When Blimpie, the submarine sandwich franchise, opens a new shop at East 224th Street and Meridian Avenue in Graham, I can say I witnessed the genesis of the idea.
The International Council of Shopping Centers annual conference starts in Sin City on Sunday. But the dealmakers didn’t wait that long to start talking. They didn’t even wait until they arrived here where an expected 44,000 developers, commercial real estate brokers, retailers and restaurateurs meet in the city’s largest conference of the year.
At 6:45 a.m. Saturday at SeaTac Airport’s gate D11, I waited for an Alaska Airlines flight. I bumped into Jeff Lyon, president and CEO of the real estate brokerage GVA Kidder Matthews, and Bob Levin, manager of the City of Tacoma’s Private Capital Division. As we chatted about each of our conference plans, a large man sitting in the waiting area stood up. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I couldn’t help overhearing.”
The man was David Hepner, the Pacific Northwest area developer for Blimpie. He was on his way to the Las Vegas conference to talk with brokers about his company’s big push to site multiple Blimpie franchises from Olympia to the Canadian border.
Lyon immediately suggested some retail pads under development at one of the main intersections in Graham and told Hepner he’d provide his contact information to one of the GVA Kidder Matthews brokers.