Owner-side real estate advisory

Institutional judgment, at consulting scale.

Twenty-five years of retail and mixed-use asset management, development, and repositioning, brought to owners who need a senior operator's perspective without a full-time hire.

Start a conversation See selected work
The approach

Most owners face moments that call for institutional-caliber capability: a repositioning, a lease-up, a redevelopment, a portfolio that needs a sharper business plan. Few need, or can justify, a full executive bench to get there. I bring that bench to the engagement, drawing on the same disciplines I ran across sixteen years at Westfield and as head of asset management for a downtown Los Angeles portfolio.

What I do

Three disciplines, one operator

Engagements are scoped to the owner's actual need, whether a single asset, a portfolio review, or a redevelopment strategy, and priced by phase rather than by the hour.

01

Asset management

Property-level business plans, budgets and reforecasts, leasing strategy, and the operating discipline that moves occupancy and net operating income. Owner-level reporting throughout.

02

Development & repositioning

Turning a highest-and-best-use idea into an executable roadmap: capital structure, phasing, entitlement path, and the tradeoffs an owner needs to see before committing.

03

Design & execution oversight

Guiding the design and construction of retail and mixed-use environments so the delivered asset matches the underwriting: on program, on budget, and leasable.

Selected work

A track record you can point to

A sample of engagements across ownership, asset management, and current advisory.

THE GRANDThe Grand LA
The Grand LA
Retail advisory, current
Related Companies
Bunker Hill
Advising ownership on retail repositioning and lease-up at the $1B mixed-use development designed by Frank Gehry on Bunker Hill, opposite Walt Disney Concert Hall.
ROWROW DTLA
ROW DTLA
Director of Asset Management
Atlas Capital Group
Downtown LA
Led full-lifecycle asset management for a 1.3M-square-foot adaptive-reuse retail, office, and creative campus in downtown Los Angeles, driving occupancy, leasing, and a multi-year capital program.
SFCSan Francisco Centre
San Francisco Centre
Vice President roles
Westfield / URW
San Francisco
Westfield's flagship urban center in downtown San Francisco: retail, dining, entertainment, and office above the Market Street corridor. A cornerstone of sixteen years in contracts, design, and development leadership across the portfolio.
VALENCIAValencia Town Center
Valencia Town Center
Vice President roles
Westfield / URW
Santa Clarita
Directed a $25M interior renovation of the regional town center and led the opportunistic repositioning of a struggling anchor box into productive use.
Background

Built on the owner's side of the table

My career runs from civil and environmental engineering into the ownership and operation of major retail and mixed-use assets: sixteen years at Westfield across three vice president roles in contracts, design, and development, then head of asset management for the ROW DTLA portfolio at Atlas Capital Group.

That path means I've sat in most of the seats an owner has to coordinate: the pro forma, the design review, the construction schedule, the lease negotiation, and the business plan that ties them together. Engagements draw on all of it.

CKChris Kitchen, Principal
Experience25+ years
LicensurePE, Civil (California)
GraduateM.S., Stanford University
UndergraduateB.S., UCLA
Focus marketWestern US · LA & SF
Asset typesRetail · Mixed-use
Contact

Let's talk about the asset.

Tell me a little about the property or the situation, and I'll follow up to set a time. Initial conversations are exploratory, with no obligation.

Prefer email? Reach me directly at chris@ckreconsulting.com

Your message goes straight to my inbox. I typically reply within a business day.