Throughout his 32-year career, Fred Cordova has purchased, sold, financed, developed and leased more than 6.5 billion square feet of real estate. As the executive vice president of brokerage services at California-based Kennedy Wilson, Cordova currently specializes in the retail sector. Western Real Estate Business caught up with Cordova at ICSC RECon in late May to get his thoughts on how traditional brick-and-mortar retailers can survive the current rash of store closures. Western Real Estate Business: Can you clarify your role in the retail space? Fred Cordova: Our brokerage service really specializes in the retail space, particularly in urban retail. We excel at leasing urban retail centers and properties, including the ground floors — the huge new wave of development of multifamily in an urban environment that has spread across the country like wildfire. We’re the ones who lease the ground-floor space. We also do infill retail shopping centers, many of which need to be repurposed. On the capital side, we do a lot of sales of properties that are going to be repositioned — older properties that need to be taken down completely, or in some cases rehabbed. But in most cases those properties are razed to make room for …
