This year has been a whirlwind. It’s shocking that we’re already at the end of it. However, we can say without hesitation that we had many accomplishments this year and we are absolutely ready for 2014. A new year means new and exciting things coming our way. But before we dive into the future, we want to take a moment to revel in all that 2013 brought us.

January/February

We started the year off strong with a multi-million dollar make-over and name change for our newest Mills addition, West Pointe. We hosted a contest on namecrashers.com asking our Mills fans, residents, and friends to help us choose a new name for West Pointe to go along with it’s make-over. The contest lasted a little over a month. In the end, Claire D. won with her proposed name: Bennington Heights. Claire received a fabulous prize, including a gift card and iPad. Bennington Heights, a 1,047 unit community located in West County is still in the process of it’s transformation, but we’re very proud of all that has been accomplished since January and are excited for what is still to come in 2014. Check out the Name Crashers Video:

We also created our first Resident Perks Card. The Laurel, a luxury community owned by Amos Harris located on Washington Ave in The MX, was our fist community to test the Resident Perks card. The MX started with Pi, The Laurel, and Embassy Suites, and has grown into the ultimate dining, shopping, and entertainment hot spot for downtown residents and visitors. To offer our residents who live right in the center of this vibrant, growing neighborhood something special, we created Resident Perks cards, which give them discounts and specials at restaurants, retail shops, and the MX Movies. We feel it is an opportunity to take the resident experience to the next level and something we hope to expand upon in the coming years.

March

March was a busy month for us. First things first; we added a wonderful new community to our portfolio. It was our first addition for the 2013 year. Peachtree Apartments was added on March 7th. Peachtree, a 156 unit community located in Chesterfield, MO, was purchased for $13.5 million. It is a luxury community featuring both garden apartment and town homes. Village Green is our other Chesterfield community, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have two fabulous and completely unique communities located in such a beautiful area of Missouri. Read more about the Peachtree acquisition.

We usually try to host our annual company party by late January or early February, but with such a busy start to the year, we ran a little behind. However, that didn’t stop us from hosting one heck of a party! Mills-A-Palooza was Friday, March 15th at Dave & Buster’s. The annual party is a time for everyone to get together to forget about work for awhile and relax. A time for new associates to get acquainted with the 200+ Mills associates, but most importantly it’s a day for our associates to be recognized and rewarded for the hard work and dedication that they put in every day. Our celebration included delicious food, cake, D&B game play cards, and a plethora of great prizes. Each year we give away a trophy to the Rockin’ Regional Team of the Year. This year’s winner was Nancy’s team, the Orange Otters. This is a great event every year and we can’t wait for our 2014 holiday party, which will most assuredly be even bigger and better.

April/May

With April kicking off busy leasing season, we put all of our efforts into leasing and marketing. Of course there’s no better way to increase our motivation than to enjoy a ceremony celebrating our accomplishments. On April 19th, St. Louis Apartment Association (SLAA) hosted their annual Rising Star Awards Benefit. We’re so proud of our team and love to see their hard work and dedication recognized. It was a great event for us this year. In addition to enjoying a night out with fellow apartment industry friends, the delicious food, and fun time, we also walked away with 9 awards, including Management Company of the Year. Check out all of our nominations and winners here.

June/July

We kicked it into high gear during the summer months; leasing, marketing, and hosting community pool parties and barbecues are just some of the activities that kept us busy. We also joined the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure on June 15th. Every year CityView, our high-rise downtown community located in the heart of the festivities, participates in the event by providing hundreds of bottles of ice cold water plus other fun giveaways such as stickers, bracelets, and even gift cards. This year, in addition to CityView’s support, we started a Mills Crew running team. We raised $2,050 and had a crew of over 20 Mills associates, friends, and family join us in the 5K Fun Run/Walk. Check out fun photos from the race as well as the fun Face Hole sign created by CityView.

In addition to supporting cancer research, we also spent time donating to another great organization: Angels’ Arms. They have been serving families in the St. Louis area for the past 12 years. Their services include providing and supporting loving homes for foster children by keeping brothers and sisters together with a nurturing family. They host many activities each year to raise funds as well as household items to help foster families support the children they take care of. One household item they are always in need of is cereal. SLAA created a cereal drive which they hosted in June to help provide cereal for the families all year long. Our communities joined the cause by decorating cereal box stations to be delivered to Angels’ Arms. Through this drive, we were able to raise over 100 cereal boxes for Angels’ Arms.

