Meet the woman who decides where you shop

By Jason Sheftell, Daily News Real Estate Correspondent

When Faith Hope Consolo goes shopping, she shops for more than just clothes. She shops for store space. Consolo, the chairman of the Retail Leasing and Sales Division for Prudential Douglas Elliman, is the top retail broker in the United States. As a retail broker, Consolo finds locations for stores and leases space to retail brands in New York and beyond.

One of the first women in the retail real estate industry, Consolo has been at it since 1985. Her first day on the job, she dialed the numbers of all the stores she loved that didn’t have a strong city presence.

“I just started calling the chairmen of all these companies,” says Consolo, working at the time for a small retail brokerage house on 57th St. “I traveled. I loved to shop. I knew what would work here.”

She dialed Godiva , her favorite chocolatier that was slowly building a name for itself in the United States, selling to high-end department stores and boutique food shops.

“I made an appointment to drive to Pennsylvania three days later to visit the president of the company in the warehouse,” she says. “He was happy with the way things were progressing. I told him he could be happier.”

The meeting went well. Consolo walked out with an agreement to give the brand a more visible retail presence in New York City and beyond. Within eight months, Godiva was on its way to 48 stores across the United States.

Pleased with Consolo’s work, Godiva referred her to a new soap company. Crabtree & Evelyn became her next big client.

“Without a store in New York, you are not on the radar screen for the big time,” she says sternly. “The Wall Streeter who creates giants, the press who make things hot, they are all right here. You need them to see you every day if you want to make it really big.”

They don’t call her the Queen of Retail for nothing. Now, in a position and division created solely for her by Prudential Douglas Elliman, Consolo and her team place the top retail brands in the top locations. Chanel, Brooks Brothers, Barney’s CO-OP, Valentino, Marc Jacobs, Searle, Armani, Versace, Dior, Paul Smith. You name it, Consolo has likely found retail space for it. She deals with the chairmen of companies, the founders, and for fashion, the designers themselves.

“When Georgio [Armani] wanted to move to New York, he called and asked for a store in an area that had a little edge,” she says. “I put him on lower Fifth Ave., which I started calling the Fashionable Flatiron. Paul Smith was the only one there then. He was actually the first to go into that neighborhood. It was nothing but delis and dry cleaners then.”

Consolo has more stories than most fiction writers. All hers are true.

“Retailers are like sheep,” she says. “When one comes, the rest of them follow. And a good retail broker can make a brand as well as a street.”

In some ways, she’s a walking and talking “American Idol” for the retail industry. She found the beauty store Fresh when it was a local Boston boutique founded by a former window washer.

“The store was on Newberry St., but away from the rest of the retailers,” she says. “I liked their product line and thought the store was smart in itspresentation. The owner was behind the counter.”

Consolo soon placed Fresh on New York’s Bleecker St., a growing downtown corridor where she had just put a young fashion sensation named Marc Jacobs. Eight years later, Fresh was bought by the luxury group LVMH. It now has 15 stores worldwide, ranging from Las Vegas to Seoul. Lev Glazman, the former window washer, is currently worth millions.

Fashion designer Jacobs, who had the guts to be one of the first big brands on residential Bleecker St., originally paid $50 per square foot for his first store. Ralph Lauren, Juicy Couture, Cynthia Rowley, Intermix, and James Perse all followed Jacobs to the area, where he now has three stores with a fourth on the way. The rent on the street today tops out at $500 per foot.

“Bleecker St. reminded me of the Marais in Paris,” says Consolo, who had one of her top agents ring neighborhood apartment buzzers to get information. “Once the neighborhood got hot with all those bankers moving in, it was only a matter of time before it needed the upscale stores. It already had the artists.”

This is Consolo’s third career. After college at NYU, she ran a successful modeling agency titled Supergirls. The cosmetic giant Max Factor became a major investor. Soon after, she graduated Parsons School of Design and started an interior design business in Beverly Hills.

“That never grabbed me like this,” she says. “This is about trends, people, neighborhoods and brands.”

Consolo reads 20 periodicals a day, including newspapers from around the world, fashion magazines and retail trade publications. Her office is a library of art and travel books, memos piled a foot high on her desk and floor, and maps of neighborhoods from Palm Beach to Park Slope. When she travels, she shops before checking into hotels. She walks cities like most people hike mountains, with a purpose and an eye for beauty.

“My clients say I never close,” she says. “Who has time for that?”

Much more direct than most big developers I’ve interviewed, Consolo has a human side. She shed a tear when she spoke of her childhood. Her father died when she was 2, her mother when she was 12. Both were psychologists. Her grandmother raised her.

“I have always done what I had to do,” says Consolo, married three times and currently single.

Faith Hope Consolo is her given name. She never changed it despite the marriages.

“If I don’t change my name, I don’t have to change any monograms,” she laughs.

Her office is on the third floor, overlooking Madison Ave. and 57th St. She can see the three levels of the Dahesh Museum of Art , a deal she made happen. She wears designer dresses from Narciso Rodriguez and Chanel, and tasteful diamonds on her watch and on her ears. Living on 62nd St. between Madison and Fifth Aves., she is around the corner from Barneys and the Judith Leiber shop, a store she is particularly proud of.

“I had to go to Leona Helmsley’s apartment building and wait in the lobby with samples of Judith’s work until Leona would see me,” says Consolo. “Her lawyers were not negotiating, so I went right to the source. Leona, who I knew, loved the idea. Of course she wanted Judith. I walk by that store every day on my way home.” There are more gems in her story repertoire.

“Everyone thinks Cartier owns their building on Fifth Ave.,” she says . “They don’t.” According to Consolo, the building at Fifth and 52nd St. is owned by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, the multi-billion-dollar charitable organization and business empire established by Aristotle Onassis for his deceased son.

When Cartier’s 75- year lease was up for renewal in the late 1990s, the men running the foundation, known in worldwide business circles as “the Beards,” contemplated giving the lease to Viacom for an MTV store. On behalf of Cartier, Consolo flew to Greece to “convince” the “Beards” that Cartier was a New York institution anchoring the popular street. They agreed, and Cartier kept its flagship U.S. store.

A recent Consolo brand to watch includes Sermoneta , a glove store she found while walking the streets of Rome. Its first New York store just arrived on Madison Ave. and 58th St. Multi-colored gloves dress up white walls.

“My mother used to buy me gloves in Rome when I was a child,” says Consolo. “New York needed a good glove store.” Apparently so does Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where she has plans to take them next.

What about trends.

“Last year was shoes,” she says. “This year, it’s handbags. It was jewelry a couple of years back. There are 24 jewelry stores on Madison Ave. between 57th and 81st Sts. Even I couldn’t have predicted that.”

She could talk forever. How can you tell a neighborhood is going to change? I ask.

“Fashion follows food,” she says. “If there are restaurants, stores are coming.”