Light begins to shine on expanding retailers as available space hits a two-year high ICSC Las Vegas: Show Scoop 20 Tech, Supply Chain Innovations SPECS Show Recap
FOR BUSINESS! Opportunities abound as available retail space reaches its highest level in two years.
Profile in Leadership: Gap Inc. CEO Richard Dickson discusses the apparel giant’s successful turnaround and reinvigoration. 16
SPECS 2025 Recap: Coverage of Chain Store Age’s 61 st annual SPECS Show, the retail industry’s leading event for store design/ development, construction and facilities management, includes the following:
• SPECS 2025 featured dynamic keynotes, targeted educational sessions on critical industry topics and plenty of business networking.
• Session Spotlight: Artificial intelligence can reduce the costs and improve the efficiency of facilities maintenance operations.
• Session Spotlight: Speakers discussed efforts to close the skilled trades gap.
• Session Spotlight: Adaptive reuse can provide retailers with cost savings of 15% to 20%.
•CSARetail’sTopWomenAwards honor female executives in store development and facilities management.
Store Spaces Q&A: Arch Painting’s Rich Kilgannon discusses how retailers can benefit from painting refreshes
REAL ESTATE 27
Las Vegas SHOW SCOOP
Leaders of the retail real estate industry give their views on strategic leasing, mixed-use center management, creating great customer experiences, and more.
Al Williams & Michael Burden on redefining retail real estate services
Steve Cassella on the power of strategic leasing
Laura Barr on space as a magnet for both customers and talent
Chris Maguire on the durability of retail real estate
Paul Ghermezian on creating singular customer experiences
Stephen Congel on the core value of traditional retail
Kristin Mueller & Sean McNamara on a new formula for mixed-use center management
Paul Kurzawa on the new retail experience
Paul Weinschenk on 60 years of retail real estate innovation
Adam Ifshin on the possible effects of tariffs
TECH
Twenty tech and supply chain innovations that have transformed retail during the past 100 years.
CBRE’S Laura Barr stresses that elevated store experiences give retailers an edge for hiring and keeping good in-store talent.
Innovation Looks Different in Retail These Days
From a Japanese apparel giant to an advanced AI shopping assistant, the companies on Fast Company’s annual “The Top 10 Most Innovative Retail Companies of 2025” list seem to have little in common at first glance. But a deeper dive reveals they share a common trait: a willingness to disrupt standard business practices — or, in some cases, their own business model.
Here is a look at the Fast Company list (comments in italics are from Fast Company).
J. Crew Group: For reviving a heritage brand by marrying cutting-edge tech with old-school marketing.
The apparel retailer, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, executed a remarkable turnaround in 2024, attracting new customers by leaning into its heritage and embracing new technology that makes online shopping a social experience.
Coupang: For unlocking the logistics for shopping groceries and luxury clothes alike.
The company combines a one-stop e-commerce shop with a grocery delivery service, video streaming, membership program and more with free delivery benefits. It entered luxury retail in 2024 with the purchase of e-commerce company Farfetch.
Ikea: For launching a secondhand platform to keep consumers in its ecostream.
Customers can buy and sell their secondhand furniture on Ikea’s peer-to-peer marketplace, Ikea Preowned, which launched in August. When an item is purchased, the seller chooses between receiving money or a store voucher with a 15% bonus.
Pandora: For spinning recycled gold and silver into new jewelry.
In January 2024, the company said it was revising its entire supply chain to use only
recycled precious metals, which can be reused indefinitely without losing value.
Fast Retailing: For introducing micro-fashion trends to Gen Z Americans.
Uniqlo’s parent debuted its youth-focused brand in the U.S. with a New York City flagship. GU highlights innovative microtrends popular with young consumers, selecting only a few trends to focus on each season.
Swap: For helping DTC brands send products to customers around the globe.
The London-based company provides an operating system that consolidates logistics into a single suite of tools to manage e-commerce operations, offering its DTC customers the ability to ship packages, track them in real time, manage cross-border logistics and more.
Crisp: For cutting waste by forecasting demand for consumer packaged goods.
The firm consolidates data and analytics on inventory, sales and returns from more than 40 grocery retailers and distributors into an easily digestible digital report, with clients that include Hormel, Kraft and more.
