Stocking the region with shopping malls

The way Joseph F. Coradino talks about the work that consumes him - shopping malls and retail real estate - you could almost mistake him for an orchestra conductor.

The man talks with his hands. Just about every expressive muscle on his face, actually, is also deployed in the impassioned plea to share in the enthusiasm.

Coradino is the region's maestro of malls - president of PREIT Services L.L.C. and PREIT-Rubin Inc., the companies that handle leasing and redevelopment of 38 malls and 13 shopping centers owned by the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust.

The Philadelphia company's malls dot the region: Willow Grove, Plymouth Meeting, Cherry Hill, Voorhees, Moorestown, the Gallery.

Coradino, who grew up at 17th and Oregon, says he and fellow PREIT executives are "neighborhood kids." They have an innate feel for how people around here live, commute, identify themselves and - perhaps more to the point - shop.

Coradino supervises the company's staff of leasing agents, whose job is to land tenants and come up with the right mix of stores to make a mall or shopping center attractive and profitable.

He also has been key in mapping the $365 million in face-lifts underway at Cherry Hill, Plymouth Meeting and the former Echelon Mall.

Coradino joined PREIT 26 years ago thanks to the man he calls his mentor, chairman and chief executive officer Ronald Rubin. Schooled in urban planning and finance, he is a businessman with a wonk's streak.

Question: You've got how many people reporting to you?

Answer: Total employees in retail groups, probably about 600 or 700.

Q: Who is in charge of landing the tenants in your malls?

A: Our leasing team . . . about 20 people.

Q: They're the ones who have to go out and make sure your vacancy numbers are good, right?

A: That's correct. . . . This is a leasing-driven business, unquestionably.

Q: So, that's really the bread and butter?

A: Absolutely. Raison d'etre. Reason for being.

Q: What do the leasing agents do?

A: There's this relationship piece of the business with American Eagle and Abercrombie and GAP and PacSun and the list goes on. They're maintaining those account-based relationships. The second thing they're doing is they're out farming for new, exciting retailers.

Q: How do they decide who the new catch is going to be?

A: There's no secret to it. It's door-to-door. Leasing people shouldn't be at their desk.

Q: So, one of their jobs is to canvass and eyeball . . .

A: . . . Right . . . See, our business really starts at the demographics and the psychographics for a particular market. Who is the customer? That's the key question.

Q: Is psychographics a retailing term - or a marketing/advertising term?

A: It's a marketing and advertising term. You want to really understand the psychographic. Because it became more important. We used to think if somebody made $150,000 a year and had, you know, a four-bedroom, 21/2-bath [house] and one child, they were going to behave in a certain fashion. They're gonna shop at particular stores. And then we started to say, you know what, it's more complicated than that. It's not just how much money, how many children, what their educational level was.

Q: What else is there?

A: It's taste and preferences. It's like, how do you perceive yourself? Do you perceive yourself as being cool? Edgy? Conservative? Who'd you vote for? Who are you going to vote for? All of a sudden, where you shop, what you buy, starts to be determined by these psychographic characteristics.

Q: You've been formally schooled in urban planning. How did you become convinced that business was the way to go . . . rather than just putting "pins on a map," as you've said. When did you hit that?

A: Because I realized that you can get more done as an entrepreneur than a bureaucrat.

Q: Why? Had you done an internship and sort of banged your head against a wall?

A: With [Arizona businessman] Roy Drachman and with the City of Tucson's planning commission.

Q: In graduate school?

A: Right.

Q: And what was your takeaway?

A: My takeaway is you can get more done as an entrepreneur than a bureaucrat. . . . That you can accomplish things. I mean, there's a lot of folks in city planning that ultimately move out, they become a consultant, they go to work for developers, etc., and they do it afterwards. I sort of said, I'm going to take a run at this thing right out of the box, and I can always be a city planner.

Age, birthplace: 56, South Philadelphia

Occupation: President, PREIT Services L.L.C. and PREIT-Rubin Inc.

Hometown: Philadelphia

Education: Urban studies, Temple University; master's in urban planning and finance, University of Arizona

Personal: Wife, Dawn, a trained opera singer and music teacher; one daughter, 17, who just got her driver's license.

Management Style: "Inclusive and driven."

Hobbies: "Working out keeps me sane; cooking keeps me connected to my roots."EndText