Kimco Realty buys 8 Long Island shopping centers from Kabro Associates for $375.8M

A family-owned real estate developer that just sold its Long Island retail portfolio for $375.8 million will be winding down after about 70 years in business, one of the owners said Thursday.

Kabro Associates, based in Woodbury, sold its Long Island retail properties — seven shopping centers and a freestanding building occupied by a grocery store — to Kimco Realty, a Jericho-based real estate investment trust that is one of the largest shopping center operators in the United States.

Brothers Melvin and Lawrence Kaplan founded Kabro in the early 1950s, said Neal Kaplan, a Kabro partner and Melvin Kaplan’s son.  The late founders' children and grandchildren sold the Long Island retail properties to Kimco in a deal that closed Wednesday, said Neal Kaplan, 69.

“We all felt it was the right time, provided we found the right buyer.  It was important to us to know that the portfolio wasn’t going to be divided,” he said.

Kabro still has one other shopping center, in Pennsylvania, that will be sold, he said.

The eight Long Island properties sold to Kimco total 540,000 square feet of retail space:

• The Gardens at Great Neck
• Woodbury Common
• The Market Place in Woodbury
• Southgate Shopping Center in Massapequa Park
• Green Cove Plaza in Greenvale
• Syosset Corners 
• Sequams Shopping Center in West Islip
• Stop & Shop building in Woodbury

They are 94.4% leased and five of them are anchored by grocery stores, Kimco said.

Tenants include King Kullen and Holiday Farms supermarkets, TJMaxx, GoHealth Urgent Care, Rite Aid, Starbucks, Dunkin’ and Chipotle.

Kimco bought the eight Kabro properties because they are high-quality assets on Long Island, an area where there are tremendous barriers for new retail developments, such as difficulty in getting town building approvals and the lack of available land, said Ross Cooper, Kimco’s president and chief investment officer.

“You’re not going to see new retail developments on Long Island of this magnitude anytime soon,” he said.

About 81% of Kimco’s properties are anchored by grocery stores, he said.

The Kabro purchase brings Kimco closer to its goal of having 85% of the company’s annual base rent coming from grocery-anchored centers, Conor Flynn, Kimco’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

A publicly traded company, Kimco now has 36 retail properties totaling more than 3.5 million square feet on Long Island. 

Nationwide, Kimco owns interests in 534 shopping centers and mixed-use assets comprising 91.5 million square feet of gross leasable space.

Milton Cooper, executive chairman of Kimco, co-founded the company in 1958.  Ross Cooper is his grandson.

Kimco’s local ties are among the reasons that Kabro entered into a deal with the company, Neal Kaplan said.

“We’ve known the Cooper family for many years.  We’re thrilled that they ended up being the ultimate caretaker of what we built over the years,” he said.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.