Meet the Syracuse exec who’s betting on the future of malls when others are running away
Syracuse, N.Y. – When Carmen Spinoso saw the dramatic changes happening in shopping malls, he didn’t give up on the industry. He jumped on a business opportunity.
Spinoso, a former leasing agent and executive with mall developers Pyramid Cos. and Wilmorite, started his own mall management company in 2009, just as the Great Recession was speeding up a trend that was killing many malls.
Large, publicly traded mall companies were buying up the biggest and best performing malls, leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Spinoso recognized those that remained were going to need an experienced manager to help them survive.
”The worst time in the economy created an incredible opportunity, and that’s when I started the company,” he said.
His business, Salina-based Spinoso Real Estate Group, has become the go-to manager of malls across the country that have been placed in receivership after their owners fell into default on their loan payments.
Of the 40 shopping centers Spinoso operates, his company owns eight and manages 32 for third parties. Eighteen, or slightly more than half of the properties he manages for third parties, are under court-ordered receivership.
Spinoso Real Estate Group operates 40 shopping centers, including 37 enclosed malls, across the country. (Spinoso Real Estate Group)Spinoso Real Estate Group
All but three of the centers are enclosed shopping malls.
Two of the malls Spinoso operates belonged to his former employer, Syracuse-based Pyramid.
One of them, Hampshire Mall in Hadley, Massachusetts, was auctioned in 2024 after Pyramid lost it to foreclosure. The other, Palisades Center in West Nyack, went into receivership in 2024 after Pyramid was unable to refinance a mortgage on the property.
And Spinoso recently came close to taking over management of a third Pyramid mall.
In July, a judge gave the court-approved receiver of Pyramid’s Walden Galleria near Buffalo permission to hire Spinoso to manage the mall. But the hiring was postponed when Pyramid reached an agreement with the receiver allowing it to continue managing the mall, at least temporarily, while it seeks new financing.
Early days
Managing malls wasn’t part of Spinoso’s career plans as he grew up in Syracuse.
“I actually wanted to pursue music as a career and studied piano,” he said during an interview in his corporate office on Northern Concourse in Salina, where he employs 120 people.
But he also got an itch to own his own business after watching his uncle, Lon Frocione, grow his food distribution business. Deli-Boy Inc. once supplied 1,000 restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, and pizza and sub shops in eight states.
“He was a very successful guy,” Spinoso said. “So as a young kid, I was exposed to that. I saw my uncle start from nothing — I don’t even think he had a college education — and build a very successful life and business.”
When he went to Le Moyne College, Spinoso decided to major in accounting, with a minor in computer science, just in case his dream of owning a business came true one day.
After college, Spinoso went to work as a leasing agent for Pyramid, which was founded by the late Robert Congel. He joined just as the company was opening what was then called the Carousel Center, now Destiny USA.
“It was really by chance,” he said. “I got an opportunity to interview for a leasing position. I didn’t know much about it, took the position and fell in love with it. And I’ve been doing that for virtually my entire professional career.”
After three years at Pyramid, Spinoso went to work for Rochester-based Wilmorite as a senior vice president for five years. He then returned to Pyramid as a senior vice president for the next nine years.
He focused during his second stint with Pyramid on leasing for the company’s existing portfolio of malls, while Congel focused on expanding the Carousel Center into Destiny USA, now the largest mall in New York.
During that time, he said he came to see the role that malls play as a place for people to gather, have experiences and create memories.
“It really inspired me to want to be a positive force in that industry,” he said. “I felt like, by extension, if you’re successful at what you’re doing, it’s going to benefit so many other people.”
‘A big change’
But following the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, Spinoso noticed major changes in the world of shopping malls.
Starting in 1965 and continuing until the early 1990s, about 1,500 malls were built in the U.S.
“They were built by privately held real estate companies like Pyramid and Wilmorite,” he said. “Most of them were family businesses. And there were over 100 different companies that built these 1,500 malls.”
Following the savings and loan crisis, those privately held mall development companies suddenly found it difficult to obtain financing, he said.
“A lot of the capital markets were shutting down and they weren’t lending,” he said. “It was very hard to raise money.”
As a result, a handful of mall developers took their companies public in the early 1990s because that enabled them to raise capital by selling stock, he said. And to keep their shareholders happy, they bought up large numbers of malls, he said.
“So basically, you went from over 100 owners to a handful of big companies that consolidated the industry,” he said. “That was a big change.”
During that consolidation, the mall industry lost a lot of the people who knew how to operate malls, he said.
