Former child actor Bill Gerrity used acting money to pay for private high school, a college education and to launch a real estate business. He is president of GMS Realty, owner of Seaport Village. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

Bill Gerrity walks out onto a pier fronting Seaport Village with two laundered shirts over his shoulder. Does the photographer have a preference, he asks? What a pro. The president of GMS Realty, which owns Seaport and is in line to double the waterfront retailer’s size with a $42 million expansion into the Old Police Headquarters building, learned long ago about working before the camera. A child actor, his commercial work in the 1960s included a Spaghetti-O’s commercial he landed by accident when the chosen boy failed to show and where Gerrity lip synched the famous “Uh-oh-Spaghetti-O’s” jingle. His big silver screen appearance was in 1968’s “Psych-Out,” a film on hippies featuring Dean Stockwell, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern and Jack Nicholson. At imdb.com, Gerrity gets credit as “Little Boy.”

The acting money paid his way to private high school (Harvard, now Harvard-Westlake in North Hollywood), bought him a car, paid for college and was the original capital for his real estate business.

While Gerrity, 50, didn’t pursue a career in Hollywood, he did in baseball. The right handed pitcher attended several colleges to play the sport, graduating from UCLA with a degree in history. He was good enough to make the minor leagues with the Minnesota Twins and play semi-pro in Mexico and other independent teams, but that was that. So where’s a handsome man with an athlete’s body to turn? Commercial real estate, of course, where size, looks and confidence do matter.

He came to San Diego in 1979 to play for the Ponys of Tijuana, a team in La Liga Norte de Sonora. After a brief stint in the Minnesota Twins organization, in 1980 he joined John Burnham & Co. and became a commercial real estate broker.

But Gerrity wanted more than the glow of nailing a deal. Soon he was a partner in small office development and custom home projects. He later settled on commercial construction. “A career in commercial development offered the chance for more creativity and to make more of an impact as a small developer,” he says.

By the early 1990s, Gerrity was focused on retail development and found opportunity with neighborhood shopping centers that were being ignored by the larger retail builders. “This was an area of real estate where I could make an impression and add value both for the investors and the local community,” he says. At the time, retail centers anchored by grocery stores were owned by small companies that became profitable for their owners but then stopped growing. Unlike their counterparts in the commercial industry, these owner/operators eschewed the corporate structure required to attract the necessary institutional investors.

California’s descent into a half-decade economic funk in the early 1990s scared off large investors but gave Gerrity an opportunity. With friends and family, he started investing in retail property, figuring it would storm back in value once the economy improved. He also sought out institutional sources interested in investing statewide.

In 1996, Gerrity and Morgan Stanley combined to form GMS (a play on their initials) Realty, a company that remains based in Carlsbad. Since then, GMS has acquired and sold more than 65 properties in transactions valued at more than $1.2 billion. The portfolio includes 19 properties in the Western United States. Its local holdings are Seaport, Tierrasanta Town Center and Lemon Grove Plaza.

Gary Palmer, a managing principal with Westbrook Partners’ San Francisco office, was the Morgan Stanley investment banker who put together the 1996 deal with Gerrity.

“We were looking for a partner with whom we could establish a retail acquisition platform,” Palmer says. “We talked with a bunch of folks and were very impressed with Bill from the start. He clearly brought the most thoughtful approach to the business and had a very solid understanding of what we, as capital partners, were looking for.”

Gerrity also wins praise for his vision.

“He is genuinely a leader,” Palmer says. “Real estate people are mostly deal people. They like to do deals and then move on. But he builds an enterprise and grows an enterprise and knows how to make it evolve. He knows how to inspire people. That is what a leader does.”

Palmer continues to be in contact with Gerrity about other projects. “One of these days he will be my partner again,” he says.

New Partners, Same Goal

In 2000, Morgan Stanley’s interest was sold to Principal Enterprise Capital in a transaction GMS valued at about $300 million. Since then, the 56-employee company has done about $600 million in transactions, including acquiring the managing interest in Seaport Village in 2003.

“I was approached through a bank,” Gerrity says of the investment. “There was an opportunity to help re-capitalize the partnership. Downtown was clearly undergoing a renaissance that was, and is, going to be long-lived. We thought that Seaport Village was a unique piece of property that could become an integral part of a revitalized Downtown.”

In 2003, GMS was a finalist along with Ripley Entertainment to redevelop the site adjacent to Seaport Village in ways much more commercially intensive than what is being proposed today. It was public outrage about Ripley’s proposal for a large aquarium and a “Believe It Or Not” museum that caused San Diego Port commissioners to toss out both proposals and start again, this time seeking design proposals from international architects before entering into discussions with a developer.

Peter Q. Davis, who represented the city of San Diego on the Port Commission at that time, says Gerrity made mistakes in his approach. “He runs a good company, but boy did he come off as arrogant in his first attempt to deal with the Port,” Davis says. “I think he was being given poor advice. To his credit he backed off.”

“I can be a bit reserved on first meeting someone or in a formal presentation, which is the only context that I interacted with him,” says Gerrity of Davis’ observation. “He might have interpreted that as arrogance.” Today Davis is a public supporter of GMS’s police station project.

Outside of a few articles in trade journals, Gerrity has kept a low media profile in San Diego and the firm’s other markets. With the company’s move into specialty retail development, that likely will change. “I have not made any active effort to cultivate a public image,” he says. “I need to be more conscious of it as I pursue more high-profile projects.”

Why Seaport And OPH

Gerrity says his attraction to Seaport is obvious. “It is not an exaggeration to say Seaport Village is in one of the best locations along the coast, certainly among the most desirable urban areas along the coast,” he says.

His goal is to redevelop the adjacent police station, essentially vacant for 20 years, and integrate it into the life of the city so it is used and valued by visitors and residents alike.

“The tenancy there is targeted primarily at tourists,” Gerrity says. “But the primary draw is the bay and the setting itself. A lot of residents and locals will visit the property because it is an entrancing and delightful walk along the Embarcadero. We want to create a place where people can enjoy what it really means to be in San Diego. The water, the climate and the setting.”

The project — it could be up to 140,000 square feet in size if interior and exterior space is counted along with a separate new building for a seafood processor and fish market — faces its next big hurdle on Nov. 1 when the Port considers approving its environmental impact report and submitting it to the California Coastal Commission.

When At Home

Gerrity lives in North County. He is married and has two grown sons, a 24-year-old who is an analyst at Morgan Stanley and a 21-year-old who is a senior at Georgetown. In his spare time, he works out at the gym, but the level of his activity was greatly toned down by a hip replacement last year necessitated by a medical condition and an old athletic injury. He regularly played basketball, skied and greatly misses surfing.

He still can watch movies, however, including his own. “I do own a copy of ‘Psych-Out,’” he says. “The secret is out. Better yet I have a copy of the movie poster.” With his project in for a rambunctious hearing on Nov. 1 at the Port Commission, he may want to keep a copy out at home to ensure he gets at least a few laughs that day.