Jim Rouse
Bob Snow and Jim Rouse were business partners, developers,
consultants, associates and moreover, good friends. They
worked together on numerous projects and ventures spanning
over two decades and together advanced the concept of the true
urban entertainment complex worldwide.
James Rouse was a real estate developer, civic activist
and philanthropist known for rejuvenating downtown
areas in the United States.
As president of The Rouse Company, he created innovative "festival
marketplaces," including Harborplace in Baltimore, Faneuil Hall Marketplace in
Boston, Gallery at Market East in downtown Philadelphia, and South Street
Seaport in New York. Many say the native of Easton, Md., helped
popularize the term "urban renewal." Rouse's legacy also includes
Columbia, the planned community between Baltimore and
Washington, D.C. Columbia has become a model for similar
communities nationwide.
Other examples of Rouse Company festival marketplace
developments include St. Louis’ Union Station, Downtown Portland's Pioneer Place, and
the Riverwalk Marketplace of New Orleans. The early festival marketplaces like Faneuil
Hall and Harborplace led TIME magazine to dub Rouse "the man who made cities fun again."
Rouse began his career in the mortgage banking industry but left it in 1954 to
start his own real estate company, focusing initially on the development of
several indoor shopping malls, now a staple of
American suburbia.
After 40 years at the Rouse Company, James
Rouse retired from day-to-day management
in 1979. Soon afterwards, he and his wife
founded the Enterprise Foundation, a not-
for-profit foundation funded in part by a
for-profit subsidiary, The Enterprise
Development Company, and focused on
seeding partnerships with community
groups that would address the need for affordable
housing and associated social services for poor neighborhoods.
Rouse was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1981. In 1988, Rouse
was awarded the second Honor Award from the National Building Museum.
The Rouse Theatre in Wilde Lake High School is named after James. In May 2006, an approximately
four-mile stretch of Maryland Route 175 between Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 29 in Columbia,
Maryland, was named after Rouse and his wife, Patty.
Patty Rouse died on March 5, 2012.
Rouse received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1995.
Rouse died April 9, 1996, at the age of 81. For quite some time after his passing Snow continued to work
with Enterprise Development and its President Bob Barron (who is now a part of the Snow & Associates
team).
A loosely organized confederacy of independent developmental renegades
