Corinne Verdery

Corinne Verdery has since September 2022 run the day-to-day operations of one of Southern California’s most prominent privately held real estate concerns and one of the largest such companies in the U.S. And, in 2024, the 38-year-old Caruso had its best results ever. Key metrics all bounced, including net operating incoming increasing 7 percent annually.

Which was a good thing, because 2025 arrived with a major challenge. The fires that ripped through the Los Angeles region in January destroyed one of Caruso’s jewels: the nearly 7-year-old Palisades Village shopping and dining complex.

Rebuilding Palisades Village for — as Verdery describes it — a “re-grand opening” in August 2026 is a top priority for the company. In May this year, Caruso announced the retailer Elyse Walker would anchor a flagship at the redone complex. Verdery said in early September that the company would be announcing other retailers and restaurants in the coming months.   

The company, too, has a couple of fresh groundbreakings planned for early next year. At the Commons at Calabasas, Caruso is adding 80 luxury apartments and 27,000 square feet of stores, restaurants and outdoor space. At the Rosewood Miramar Beach in Montecito, the company is adding dozens more apartments — including for employees of the resort hotel there — as well as new retail. (The resort incidentally in 2025 earned five-star rating from Forbes for the second year in a row.)

“We haven’t had two shovels in the ground in a few years now,” said Verdery, who joined Caruso in 2016 as an executive and later became its development chief.  

Meanwhile, the company’s famed shopping plazas such as the Grove and the Americana at Brand have enjoyed double-digit growth in foot traffic this year, Verdery said. And new tenants are arriving: Spanish fashion giant Zara in June opened a nearly 27,000-square-foot flagship at the Grove in Glendale.