Amazon: For creating an assistant to help shoppers navigate its offerings.
Amazon’s AI-powered conversational shopping assistant Rufus seamlessly synthesizes information from a range of sources, including customer reviews and relevant stores, to answer consumers’ queries.
Perfect Corp.: For letting customers try makeup and skincare virtually.
The company’s augmented reality assistant helps retailers and makeup/ skincare brands create virtual try-on experiences for customers. Perfect’s tools integrate directly onto clients’ websites, allowing consumers to virtually test items — even hairstyles — before purchase.
Constructor: For pointing shoppers toward what they need — even when they’re not sure.
The company’s AI shopping assistant, deployed by major global e-commerce sites, can answer complex, hyper-specific questions, using location data and other information to generate a tailored, shoppable packing list.
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Open for Business
Available retail space reaches its highest levels in two years — though most of the freed-up opportunities are in Class B and C properties.
By Zachary Russell
Though new construction of retail real estate space continues to remain at low levels, space availability received an adrenaline shot in the first quarter of 2025.
Commercial real estate data firm CoStar revealed in a recent report that available retail space has increased by approximately 12.5 million sq. ft. since the start of the year.
Fueled by high-profile store closures, which more than doubled in 2024 compared to 2023, availability has reached 4.8%, the most retail space available for lease than at any point in the past two years.
A changing economic environment has led to a diverse list of retailers to close hundreds of stores or shut down operations entirely. Outside of the notable retail casualties of Big Lots, Joann, and Forever 21, chains including Dollar General, Macy’s, JCPenney, and GameStop have all announced plans to close stores this year.
“Overall, higher occupancy costs, higher labor costs, and higher costs from suppliers are making for a tougher landscape,” said Brandon Svec, national director of U.S. retail analytics at
“Mall operators are going to look to non-traditional tenants. That is going to be an interesting thing to look at — not just this year, but over the next couple of years.”
R.J. Hottovy, Placer.ai
CoStar Group. “Some of it is the shifting consumption profile within the economy today. Consumers are really pushing more towards essential purchases and away from discretionary purchases, especially those consumers in the bottom 80% or so of the income bracket.”
The increase in retail spaces has been seen across the United States, but some markets are seeing greater rises than others. Of the 143 U.S. markets within the CoStar national retail index, available retail space increased in 79 over the past year, while 64 saw a decline in retail space availability over the same time frame.
In comparison, in the first quarter of 2024, only 58 of the 143 markets increased retail space availability over the prior year, while 85 saw availability decline.
Among the 44 major U.S. retail markets, defined as those with at least 100 million sq. ft. of retail space, availability increased in 24 of them over the past year. As of March 2025, the U.S. average availability rate was 4.8%.
Austin, Texas, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis saw the highest year-over-year increases in availability, while fast-growing cities such as Tampa, Fla., Nashville, Tenn., and Orlando, Fla., saw availability decrease the most. Detroit and key California markets (Inland Empire, Los Angeles, and Sacramento) had the highest overall availability rates. When it comes to what size properties are becoming available, CoStar found that large boxes, including those formerly occupied by chains such as Big Lots and Joann, are leading the increase. For the first quarter of 2025, spaces of 25,000 sq. ft. or more saw a 12.9% increase in availability compared to the first quarter of 2024.
Spaces between 10,000 and 24,999 sq. ft. saw a 9.3% increase in the period, and spaces between 5,000 and 9,999 sq. ft. saw a 3.0% increase.
The beginning of 2025 marked the fourth-straight quarter of increased availability for these large properties.
Construction
Retail construction has remained consistently low for seven years, according to a recent report from Cushman & Wakefield, contributing to low vacancy rates, even as store closures mounted last year. And it hasn’t been just retail impacted by higher interest rates, material inflation, and labor costs.
Aldi aims to open more than 220 stores this year.
Industrial and multifamily construction pipelines have dropped below first quarter of 2020 levels by 17% and 8%, respectively, and office development, at record highs in 2020, has declined significantly from 135 million sq. ft. to under 30 million sq. ft.
