“Retailers are doing well, but growth is challenging as there isn’t much space to be had,” says Greg Eisenman, managing director of retail tenant services at Franklin Street. There is a major appetite for deals, but interest rates and construction costs have made development difficult, so it is taking longer for retailers to find space and close deals.
The challenges are part of the overall historical retail cycle, explains Eisenman. “As brokers, we have to get a lot more creative, and just continue to dig deeper and harder. Nothing’s coming easily, but that’s okay. We’re not in this business for it to be easy. We’re here to work hard for our clients.”
Eisenman sees service-oriented tenants, food and beverage (F&B) tenants and auto concepts expanding and thriving. He notes, “There are more restaurant concepts now than I think I’ve ever seen before, which is really exciting. It’s a great way to activate spaces. Landlords, as they hone their shopping centers and work on their tenant mixes, are continuing to focus on how to bring people together by putting together a mix of traditional retail and higher-end service users — or not higher-end, depending on the type of product. And then great F&B is what’s bringing people out of their homes and into the shopping centers.”
Watch the video to learn more about creative approaches to retail spaces (including an Atlanta center with a dog park!) and how landlords are improving their shopping center merchant mix to draw in customers who want to stay longer and spend more.
This video was created as part of the Retail Insight newsletter by Shopping Center Business, a brief newsletter series leading up to the ICSC 2023 LAS VEGAS conference and including post-conference video interviews. The videos in the publication are created in conjunction with our content partners, which sponsor the newsletter. Click here to subscribe.