Kimco pays $375M for Long Island shopping centers

Kabro Associates sells grocery-anchored portfolio as it winds down family business

Kimco Realty's Conor Flynn with The Gardens at Great Neck (Kimco Realty Corporation, Google Maps)
Kimco Realty's Conor Flynn with The Gardens at Great Neck (Kimco Realty Corporation, Google Maps)

Kimco Realty is making a big expansion in its own backyard.

The Jericho-based real estate investment trust picked up an eight retail assets spread throughout Nassau County from Woodbury-based Kabro Associates for $375.8 million, Newsday reported.

The properties — seven of which are shopping centers, while one is a free-standing grocery store — combine for 540,000 square feet, meaning Kimco paid just under $700 a square foot for the portfolio.

Family-owned Kabro is selling the assets as it winds down operations after 70 years in business. The firm’s leaders didn’t want the portfolio to be divided up and leaned on their relationship with the Cooper family, who run Kimco, to make the deal.

“We’re thrilled that they ended up being the ultimate caretaker of what we built over the years,” Kabro’s Neal Kaplan told Newsday. Kabro has one remaining shopping center, in Pennsylvania, which it also hopes to sell.

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The portfolio includes two shopping centers and a Shop & Shop in Woodbury, as well as retail plazas in Great Neck, Greenvale, Massapequa Park, Syosset and West Islip.

Kimco said the assets are 94 percent leased. Five of them are anchored by grocery stores, like 81 percent of Kimco’s existing portfolio. The company said its goal is to have 85 percent of its annual base rent derived from grocery-anchored shopping centers, which have proven a resilient asset class since the start of the pandemic.

Founded in 1958, Kimco is one of the nation’s largest shopping center operators. The Kabro deal brings its Long Island portfolio to 36 retail properties spanning 3.5 million square feet. Across the country, it has interests in 534 shopping centers and mixed-use assets, totaling 91.5 million square feet of leasable space.

At the beginning of the year, Kimco bought out its joint venture partners at a pair of California shopping centers in the Bay Area and Orange County, paying $134 million for the remaining 85 percent stake in the Brookvale Shopping Center in Fremont and the Anaheim Plaza.

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— Holden Walter-Warner