Southern Land Co. developer applies philosophy to placemaking

ERIE — It’s not everyday that a real estate developer quotes Winston Churchill, Robert Putnam and Aristotle in the same conversation — but Southern Land Co. vice president and general manager of the company’s Westerly project in Erie doesn’t see herself as a run of the mill developer.

“We shape our buildings and then afterward our buildings shape us,” the former farm girl and self-described “armchair anthropologist” said Heidi Majerik, echoing Churchill. 

“It’s imperative that our built environment is built in a way that positively impacts rather than negatively impacts us,” Majerik said. “That’s what Winston Churchill was getting at.”