But even the most basic facts had been a challenge, such as Ms. Consolo’s correct birth date. Before the obituary was published, I persuaded her assistant to send me a photo of her driver’s license so that we could accurately report her age. She was 73, not 69, as she maintained.

I met Ms. Consolo in the early 2000s. At one of our first dinners together, her characteristic outrageousness was on display. As we sat at the bar of a TriBeCa restaurant, she sipped wine and dished on the latest industry gossip.

On the other side of her sat a handsome young banker-type, and as Ms. Consolo talked, she casually reached over and began eating the French fries off the stranger’s dinner plate.

I was amazed; so was he. As the gentleman looked at her, wide-eyed, wondering why she was eating his fries, the zaftig Ms. Consolo leaned her elbow on the bar, the V-neck of her dress slipping to reveal her bra strap, and barked in her best brassy-dame tone: “What?! You weren’t even eating them!”

She then turned her back on him and continued our conversation as if nothing was amiss.

Admittedly, she was more Mae West than Grace Kelly. But that was the thing about Ms. Consolo: She kept you on your toes. There was no time to wonder why this supposed blue blood had a Brooklyn accent and a scrappy bravado.

Ms. Consolo was a singular figure in the world of retail real estate. She loved to shop and incorporated it into her deal making. She represented Godiva chocolates, she said, because they were her favorite, and she brought Zara to New York after going to Barcelona on a shopping spree.

“She really changed the retail marketplace,” said William Rudin, one of the city’s largest developers. “Her street smarts and entrepreneurial spirit and flair — even the way she dressed and communicated — attracted an amazing clientele, some of the great international brands, to New York.”