Mahlon Apgar IV
Mahlon (Sandy) Apgar IV is a housing, infrastructure, and real estate consultant to global corporations and government agencies, and the founder of Apgar & Company. He has been senior advisor on real estate, urban development and public-private partnerships, and a partner of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a partner of McKinsey & Company, and a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. President Bill Clinton appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment in 1998, with global responsibility for the Army's housing, real estate and facilities. In that role, he established the Army's Residential Communities Initiative (RCI) and led negotiations for the Army with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to restructure the management of over 70,000 historic military properties.
Education and military service
Apgar graduated from Blair Academy in 1958, and in 1962 received a BA in Sociology from Dartmouth College, where he was a Choate Scholar and a Distinguished Military Graduate of Army ROTC. Additionally, he was a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity and helped lead the chapter's decision to break from the national organization due to its discriminatory admissions policy. In 1962, he was commissioned in the US Army and served as an intelligence officer in Germany until 1965. The following year, he studied the British new towns program at Oxford University. In 1968, he received an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was a National Fellow and Executive Editor of The MBA magazine.
Consulting career
Apgar began his real estate career with the developer James W. Rouse, and assisted in opening the new city of Columbia, Maryland. In 1968, he joined McKinsey, transferring to London in 1970, where he worked on British and European public sector housing, urban development, and local government issues. He wrote urban guidelines called The Sunderland Study: Tackling Urban Problems for the UK government and advised firms on real estate strategy. In 1974, he began a five-year engagement in Saudi Arabia, leading planning teams for Saudi Aramco's large-scale community development and infrastructure expansion and co-authoring the blueprint for the Saudi government's national urbanization strategy.
In 1980, he founded Apgar & Company, an advisory firm specializing in large-scale corporate real estate and facilities portfolio management. In 1997, he patented a corporate real estate evaluation system known as the Apgar Real Estate Score . From 2002 to 2006, Apgar was a partner and director of BCG, where he established the Infrastructure and Real Estate practice. He was the firm’s senior advisor on real estate from 2007 to 2011.
He has advised over 150 companies, institutions and governments in 13 countries on some 550 projects, including Irvine and Playa Vista, California; Brandermill, Virginia; Disney World; Hull, London, and Sunderland in the United Kingdom; France; and, Japan.
Affiliations, publications, awards
Apgar is a non-resident Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Counselor of Real Estate, a Member of the Business Executives for National Security Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Institute of Directors, and the Royal Society of Arts, as well as a Governor of the Urban Land Institute Foundation. He has taught courses at Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, and Yale. He has edited two books, including New Perspectives on Community Development, and authored more than 150 publications, including seven for the Harvard Business Review. In 2008, he co-authored "The Promise of Public-Private Partnerships: Principles and Proposals for the Next President." Apgar received the Army's Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service, the Chairman's Award of the President's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the Arthur A. May Award of the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers, now The Appraisal Institute. He received the William S. Ballard Award and twice received the James Felt Award for Creative Counseling , both from the Counselors of Real Estate.
References
- Woodrow Wilson International for Center Scholars – Senior Scholar Biography
- Oxford Said Business School – Associate Fellow Biography
- "The Alternative Workplace: Changing Where and How People Work," Harvard Business Review, May–June 1998, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp. 121–136.
- "Managing Real Estate to Build Value," Harvard Business Review, November–December 1995, Vol. 73, No. 6, pp. 162–179.
- Mastering Urban Growth: A Blueprint for Management, McKinsey International, Inc. for the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1978.
- "New Business with the New Military" (with John M. Keane), Harvard Business Review, September 2004, Vol. 82, No. 9, pp. 45–56.
- New Perspectives on Community Development, London/New York: McGraw Hill, 1976. Editor. Author of Introduction; Chapter 4, "Guiding the Development Enterprise", pp. 77–98; Chapter 5, "Developing the Project Strategy", pp. 99–128; Chapter 6, "Planning for Community Management", pp. 129–156; Chapter 7, "Mastering Development Economics", pp. 157–187.
- The Promise of Public-Private Partnerships: Principles and Proposals for the Next President, Report of the Forum on Privatization and Partnerships, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, August 2008.
- "Succeeding in Saudi Arabia," Harvard Business Review, January–February 1977, Vol. 55, No. 1.
- The Sunderland Study: Tackling Urban Problems (Volume 1) and A Working Guide (Volume 2), Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1973.
- "Uncovering Your Hidden Occupancy Costs," Harvard Business Review, May–June 1993, Vol. 71, No. 3, pp. 124–136.