC.
So, there's a series of projects that I've worked on, literally looking at the opportunity
and saying, I can put a Walgreens on that corner, you know, just give me 5 minutes
and give me a phone and I'm going to go make it happen.
And that's how developers really do.
Developers are creative people by in large.
They see an opportunity, they see a need probably before the opportunity,
and that need then they go after and they create the opportunity whether it be office or retail
or industrial or hotel or apartments.
So, my job everyday really from in the 80's, in the early 80's was
to make sure that the deal closed.
It was my responsibility to negotiate the best deal on behalf of the company
that I could relative to changes that that tenant wanted.
So, really from 1987 really to this day, my responsibility shifted
from the heavy document work to sort of vice president in charge of creativity.
It was my job to go out and find opportunities that were not part of this organization,
had not been in land that we owned, and create opportunities for the company to grow.
So, if I look at a field and I decide that I like that to be a city and like there
to be office buildings and retail and a hotel and a plaza.
There are many components to that.
I take a pencil to a paper and I say where are my dominant views?
Where are people going to see?
What do I want them to see?
When they enter the quote on quote space, or they enter the place, have I created a sense
of place, have a created an environment that people go --
wow, I understand this, I appreciate this, I can relate to this, I am entertained by it,
it's pleasing to me, it's a plaza, there are people sitting outside on tables and chairs
with umbrellas and there's a restaurant, and there's somebody playing music,
and there's a fountain in the middle, in the backdrop there's an office building,
and here's where the residential people live and they walk at night.
And, there's things that you've created, so there's an enormous amount of creativity,
enormous amount of creativity that goes into Real Estate Development.
Really nothing is 9 to 5.
If you think you're going to work 9 to 5, then you're fooling yourself.
You really work till your work is done or you work until you feel that you're satisfied,
that you've put in a hard day's work and you've accomplished something.
Even when I'm on vacation or away, my Blackberry or my iPhone now is working.
I'm checking my computers, I mean it's part of who I am.
It's my life.