August/September

In August, we acquired a 24 unit community in St. Peters: The Celtic. It is a quaint little community which was originally built to be a condo community. The features include 8 foot doors, five piece bathrooms, coffee colored cabinets with elegant crown molding, black granite counter tops, unique light fixtures, and huge bay windows. We are excited to add this community to our portfolio and have plans in the coming year to expand on it, adding more units and a leasing office and clubhouse. Read more about it here.

October

We consider Mills to be progressive. We value change and understand the continual need to keep up with new policies and ideas. We recognize the use of social media as an outlet to connect and engage. Therefore, we encourage our associates to interact via social media channels. Each of our properties has their own Facebook page to post property updates, host contests, and engage with the community. This year we hosted a Halloween decoration competition among our properties to engage both our on-site and online community. The communities decorated their offices and clubhouses for Halloween and posted their photos on Facebook to be voted on. This was one of our biggest company-wide Facebook contests so far. 14 communities participated and the winner, Oak Park, received 231 votes from Facebook fans. It was a ton of fun and we plan to continue hosting social media contests via Facebook, Instagram, and who knows where else in 2014.

November

November was another big month for us. To start it off, we purchased CityView Apartments. We have been managing CityView, formerly Plaza Square Apartments, since July 2009. The community, built in 1959, was in desperate need of maintenance repairs and updates and has gone through many renovations since 2009, from updated air and heating units to a new resident community room to an entire building renovation with new apartment features such as wood-look flooring, new appliances, granite counter-tops, and the addition of dishwashers. We are very excited to now call Mills Properties the owner of CityView, and have great plans for it’s future.

Another community which has seen some construction this year is Boulder Springs in Columbia, MO. Mills currently manages 6 communities in Columbia. Boulder Springs is a luxury community which was originally a condo community. This year we added 159 apartments into the mix, along with a clubhouse, outdoor pool and fire pit, electric car charging station, dog park, basketball court, and car wash area. We completed the construction in November and are proud to already be 50% leased.

Mills is an active member in both the St. Louis Apartment Association (SLAA) as well as the Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM). 2013 proved to be a great year for us as we received the award for Management Company of the Year at both the SLAA Rising Star Awards and IREM’s 2013 ARM Flame Awards. The ARM Flame Awards were hosted on November 8th. In addition to the management company award, our fantastic Assistant Manager (now manager) of Oak Park, Karly Frazier, was awarded Assistant Manager of the Year. Bonhomme Village, located in Olivette, won Property of The Year. We’re very proud of our associates and it was great to see their hard work and dedication being recognized by IREM. Check out pictures from the event.

December

This December, we’ve had two major acquisitions. The first is CityWalk in The Central West End. While Bruce Mills has owned the land at the corner of Euclid and West Pine for several years, we have finally been able to move forward to the building stage. There were a lot of meetings and items to be approved this year, but we officially broke ground on Tuesday, December 3rd. The 177 unit luxury apartment community will have retail stores on the first floor, including a Whole Foods Market. It is scheduled to be completed by Fall 2015. Check out more info and photos from the groundbreaking.

The second account we acquired is Traditions at Mid Rivers. This will also be a newly built community. It’s located in Cottleville across from St. Charles Community College. Traditions will have 212 units and we are planning to be able to begin building in the Spring of 2014.

In addition to acquiring new communities, we also hosted our 3rd Annual Holiday Giving Event. For three years, we have been partnering with the St. Patrick Center to help give Christmas to local families. Throughout the months of November and December, we received donations from associates, residents, and vendors. We then used that money to buy gifts for families of St. Patrick Center. Our associates offered their time to help shop and wrap the gifts, and then we delivered them to St. Patrick Center to fulfill Christmas wishes. It has been a truly amazing opportunity and we are hopeful to continue to participate for many years to come. Check out fun pictures from the event.

And finally, to end 2013, we did what we do every year: we hosted a fantastic party for our managers and supervisors to celebrate all of their hard work and accomplishments throughout the year. Some highlights this year include: Cherry Hills increasing their occupancy percentage from 78% to 96%, Boulder Springs Columbia being almost 50% occupied before construction was fully complete, and Oxford, Tiger Village, and West End Terrace closing out the year strong at 100% leased. The party included a delicious lunch from Dickey’s, tons of great prizes, and a fun photo booth. Thanks again to our fantastic property managers and maintenance supervisors for your hard work!

We’ve had so many great achievements this year and we couldn’t have done it without the hard work, diligence, and passion of our entire team. From our managers and assistant managers to our leasing consultants, maintenance, grounds crews, accountants, marketing crew, capital improvements, human resources, our regionals, VP of Operations, and of course, Kirk and Bruce Mills. From our past to the future, in the words of Mike Brewer…Game On!

Mills 2013 Year In Review:

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