Cohen Group CEO Andrew Cohen, owner of Burnside Village, is to step down next week

THERE won’t be many chief execs who last 17 years astride a multimillion-dollar business but as of Friday next week, there will be one heavyweight less.

Andrew Cohen, Cohen Group CEO, and who runs Burnside Village, will retire on Sept 15 after 17 years at the helm.

THERE won’t be many chief execs who last 17 years astride a multi million dollar business but as of Friday next week, Adelaide will have one heavyweight less.

Andrew Cohen has run the Cohen Group since March 2000, the company an overarching entity with a formidable presence in the SA industrial and commercial property markets though forever destined to be overshadowed by a shopping complex entrenched in the top one per cent of retail centres nationally on a turnover per sqm basis.

Burnside Village shopping centre in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs has been more than a vocation ever since Mr Cohen’s father Richard founded it 40 years ago, planting a series of vines in the village centre still thriving today.

“For my first seven years (as CEO) my dad was in charge, I was like an apprentice,” said Mr Cohen said as he prepares to relinquish the role.

“He retired at 85 but continued to come into the office, he didn’t want to change his daily routine. He kept going until just shy of his 95th birthday.”

The succession route this time will be very different. The Cohen Group will continue to expand said Mr Cohen but, to assuage nepotism charges and more, the family name will be absent from the top role.

“There is no chance the next CEO will be a Cohen.”

Not that he has done badly.

Remarkably, the centre attracts around 4.3 million visitors annually to its more than 100 outlets.

“Food gives us our footfall, fashion gives us our point of difference,” Mr Cohen said.

Challenges have been many but can be overcome by a focus on giving value and sustaining long term relationships he said, 10 and 15 year Village leases are commonplace

“Online shopping has been a disrupter already,” he said, Amazon too. You can’t fight it is the gist so move on and continue doing what you do well.

“But you can’t get a village feel online. Arguably we have already had the disrupter through eBay. We worry about everything in the centre, there is nothing in Burnside Village that doesn’t have a Cohen footprint on it.”

Opening hours reveal a sticky point, full deregulation is the great utopian ideal but Rundle Mall’s 11am to 5pm Boxing Day opening is not yet matched a few kilometres east.

“The reality is that SA is more suited to a staged deregulation approach. We support deregulation, give us Boxing Day, allow us to open (9am) on Sunday and we’ll give you back Thursday (late night).”

Explaining such mechanisms to the thousands of international visitors to the Village is not easy he said, ‘lost in translation’ as good an explanation as any.

A national search meanwhile for a new boss is on, company secretary Ingrid Burgers holding the fort until the new year in all likelihood though the board remains the same, chaired by Bruce Carter and with four Cohens, including family matriarch Patricia and Andrew who will stay on as a director.

The 54-year-old leaves the business in good shape, 10 years of consecutive net tax profits delivered and an enormous Village redevelopment looming in 12 months time.

Hemmed in to a degree on the corner of Greenhill and Portrush roads, the Village sits on a site where federal, state and council thoroughfares, metaphorically, collide. But it will be overcome, indeed the nearby Cedar Woods development further down Greenhill Rd heading into town will see as many as 2500 new residents once it is up and running. And they will need somewhere to shop.

Indeed, shoppers looking to buy the Village itself have not been thin on the ground.

“Institutional buyers call me all the time, they would love to get a piece of Burnside, they have sent teams of people down. We have to run it all off our balance sheet and do.”

Setbacks have been few, giving the infamous in-house gum tree an extended, and expensive, run perhaps the most tricky obstacle to-date.

“We thought it was probably 60/40 we would get it (through), but once the CIBO staff were worried about branches falling we got rid within 48 hours,” he said emphatically. One hundred years old, with even a canopy walk considered at one point, it reached the same age as his, now deceased, father Mr Cohen said

As for the next few weeks, planning is straightforward said Mr Cohen. An executive leadership course at Harvard needs to be completed but first it’s a health retreat for a week and then diving, the deep stuff at that, a passion that has taken him around the world.

Sharks at the bottom end of the Yorke Peninsula, his favourite SA jaunt, have shaded his local forays but for everything else the focus remains strictly here, “All our assets are in SA.” he said.