It occurs to a person in a Bethel parking lot that Bruce Schanzer, possessing a law degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and an MBA from the University of Chicago”™s Booth School of Business, is the last person you”™d expect to find standing in the snow, dodging cars and ”” the attention-getter ”” smiling broadly.
“We like the cars,” he said. “Cars are good.”
Schanzer is president and CEO of Cedar Realty Trust, based on Long Island. Cedar owns and operates 70 grocery-based shopping centers totaling 10 million square feet between Washington, D.C., and Boston, with the exception of Delaware. The company is 30 years old and has been public for 10 years. Schanzer, who is 44 and lives in New Rochelle, N.Y., took the helm in June 2011.
He was in Bethel to check on his company”™s most-recent $34.5 million purchase made in November: the 100,000-square-foot Big Y Shopping Center, anchored by a Big Y Supermarket.
The center dates to 2007 and, besides Big Y, is currently filled with 11 tenants in four buildings: Wells Fargo Bank, Empire Szechuan Restaurant, Lee Nails and Starbucks are in buildings within the parking lot, while the main Big Y building has attached neighbors Dollar Tree Store, Snap Fitness, Stony Hill Wine & Spirits, New Balance, Weight Watchers, Quest Diagnostic and Great Clips.
Schanzer called it “a great tenant mix.” The center is at the intersection of Stony Hill Road and Old Hawleyville Road.
The center is Cedar”™s seventh in Connecticut, with a total 1.2 million square feet statewide, but the company”™s first in Fairfield County.
Schanzer said that could change. “We like Connecticut and we like Fairfield County,” he said. “Our objective, in as economical a basis as possible, is to grow deeper roots here. I would call us selective and motivated acquirers of Fairfield County properties, with the right prices and assets that would work well for our portfolio.”
As he sipped a Starbucks”™ coffee in the center, Schanzer noted a “community vibe.”
“When I look around ”” five people at that table, three, two, three, two, two ”” they”™re all sitting here talking. In some Starbucks there”™s a long line waiting to get out the door, the commuters. This is more of a community resource and a learning place. I think this atmosphere speaks to the whole center.” He cycles through every Cedar property with feelers out for similar, nonquantifiable aspects of the company”™s properties.
“I like to get out of the office ”” away from the computer screen ”” and visit the centers to see their vitality,” he said. “The nice thing about owning community shopping centers is visiting the communities they serve and seeing the positive impact they have.”
As a company, the 70-property Cedar that bought the Big Y Center in Bethel is, in Schanzer”™s words, “one of 16 publicly traded shopping center groups and among the better performers.” But when he came aboard in 2011, the firm”™s portfolio held double its current 70. “Of those 140 assets, many were joint ventures with Cedar as minority partner. We were heavily leveraged.” The company had spread to the Midwest, which fell into Schanzer”™s crosshairs as he trimmed the portfolio by half. “Our focus now is operational, geographical and strategic, improving the quality of the portfolio” he said. “I”™d say we”™re in the third, fourth or fifth inning of our turnaround phase.”
He said Cedar had considered its grocery-based centers “the gems of the portfolio,” which meshed with “the very high quality of Big Y” with two other stores in Stratford and Monroe.
Further, Bethel features strong metrics for “household income, population density, population growth, economic drivers and traffic drivers,” according to Schanzer.
The address is Bethel, but Schanzer refers to it as “the greater Danbury area.” Its status as a high-traffic area was in full view as Schanzer spoke, with heavy traffic defying the bad weather.
“It”™s a strong market and a great place to own and operate a community-oriented, grocery-anchored shopping center,” he said.
