New York brokerage Capricorn Retail Advisors has brought on two new principals with mall landlord experience to help drive the firm’s expansion.
Max Talpalar, who signed onto the Capricorn last week, brings five years of experience as a leasing broker at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. He joins Larry Weinstein, the former president of Simon Property Group’s Premium Outlets platform, who came on board as a principal at the firm this summer, Capricorn Managing Principal Jason Richter said.
“Larry and Max, both from a cultural perspective, identify with Capricorn’s ethics in the way that we do business,” Richter said in an interview. “They are aligned in our vision to create a company that is highly specialized in the high-street space and enclosed regional mall space. Both have had illustrious careers.”
Weinstein was at Simon Property Group, the largest owner of shopping malls in the U.S., for more than two decades. As the president of Premium Outlets, which includes Woodbury Common Premium Outlets and Las Vegas Premium Outlets, he was in charge of overseeing a portfolio of 75 shopping centers spanning more than 30M SF.
He left the company at the start of 2022, according to his LinkedIn page, and started his own firm. He officially joined Capricorn in June.
“I look forward to bringing my relationships and experience to the tremendously successful platform which they have already built serving retail tenants and landlords internationally,” Weinstein said in an emailed statement.
He added that he, Richter, Talpalar and company principal Andrew Schulman together have more than 100 years of retail real estate experience. Weinstein said he has 35 years of real estate experience, with most of that time spent working for REITs.
“There is not a retail venue in the U.S. that collectively we don’t intimately know,” Weinstein said.
Talpalar is joining Capricorn this week from Green Owl Real Estate, which he founded two years ago. Before that, he was a senior leasing manager at Westfield in New York City, which oversees the retail in the World Trade Center, from 2016 through 2021.
“With the addition of Larry and myself we are taking it to the next level, creating a team of real estate professionals unmatched in depth and variety of experience,” he wrote in an email. “It’s an exciting group to be a part of.”
Retail has faced a tough environment in recent years, with vacancy spreading across major corridors. However, the tide appears to be turning. In the U.S., retail availability is at just 4.8%, according to CBRE, with few new projects in the pipeline. Rents are up 4% nationally, according to the brokerage.
Places like New York continue to attract luxury stores, as well as contemporary brands opening their first brick-and-mortar locations.
Richter said Capricorn’s plan is to double the number of staff and the size of Capricorn’s business in the next year. Right now, the firm is representing facial clinic Skin Laundry, finding locations on Long Island, and outdoor apparel company Stio, he said.
The firm is also managing the portfolios for shoe brand Steve Madden, handling the North American expansion of Pop Mark and representing Brookfield at Greenpoint Landing in Brooklyn.
“We’ve seen tremendous demand for the last three years running in all of the areas in which we are active,” he said. “I do agree that 2024 is going to be a slower year — we do believe that the overall economy is in for a little bit of rough air, but we’re hopeful and optimistic that it’s not going to have the type of projected or forecasted impact that we’ve all seen in the headlines.”
