Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/803877
A P R I L 2 0 1 7 / S C T 69 Conforti that he would probably get more out of interning at their commercial real estate firm than he would from sitting in a classroom. Conforti wound up spending five years at the firm, called Capital Realty Services. He became an analyst there and began learning commercial real estate financing. "The [group] was really at the forefront of real estate capital markets, when securitization was an A and B note versus 14 sequential tranches," he said. "They aggregated real estate product and did some pretty interesting structuring." Conforti took this knowledge with him to his next job as an investment banker at Alex. Brown & Sons. There he worked in the real estate investment banking and capital markets divisions until the company's merger with Bankers Trust. The merger presented a golden opportunity: Conforti had been itching to return to his native Chicago, so he jumped at the chance to steward a Blackstone-led investment in the Windy City. "It was a holding company investment," he said. There was some trepidation about a few aspects of the deal, he recalls. "I wound up doing the turnaround for the public portion of it," he said. Conforti helped take the company private. Having always been something of a math nerd, Conforti decided to try his hand at launching a real estate hedge fund, and he proved to be quite good at it. In January 2005 Conforti's Greenwood Group was acquired by Stark Investments, and he stayed on at the hedge fund of Stark Investments for three years before moving over to UBS O'Connor. One of Conforti's investments while at Stark was the common-stock purchase of roughly 20 percent of The Mills Corp. before its sale to Simon. Then, as global head with a hedge fund portfolio." Now, as Washington Prime CEO, Conforti says he is happy to be an innovator and strategist. "I'm like a kid in a candy shop," he said. "I'm employing quantitative analysis, thinking up marketing and sponsorship opportunities, and empowering local management." And he has certainly been busy with all of that. Since Conforti's start last fall, Washington Prime Group has shed most of its noncore assets, using the capital to reduce leverage while investing in redevelopment. In October the company agreed to provide Amazon Locker with self- service sites at 50 shopping centers, which Washington Prime COO Keric M. (Butch) Knerr says has improved foot traffic considerably. Conforti has changed the way leasing contracts work at Washington Prime centers: When retailers sign contracts, it is not just for a single store location — the agreement gives them access to Washington Prime's other properties through such things as pop-up shops and trunk shows. "Honestly, I'm befuddled that these sorts of things haven't been tried before," Conforti said. "He is challenging the organization to not only think about how consumers shop today," said Knerr, "but also to envision how they shop in the future, and, importantly, how we can help our retailers be prepared." For Conforti, gifted equally as both a bean counter and a strategist, it always comes back to the cash flow. "You can't be strategic if you haven't taken care of your financials," he said. "So many people want to come in here and do the sexy things. Let me tell you, I am the least sexy human being on earth. For me, it's all about grinding it out and leasing space." n of real estate at UBS, he oversaw a $2.4 billion real estate investment fund, the firm's biggest at the time. At UBS Conforti was also senior portfolio manager of a joint venture with Colony Capital called O'Connor Colony Property Strategies. The Mills deal paid off many times over, Conforti says. At the time, many had undervalued Mills, and Conforti says he sees parallels today among those who disparage the retail real estate industry overall. "There was a similar misperception," Conforti said. "What's happening right now in retail real estate in general and secondary market assets in particular is that pundits get on and they'll talk about the absolute and unequivocal demise of the mall," he said. "And it's true, you'll get the flight of bankruptcies, but you can also make a pretty convincing closing argument that this is nothing different than what's been happening for the last 50 years, where you lose tenants. And I have an even better argument: that when you look at the product life cycle, we've just been too long in certain subsectors, so this gives us an opportunity to adjust or optimize, the same way you would I'm like a kid in a candy shop. I'm employing quantitative analysis, thinking up marketing and sponsorship opportunities and empowering local management" "