IN PROFILE: GALE WALLACE

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BY CECE NUNN | PHOTO BY MICHAEL CLINE SPENCER

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What Gale Wallace loves most about her job at Wilmingtonbased Clarendon Properties is watching a project come to fruition.

Wallace, who has worked in a variety of roles in the commercial real estate industry, serves as director of project management for Clarendon, a development firm that has specialized in hotels and dental offices in North and South Carolina.

“That’s really, I think, the most rewarding thing that I do, watching that process from start to finish, and it’s a lengthy process. It’s every bit of two years, sometimes longer,” Wallace said.

For hotels, development starts with finding a piece of property and matching it with a brand. Clarendon has mainly worked with Hilton, Marriott and Holiday Inn Express hotels, a brand that belongs to InterContinental Hotels Group, said John Sandlin, president and founder of Clarendon Properties.

The firm’s pipeline currently holds 12 hotels at various stages of development, including a Holiday Inn Express in Porters Neck that is scheduled to open at the end of March.

“We get to touch everything,” Wallace said about the intricate development process. “We deal with the brands on getting our designs approved. We purchase all of the furniture that goes into the hotel. We coordinate all the deliveries, all the installation of that. We purchase all the kitchen equipment … we take on a far greater role than some other development companies do.

“I think that’s what makes it as much fun as it is because we do get to touch a lot of different things.”

Wallace began her foray into the real estate industry by graduating with an interior design degree from Western Michigan University. She spent nearly two decades in property management in Michigan and Ohio.

After graduation, she worked for a company developing apartments in the Detroit area; then after moving to Ohio, worked for a commercial property management firm.

“I managed about a millionand-a-half square feet and between 1,000 or 2,000 apartments in many different states,” Wallace said.

Eventually, she and her family, which includes her husband and son, moved to Wilmington.

“I thought I would do property management here,” Wallace said. “But there just was not an opportunity at the time when we came here, which was late 2003.”

Instead, she worked for a residential developer before joining Clarendon Properties in 2012.

This year, Wallace is serving as president of the Cape Fear chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women. The local chapter, founded in 2010, has 65 members.

A study the national CREW organization conducts every five years most recently showed that women occupy 36.7% of the commercial real estate industry. It appears to be smaller, Wallace said, in the commercial development and commercial brokerage sectors.

For Cape Fear CREW, which is scheduled in April to hold its Awards of Excellence honoring real estate accomplishments, Wallace’s goal centers around the word “engage,” she said.

“We want to make sure that we can successfully keep our members and our partners engaged during this time,” Wallace said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic and remaining restrictions on large get-togethers.

“We try and offer virtual options but not to the extreme where that’s all that you have,” Wallace said.

In addition to Cape Fear CREW, Wallace is a member of the Institute of Real Estate Management and has maintained her certified property management designation. She also holds a North Carolina broker’s license.

Her experience with different facets of the real estate industry made her an ideal hire for Clarendon Properties, said founder Sandlin. And that hire has led to results.

“I do give Gale so much credit in its success,” Sandlin said of his company. “I can almost go so far as to say it wouldn’t have been as successful without her. … She’s one of the most competent people I’ve ever dealt with.”

That extends to professional relationships, he said.

“In our business, investors are the key to everything, and she’s loved by all the investors,” Sandlin said. “She caters to them, she treats them well, and she does a great job.”

He said he and Wallace were the only employees at the beginning of Clarendon’s journey.

“I think she welcomed the challenge. I think she embraced it from the outset, and she enhanced it and she performed very well,” Sandlin said. “I think it gave her the opportunity to really do what she wanted to do and to use her talents on many levels.”

Clarendon continues to grow, with a fifth employee added at the end of 2020.

“It truly is a success story for a small entrepreneur to come and be able to do what we do and build the reputation that we’ve been able to build amongst investment groups, amongst lenders and the hotel brands,” Wallace said. “I think that speaks volumes for and continues to allow us the ability to do what we truly enjoy doing because we’ve been able to build a strong reputation.”