Retail REITs Going Global

NEW YORK CITY-The Mills Corp. has been busy internationally over the last few years, and it is just getting started, according to one executive. “Our aim is to have one-third of our investments in new developments outside of the United States in the next five years,” said James Dausch, president of development at the Arlington, VA-based mall developer, yesterday at a REIT symposium hosted by New York University at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

Just three of the company’s 39 centers are currently outside of the US – Madrid (Spain) Xanadu, in Spain; Vaughn Mills, near Toronto; and St. Enoch Centre, in Glasgow, Scotland. The company plans to build a center in Rome, is looking at other sites in Western Europe and will start looking at other international regions where it can develop, Dausch said. Mills has been in other countries since it opened Madrid Xandau in the spring of 2003.

New Hyde Park, NY-based Kimco Realty Corp. owns 65 centers in Canada and six in Mexico. A lot has changed north of the border since the strip-center owner entered the country in 2001, when the firm was just one of two companies bidding on a property, said David Henry, Kimco’s vice chairman and chief investment officer.