Weekend Interview: Steerpoint Capital’s Bo Okoroji, The Next Great Mall Buyer

This series goes deep with some of the most compelling figures in commercial real estate: the deal-makers, the game-changers, the city-shapers and the larger-than-life personalities that keep CRE interesting.

Bo knows retail.

Before founding Steerpoint Capital, a Southern California-based retail investment and advisory firm, Bo Okoroji worked for two of the world’s biggest names in shopping center ownership, Simon Property Group and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. 

After leading U.S. investments for URW, Okoroji founded Steerpoint and began making retail acquisitions early in the pandemic, when most investors were avoiding the asset class at all costs. But with a vision of rightsizing malls’ retail footprint and repurposing the rest of their area for hospitality, multifamily or another use, he said fundamentals are improving at the malls Steerpoint has purchased.

After a stretch of three acquisitions in California in six months, Okoroji said Steerpoint is expanding its horizons, looking to markets like Texas, New York and the mid-Atlantic on its path to becoming the next great mall buyer.

Retail isn’t the only thing Bo knows, though. On top of guiding Steerpoint, Okoroji serves on the advisory board for Walker & Dunlop’s diversity initiative, CREUnited, and works to improve air quality as a board member for the nonprofit Breathe Southern California.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Bisnow: Steerpoint in February closed on the acquisition of North County Mall, its third acquisition in six months at that point. What is your vision for the property, and where does that vision stand now?

Okoroji: We think that it sits in a really strong trade area with all the demographics and data to support a strong retail node. It's really about revitalizing the center as its true intent, as a shopping destination. So we definitely are looking at it as a true long-term retail play with a future as a viable enclosed mall.

We closed on it in February. And since then, we have been working through the addition of Costco to replace the former Sears, which has made some significant progress. And we're really thinking that anchor will help revitalize that end of the mall and help drive mall traffic and help reintroduce the shopper to the property, giving us an opportunity to then improve the retail offering and have some shoppers who have not been to the center in years finally coming back and seeing all the great stuff that's been done today.

Bisnow: How does that fit with your broader retail philosophy, and how did the pandemic change that philosophy?

Okoroji: Our thesis was that retail would bode well and come out stronger by kind of weeding out the tenants that had less-than-strong balance sheets and allowing the strong retailers that were adapting prior to Covid to continue to thrive. And that's based on the omnichannel discussion, retailers that were able to turn their facilities into hubs for logistics and shipment.

We also thought that with everyone being cooped up for such a significant period, the idea of being together was going to become more important than ever. 

And it's really about buying at a basis where we're getting high yield. So it's a high-yield retail portfolio that's heavily weighted towards redevelopment. So the opportunity to add alternative uses, whether that's hospitality, whether it's competitive socializing uses, whether it's residential — those are all concepts that we see as the future of the space, and the mall footprint bodes well for that with the large parking fields, the ability to go vertical if you rightsize the interior mall.

Bisnow: Why retail? What drew you to the asset class in the first place?

Okoroji: I started my real estate career in student housing, then moved over to military housing, all subsets of multifamily. For me, it was a bit more cookie-cutter, where retail was, in my opinion, the more intricate asset class with all the moving pieces and all the different stakeholders that are involved in making the project viable.

So it was somewhat of a challenge and a puzzle, but also something that you can relate to. Everyone has a home mall. I ask people, “What was your home mall while growing up?” It brings back memories, and it's something at a dinner table that you can have an easy conversation about because everyone knows the Zaras of the world and the Targets. So it’s just something that was personal and also intricate, and my love for real estate, putting those together, I think retail was probably the most viable and the sector that I was most passionate about.

Bisnow: Your Twitter bio says, “the next great mall buyer.” So what is the next acquisition?

Okoroji: Our portfolio is highly segmented or exclusively segmented in California. We're looking to continue to make our way east, looking at opportunities in Texas, looking at opportunities in New York, looking at opportunities in the mid-Atlantic. So for us, it's not necessarily about a certain asset; it’s about buying the right property, buying the right project at the right yield. So we want to diversify ourselves across the country. But mostly, we want to make sure that we're making the right buys, at the right time, at the right basis, for the right reasons.

Bisnow: What is your benchmark for success? How will you know you are no longer the next great mall buyer and instead the current great mall buyer?

