Kimco Realty Corp. entered the Fairfield County market via the $40 million buy of Wilton Campus Shops, even as its CEO said such high-end properties are increasingly difficult to acquire.
The seller was a partnership of Westport-based Kleban Properties, which owns the Wilton Executive Center adjacent to the retail property.
Wilton Campus Shops is at 5 River Road in Wilton and totals 97,000 square feet of space and is 98 percent occupied, anchored by a Stop & Shop alongside more than 20 specialty shops and several restaurants.
Kimco Realty bills itself as one of the nation”™s largest publicly traded owners of neighborhood and community shopping centers, with stakes in more than 1,800 properties totaling nearly 166 million square feet of space in 44 states.
Starwood Capital Property Trust Inc., Fairfield County”™s largest public REIT, by comparison has assets totaling $3.5 billion, only a fraction of it in retail. Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc., based in Greenwich as the case with Starwood Capital Property Trust, has just under $600 million in assets in the form of more than 50 properties totaling nearly 5 million square feet of space, many of them retail centers in the Tri-state area.
Kimco has been led since 2009 by David Henry, who prior to joining Kimco in 2001 was chief investment officer at GE Capital Real Estate, a General Electric Co. subsidiary based in Norwalk whose assets today total $58 billion.
Henry is chairman of the International Council of Shopping Centers and is a director of Ridgefield-based Fairfield County Bank.
Kimco Realty lists a half-dozen existing retail centers in Connecticut, none in Fairfield County. The real estate investment trust is based in New Hyde Park, N.Y.
In the second quarter, Kimco earned $24.6 million, after adjusting net income to reflect the impact of foreign currencies on its results, with the company maintaining sizable holdings in Mexico.
The Wilton buy comes even as Henry hinted at Kimco accelerating sales of some properties in its portfolios, as the underlying commercial real estate market continues a comeback, including the secondary markets where equities are resold.
“We are being very deliberate and ”¦ we are heartened by the fact that the market is improving for these lower-tier assets,” Henry said in an August conference call. “I think it”™s because so many people have tried to buy the higher quality (assets) and there”™s just so many bidders that they”™re forced to go down a notch in terms of the markets to get retail (holdings) today.”
“We are trying to take advantage of the decline in the market to do it,” Henry said. “Conversely, we are trying to be very careful about what we buy and make sure it”™s the better stuff, and we”™re trying to do as many off-market situations as we can.”
Henry added that real estate remains a good investment as an inflation hedge that beats the performance of many alternative investments to include treasuries and corporate bonds.
“People are just tired of sitting on cash,” Henry said. “There is a frustration in terms of a limited supply of truly high-quality retail in primary markets, so just like every other cycle, it has now moved downwards towards the ”˜B properties.
