Mana 362

Cadillac Development, sharing its name with the French explorer, was founded in 1953 by three friends; Eph Diamond, Joseph Berman and Jack Kamin in Toronto, Ontario. They began their journey by building high rise apartment buildings, supplying housing to the many baby boomers, with an innovated twist. They added resort-like luxuries such as health club facilities in the building and trees and landscaping on the outside. 1 

Fairview Corporation was part of one of Canada’s most successful business dynasties, Cemp Investments Ltd. They designed many Canadian office buildings, and often collaborated with Cadillac Development. Cadillac built shopping centers for Fairview and they were both very interested in working together to create more development. On a specific occasion, they joined forces to purchase a firm called Canadian Equity and Development Co.. Cadillac was interested in building houses although Fairview wanted to build shopping centers. Then, finally in 1974 the two companies merged creating the real estate powerhouse Cadillac Fairview.1 

Revenue generated from rental properties were negatively impacted across the industry because of a dramatic increase in interest rates during the 1980s recession. This lead Cadillac Fairview in deciding to sell the Land and Housing division from their company during the years 1982-1985. In 1987, JMB Realty Corp., a Chicago-based real estate developer, bought all the outstanding shares of the CF company for 2.6 billion dollars. While Cadillac Fairview were focusing on their development in commercial real estate, they experienced a huge loss in cash flow and asset values due to the recession that hit North America in the 1990s. In 1995, under the new vision of stabilizing from the recessions; a considerable amount of capital was endowed in the company by an external group of investors. They managed to hire a new management team sharing the same vision and values that led them to a public raise of 304 million dollars. On the road to success, the executive team of CF setup a plan to become the first choice for real estate investment and achieved that by becoming the dominant retail franchise in Canada. Since 1996, their focus was mainly on the continuous growth of the company; externally through strategic acquisitions and development and internally through innovative leasing and property management.1

Today, Cadillac Fairview is known for being one of the largest real estate organizations in North America with a little over 2000 employees2. In addition, they are known for their services offered in several shopping centers such as CF Fairview Pointe Claire, CF Carrefour Laval, CF Galeries d’Anjou and much more across Canada.3 The job we are analyzing is the Guest Service Center – Service Representative. This service is offered in certain malls in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, British Colombia, Alberta, Manitoba, and New Brunswick. There is a minimum number of 10 employees per center and they offer strollers rental, shopping carts, wheelchairs & walkers, gift bags, coat check and many more4. During our interviews, we were informed that employees were stable and the turnover rate was very low. In terms of the training process, it is essential that all newly hired start by taking a tour of the shopping center. They are shown the storage and where the administration and securities are. They are required to read the Training Manual as well as the gift cards Policy Manual. On their second day, they are trained on the stroller cash and interact with the clients with the help of their coworkers. They learn about each items offered by the company in terms of prices and how to fill out the forms. Their main tasks are the stroller cash, answering phones, stock the counters and fulfilling the client needs. Once the learning process is completed, they then begin their training in selling gift carts. When everything is mastered including the software use, the next step is learning how to deal with challenging situations they could encounter within the job. A few weeks in, they are then able to work on their own for a short periods of time until they’re capable in handling more unique situations such as gift cards losses, transfers, and other issues the customer may encounter.