NEW HYDE PARK, NY-Continuing its US portfolio recycling initiative, retail REIT Kimco Realty Corp. has disposed of more of its non-strategic assets. Since the end of second quarter 2012, the company has sold 23 retail properties comprised of 2.7 million square feet for $165 million, including a subsequent quarter-end sale of a 13-property portfolio in the Midwest region, of which eight properties were located in Ohio and five in Indiana.

Since the start of the company’s asset recycling program in September 2010, Kimco has sold of 86 non-strategic properties comprising on a gross basis, 7.9 million square feet for $529.9 million. The REIT’s share of the proceeds from these sales was $387.4 million and was utilized by Kimco to “opportunistically add high-quality shopping centers in core markets to its portfolio," according to a company statement.

“We went through our portfolio and we identified a number of non-strategic shopping centers that we decided for a number of reasons, to dispose of them, primarily because they may have been in challenged markets, they may have had chronic vacancies, single-use, limited or low growth or just because we didn’t have the necessary scale of people in that geographic location,” David F. Bujnicki, Kimco’s VP of investor relations and corporate communications, previously stated to GlobeSt.com about the initiative.