Owner Carmen Spinoso has been in the mall retail business since the 1980s, founding his namesake company roughly 17 years ago after witnessing a rapid expansion of malls across the country, followed by consolidation into the hands of a small number of companies in the ’90s and early 2000s.
“Malls are by far the most complicated and nuanced real estate asset class that exists,” Spinoso said. “So as I watched the industry consolidate, I decided that there would be an opportunity to build a platform that was privately held, that had malls as their real DNA and could actually execute on plans to revitalize malls and stabilize them and make them better. That’s what I set out to do about 20 years ago.”
Since then, the company has worked on more than 100 malls across the country, Spinoso said, and currently has a hand in retail properties totaling about 45 million square feet, primarily malls.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
The company looks at several criteria when selecting properties to invest in, Spinoso said, including strong community importance, solid performance trends, and perhaps most importantly, how well their company’s framework can create opportunities for improved management, leasing and investment.
The Mall at Fairfield Commons checked all these boxes, Spinoso said.
“We feel we have a very strong program to be able to market these properties and connect them with the communities they exist within in a very strong and meaningful way,” he added. “We can bring our skill set and talents and experience and wealth of knowledge to invest in (malls), make them better, strengthen the connection with the community, and we believe will have a long-term, viable future.”
The Mall at Fairfield Commons has also shifted to more “experiential retail,” with a focus on events, activities and community gathering rather than just operating a chain of stores and restaurants, something the company wants to continue under its ownership.
The historical consolidation - and subsequent homogenization - of malls got away from this idea, Spinoso said.
“If you look back throughout civilization, the town square or the marketplace was a gathering spot, not just to go to buy food and merchandise, but also to gather with people and interact and be entertained and all of those things,” he said. “That was the original concept of the mall, not just retail. It was to be this kind of community center.”
Since the company acquired the mall, the group has contracted with retailer Dillard’s as its newest anchor tenant, which will be opening in the former Macy’s later this month.
The remaining anchor spot – the former Dick’s Sporting Goods near the mall’s food court – remains open, but the company is in active discussions for prospects to fill that space, Spinoso said. Dick’s relocated all operations to their House of Sport location at the mall in March last year.
While the mall is “pretty well occupied,” at this point, Spinoso said, there are several other prospective tenants in negotiations.
“We look at this as a huge asset to the community,” Spinoso said. “We’ve got an incredible focus on it, there’s going to be a lot of good announcements coming. We are very committed to improving the property and making it a real trophy for the area and the region.”
More broadly, if malls were truly dead, Spinoso said, COVID-19 would have killed them outright. However, since the pandemic, malls in the business’s portfolio have seen a resurgence of traffic and sales higher than pre-COVID numbers.
“Everybody’s been predicting the death of the brick and mortar and the transference of all shopping to online,” Spinoso said. “If that’s true, then COVID would have been the watershed event that ripped the Band-Aid off...yet people came back. So the trend continues to strengthen on malls, especially on malls that are being properly managed.”
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