Okoroji: I used that in my time at Westfield during the pandemic when we were looking to generate interest in malls at a time where no one would be willing to pick up the line when you said that you're peddling malls. Every year coming out of the Global Financial Crisis, there was a new participant in the mall space that came in and acquired two or more assets. So the idea was during the pandemic that had frozen. So the question was, who's the next great mall buyer? Who's going to be the next group that understands the space enough to make the bet to place capital? 

We would now be on that list as a group that has emerged that has acquired two or more assets. So theoretically, we've checked that box, but I just always thought it was interesting that there would be a new participant in the space that would acquire a significant number of assets. But as the headline risk started increasing and people are wary of the retail apocalypse and then when the pandemic happened, it really took that sentiment away, but I now believe it's back. We're now seeing groups that were never at the table when it was a retail or mall deal, specifically, submitting bids and staying actively engaged. I think there's a certain sense of FOMO. 

Bisnow: Before founding Steerpoint, you worked at URW and Simon Property Group. How does your experience at two of the biggest shopping center investors inform what you are doing at Steerpoint?

Okoroji: I was lucky enough to be recruited into the real estate executive training program at Simon, which was a rotational out of business school. It was three to four members per cohort. Since then, the cohorts and the folks that were part of that program have gone on to be in all sectors in the real estate industry. It's built a very strong network that we can lean on when we're looking to get deals done, when we're looking to get insights, when we're looking to trade notes. So that has been a priceless part of my career path. 

But also the ability to sit in these meetings with some of the best minds and folks that would be considered founders of the industry and understand how they envisioned the business when it was being built in the ‘60s and ‘70s and how it's evolved since, having privilege and those conversations and that you'd be able to learn by osmosis has helped build our thesis internally.

Bisnow: What do you advocate in your role on the advisory board for Walker & Dunlop’s CREUnited? How do you want to see the industry change?

Okoroji: It was highly focused on converting those who have spent time in the space and gained knowledge and are looking to make the next path into equity ownership. So it was highly focused on how do we help minority stakeholders take the next step from an employee to an owner and, even better, to an equity investor or an equity partner? So it was really about building long-term wealth within minority communities through access to capital and equity. 

At the time, I joined it as a member of Westfield. And our job was really focused on bridging the gap and answering questions and giving our insights and also offering our resources and our intuitional knowledge to small shops led by women or Black and brown leaders. So it gave me the confidence and it gave me a network to lean on to help launch Steerpoint and have the confidence that it could be successful. 

How do we diversify ownership? How do we diversify assets under minority management? That is really what I advocate for.

Bisnow: How did you get involved with Breathe Southern California, and how do you see commercial real estate making a difference on the issue of air quality?

Okoroji: I knew that I wanted to become more active in the Southern California community and I wanted to give back to the state and to the city of Los Angeles because of all the opportunity that it presented me when I moved here three or four years ago. I was able to meet the team at Breathe SoCal and believe in their initiative, really focus on childhood asthma and the effects that the environment has on that and the increasing rates that we're seeing.

Commercial real estate, we have to be a good stakeholder. It's more focus on clean energy and how we can push the envelope to be more conscious about LEED certification, about how do we embrace more of the solar aspects, how do we make our infrastructure more sustainable to the community and to the environment? I view our assets as our greatest resources, to host events and raise awareness. We have over 40 million people that visit our properties every year, and that gives us a voice. 

Bisnow: Give us a bold prediction for the rest of the year. 

Okoroji: Despite the choppy waters, we are able to end the year with an additional three acquisitions and grow our total portfolio of assets under management from $350M to north of $600M.

Bisnow: What is your weekend routine or favorite weekend activity?

Okoroji: I'm bicoastal right now, so I spend the majority of the week in Los Angeles, and then I fly home to Dallas on the weekends. So it's all about family, spending time with the wife and the kids, touring malls — my kids are mall rats already at 2 and 6. They've been to so many malls across the country that my 6-year-old actually asks to go to the mall. So it's one of those things where I can kind of mix work with personal time, and it's all fair and fun. 

But also, getting out there on the golf course, just playing a round or just hitting the driving range, just trying to spend the weekends focused on family and fun, and then grinding it out Monday through Friday in the great state of California.