Spinoso said he also noticed that the large publicly traded companies buying up malls were only interested in the premium properties and often would not put their resources into the lesser ones.
Spinoso said it became obvious to him that the less desirable malls would change hands at some point. And when they did, they would need someone to run them.
As he began making plans to launch Spinoso Real Estate Group, another change happened in the mall industry — the Great Recession of 2007-2009. The longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression, it caused consumers to cut their spending.
Many malls closed as a result. The number in the U.S. shrank from 1,500 in 2005 to 1,150 by the end of 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
Among those that closed were eight in the Syracuse area — ShoppingTown, Great Northern, Penn Can, Marketplace, Tri-County, Fairmount Fair, Camillus and Fayetteville.
Crisis leads to opportunity
But what was bad for malls only confirmed for Spinoso the business opportunity he initially saw following the savings and loan crisis.
“I realized a lot of these properties are going to be given back to the bank because, again, they’re not going to be able to refinance them, and who’s going to take care of them?” he said.
He launched Spinoso Real Estate Group in 2009 with no partners, just himself at first. Now, in addition to his 120 employees in Salina, he employs about 400 people at the malls his company manages and at satellite corporate offices in Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., as well as California, Florida and Texas.
Spinoso Real Estate Group’s headquarters in Salina. Founded in 2009 by former Pyramid Cos. executive Carmen Spinoso, the company manages shopping malls throughout the U.S. (Rick Moriarty | [email protected])Rick Moriarty | [email protected]
When he takes over a mall’s management, Spinoso usually hires its entire staff.
“A lot of the people that work at the malls are really good, well-intentioned people that love their properties,” he said. “They just don’t have any support. So when we take them on and we integrate them into our platform, they get re-energized and they become excited and very productive.”
He said he also focuses on expanding the tenant base of the malls. Filling vacant spaces, especially those once home to department stores, is a priority.
For example, when Spinoso bought South Park Mall in Strongsville, Ohio, in 2021, the center had a vacant former Sears store that was separately owned. He bought that, too.
Then Spinoso immediately started looking at a number of possible uses for the two-story, 120,000-square-foot space formerly occupied by Sears. He considered a hotel and apartments before hitting on another idea.
The mall had a 50,000-square-foot Dick’s Sporting Goods store. But just as Spinoso bought the mall, Dick’s came out with a concept for a store more than double that size — Dick’s House of Sport, with climbing walls, batting cages and an outdoor athletic field where customers can try out the athletic equipment sold in the store.
Spinoso approached Dick’s about putting a House of Sport in the former Sears location. Dick’s agreed to do so. The new, two-story, 100,000-square-foot store opened Oct. 31 and features an outdoor field where a Sears Auto Center stood.
“It’ll be the most amazing retail store in that whole region of Ohio,” Spinoso said.
Since acquiring the mall, Spinoso has signed 31 new leases, including adding restaurants such as Hooley House, KPOT and Kyuramen, and reconfigured a vacant OfficeMax large-box space to accommodate new tenants Activate Games and Boot Barn
He said his company already has a tenant lined up for Dick’s old space but cannot announce details yet due to a confidentiality agreement.
Spinoso said he continues to see a future for malls that are managed well.
“If you’re not doing the things that it takes to keep that community center a safe, attractive place with retail, dining, entertainment and services that people want, they’ll drive right by it,” he said. “But if you have that collection of reasons for people to come, they do come. It’s really that simple.”
Destiny USA, Pyramid’s biggest property, is the only mall still standing in the Syracuse area, but it is not without its struggles.
Large spaces formerly occupied by department stores remain vacant at Destiny. Pyramid could not refinance a mortgage on the mall when it came due last year, putting it in default. Spinoso declined to comment on the challenges facing the mall.
“I haven’t studied Destiny, and I don’t really feel comfortable saying that I think I know what went wrong or I have the solution,” he said. “That would take a lot of thought and analysis.”
Beyond malls
While Spinoso sees his company keeping its focus on managing and owning malls well into the future, he’s also expanding its portfolio into other types of real estate.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority assigned Spinoso Real Estate Group in February to be the retail property manager for Grand Central Terminal and Grand Central Madison in Manhattan. Under the deal, Spinoso is in charge of leasing, tenant coordination, construction management, public relations and promotional activities for both properties.
He has acquired two malls in the last two months — Fairfield Commons in Dayton, Ohio, and The Mall at Johnson City in Tennessee. And he plans to buy more.
“When you own them, it’s absolutely more risky, but we have tremendous confidence in our team and our track record,” he said. “Without risk, there’s no reward. And we’re willing to take risk and are confident that we’ll succeed.”
