The Matthews Mentality Podcast E90: Peter Borzak of Pine Tree | How to Build a Retail Empire That Wins in Any Market Cycle
Dec 10, 2025
Kyle Matthews chats with Peter Borzak, Chairman and CEO of Pine Tree, a grocery-anchored retail real estate powerhouse. Peter shares the lessons learned from his 30-year journey, including navigating the 2008 financial crisis and the importance of trust in business. He emphasizes focusing on effort over outcomes to manage stress, finding balance between work and family, and the critical skills of listening and patience. Peter also discusses Pine Tree's ambitious growth plans and their strategic shift towards necessity-based shopping centers.
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Specialize To Win In Retail
- Retail requires specialization and deep domain knowledge to generate alpha over generalist approaches.
- Pine Tree focused solely on retail and built capabilities from development to operations to win consistently.
Early Venture Failed, Then Rebounded
- Peter started Plymouth Court Properties in 1990 but the early-90s commercial real estate crisis sank that effort.
- The failure taught him limits of being a generalist and set the stage to start Pine Tree in 1995 with a specialist focus.
Raise Capital By Being Trustworthy
- Build trust to raise capital; trust matters more than deal specifics when investors decide to commit.
- Be consistently trustworthy because reputational damage in retail real estate can be career-ending.
