SCBlog

With challenges including high interest rates, construction prices and longer permitting timelines, the cost to own, build, remodel and lease restaurant space today has gone through the roof. Forward-thinking restaurant tenants and retail landlords, though, are finding creative ways to make things work.  In today’s environment, it’s necessary to find imaginative solutions when neogitating lease terms and structures, in order make both tenants and landlords comfortable and willing to close transactions. Colliers’ retail brokerage team in Central Florida has recently observed several trends that illustrate this ingenuity.  Annual increases in …

Reed Cordish of The Cordish Companies gives a peek behind the curtain at Nashville Live!, the company’s newest attraction. The Cordish Companies owns and operates many entertainment districts surrounding professional sports arenas around the country, including Texas Live! in Arlington, Xfinity Live! in Philadelphia and Bally Sports Live! in St. Louis. The latest entry for the company is Nashville Live!, which will feature five levels of entertainment and dining at completion, as well as a floor dedicated to private events. In 2022, The Cordish Companies purchased the historic George Jones …

How retail center owners can ride the $100 billion third wave of digital. Industry experts are calling retail media networks the ‘third wave’ of digital. A number of large retailers have already earned more than $1 billion with their retail media networks. This source of high margin annual revenue also has the potential to impact retail center owners.  How is Retail Media the Third Wave of Digital? Each wave of change since the world has leaned more toward digital marketing has brought both disruption and opportunity.  The first big wave …

Legal covenants often cause excessive property taxation for mall owners that are looking to redevelop. The repurposing of malls and anchor stores is a popular topic in community development circles, but legal restrictions make redevelopment extremely difficult. Often locked into their original use by covenants, malls and anchor stores are often grossly over-valued for property tax purposes.  In pursuing a redevelopment, taxpayers should ensure the properties are fairly assessed and taxed.  Debilitating Obsolescence It is difficult to overstate the plight of malls and department store anchors. Gone are the halcyon …

Looking beyond aesthetics, many are viewing a property’s design as a valuable asset. As centers evolve to have more experiential tenants, many are looking at design as one way to convey experience to visitors. Adding open-air elements, like public gathering spaces, parks and murals, has become popular. Centers are also more open to blending uses than creating retail districts. SCB recently interviewed Mitra Esfandiari, partner at Long Beach, California-based RDC, who has worked on a number of forward-thinking centers over the past decade. SCB: How are center owners viewing design …

To forge ahead, the retail industry might want to look back. Rapid growth of online sales has vastly outstripped traditional retail sales by a considerable percentage. Since 2012, online commerce has grown by roughly 14 percent annually1 while traditional in-store sales have ticked along in the low single digits.2 As a result, it has been forecast that the social utility of retail real estate has run its course, to be replaced in large part by online shopping. Certainly, during the height of the pandemic, it seemed as though this prophecy …

With pandemic-related disruptions fading with time, the retail sector has recovered in impressive fashion. Capitalizing on a flight to quality, 2021 ushered in a dramatic increase in deal flow and revealed surprising resilience following an unusually challenging 18 to 24 months. While market-to-market and sector-to-sector variations remain, the overall mood for retail and mixed-use developers is one of grounded optimism. The pandemic prompted changes in the ways spaces are used and prioritized, and it also accelerated existing trends. Perhaps the most notable acceleration is the pressure on anchor-dependent enclosed malls. …