Corinne Verdery

Four years into running Caruso — and a decade after joining one of the region’s premier real estate firms — Corinne Verdery is overseeing “the busiest time in our company’s history.”

And one of her landmark accomplishments came this past August, when Caruso reopened Palisades Village, 19 months after the January 2025 wildfire and following more than $100 million of restoration and remediation work. The center returned 99 percent leased, with roughly one-third of its tenants new.

“We knew that how we reopened would really set the stage for the Palisades community moving forward,” Verdery said. 

The Palisades Village was one of the first projects Verdery worked on as Caruso’s head of development. She said reopening-day traffic was three times pre-fire levels, nearly two-thirds of visitors came from outside Pacific Palisades, and some tenants had surpassed their monthly sales targets by midday.

The reopening is only one piece of an increasingly full development slate. Caruso is underway on a mixed-use expansion of the Commons at Calabasas, where 80 apartments are expected to open next year, and new retail and restaurants begin arriving this year. 

Caruso also plans to break ground later this year on retail space, market-rate apartments and employee housing at Rosewood Miramar Beach, while apartments at the Lakes at Thousand Oaks are also moving toward construction.

And the firm is entering a new business line. The Miramar Lake Club, its first private golf and social club, is under construction near Thousand Oaks and is scheduled to open this fall. It’s centered around a Jack Nicklaus-designed course and an 18,000-square-foot clubhouse. 

The Caruso portfolio also notably includes the Grove, the Americana at Brand, the Commons at Calabasas and Rosewood Miramar Beach.

Meanwhile, Verdery is looking beyond California. She said Caruso is exploring coastal Florida and the Bahamas, along with markets such as Austin and Nashville. “Our interest is to find a state and a city where we could grow roots like we have in Southern California,” she said.

That growth comes after Verdery spent her first years as CEO navigating a sequence few executives would volunteer for: financial-market turbulence, COVID’s wake and, most recently — and maybe most significantly — the Palisades fire.

“Everyone at Caruso knows what the mission is for the day, the year, the decade,” Verdery said.