Hilco hires Newmark vet as head of retail development
Hilco Global, a financial services firm whose asset portfolio includes several retail real estate properties, has hired on a new development chief.
Mitch Friedel, who spent more than 30 years at Newmark, will take over as director of development advisory and leasing at Hilco.
He and his team at the Northbrook, Ill.-based financial services firm, will be involved with projects totaling an asset value of $3 billion in the United States.
At Newmark, Friedel focused on ground-up, mixed-use projects that included the billion-dollar redevelopment of Disney Springs in Orlando.
He spent the last 12 of his years at the global real estate services firm as vice chairman of its global real estate services team.
“My role is to bring upscale retail to proven markets,” said Friedel. “Brands having the most impact on in these projects are names like Apple, Lululemon, Sephora and Aritzia. All their businesses are on fire.’”
Most of the projects Friedel has been involved with are sized between 300,000 to 500,000 square feet.
“Having the right restaurants is key to success in such mixed-use projects. I do think about restaurants first,” he noted. “Properties of this size should have eight to 10 food and beverage brands. We look for restaurants that are successful, but new to the area. Brands like Carve and Ruth’s Chris.”
Friedel deals mostly with ground-up projects and so has time to carefully plots his tenant lineups.
“Retailers always plot ahead,” he said. “I’m talking to my tenant relationships two to three years ahead of a center’s opening date.”
Hilco Global, a subsidiary of Orix Corporation USA, is a diversified financial services company that delivers integrated professional services and capital solutions that help clients maximize value and drive performance across the retail, commercial industrial, real estate, manufacturing and intellectual property sectors.