“Store closures have primarily fallen on Class B properties,” said Svec. “The Joanns, the Party Citys — all of these will provide a wave of supply. New construction is almost nonexistent. Costs overall are a hard hurdle to overcome on ground-up construction.”
A recent report from CBRE further proved the fact of increasing large space availability. Georgia, part of the fast-growing Sun Belt region, saw available anchor space increase by a whopping 57% in 2024.
At the end of last year, there was 6.8 million sq. ft. of anchor space available spread across 151 properties, compared to 4.3 million sq. ft. at the end of 2023.
Joe Parrott, senior VP of retail services at CBRE, said that the closures of chains such as Conn’s and Bargain Hunt disproportionately impacted availability in the South and Southeast. Conn’s closed more than 553 locations across its two banners, while Bargain Hunt closed 92 stores.
“Those, combined with the big national chains like Big Lots, American Freight, and Joann that went under, Georgia was affected by all of them,” he said. “Whereas the West or Northeast didn’t have all of those closures.”
“Store
closures have primarily fallen on Class B properties,” said Svec. “The Joanns, the Party Citys — all of these will provide a wave of supply. But new construction is still almost nonexistent.”
Brandon Svec, CoStar
Who will fill new available spaces?
As to the next tenants that could fill vacant retail space, it appears that grocers, restaurants, and specialty retailers are the most primed for success.
According to Datex Property Solutions’ Tenant Track for 2025, categories with the highest six-year sales per sq. ft. averages were grocery chains ($597), beauty retailers ($686), fast-food chains ($673), restaurants ($583), and sporting goods retailers ($339).
Drug stores, specialty food chains, pet retailers, and dollar stores have seen their merchant health move in the opposite direction over the same period.
“Certain merchant categories disproportionately benefited from the pandemic and others were adversely affected,” said Mark Sigal, CEO of Datex. “Until recently, there’s been a dearth of available space for the merchants and merchant categories that are expanding.”
CBRE’s report noted that amid high-profile store closures, some categories are ready to expand into the bigger Class B and C spaces. Fitness and recreation tenants filled 20% of available anchor space in Georgia, followed by apparel and shoes (16%), and furniture and decor (14%).
“The chains in categories that are profitable and have cash on hand are looking to grow,” added Parrott, noting that increased availability will mean greater competition for both retailers looking to expand and property owners alike.
“Prior to this recent spate of liquidations, it had become much more of a landlord’s market than the historical norm,” he said. “Now we’ve reached a healthy market equilibrium.”
Competition among tenants for quality space is fierce, added Perrott, but owners of lower-quality space are now having to compete for tenants.
“We’re seeing a widening of the rent gap between quality spaces and secondary spaces, and I think that’s going to widen further,” he said.
R.J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at retail data firm Placer.ai, noted that just as changing consumer behavior led to store closures for some already challenged retailers, it will also have an impact on which chains will fill vacant spaces in B and C centers.
“There’s been a shift to mass merchants, which certainly has put some pressure on these retailers [that have closed stores], and certainly online retailers put some downward pressure on them,” said Hottovy. “A consistent theme of off-price and a ‘treasure hunt’
Five Below will have 150 new stores in place by early 2026.
atmosphere has been very popular –low prices but unique products is a recipe that’s worked very well in this environment.”
As an example, Hottovy noted that private label and value grocers such as Aldi and Lidl have been very disruptive in taking visits from traditional grocers.
Hottovy added that while off-price apparel chains such as TJ Maxx and Ross are expanding their footprint in large open spaces, service businesses like massage, hair, and nail salons are filling smaller open spaces at shopping centers.
Successful fast-casual and quick-serve chains are growing as well, and despite high construction costs, some properties are building new structures to accommodate restaurants where possible.
“Some of these B and C locations are adding pad locations in the parking lots, and we’re seeing some of the chicken chains and coffee chains take that space,” Hottovy noted.
Investments and redevelopments at newer properties in better locations will also have an impact on how managers of Class B and C properties attempt to diversify their tenant mix while filling spaces.
Mixed-use developments bringing housing, entertainment options, and lifestyle amenities to Class A centers will push out some tenants, and force B and C properties to get more creative to compete for foot traffic.
“All it takes is one new tenant to change the fortune of a property,” said Hottovy. “Mall operators are going to look to non-traditional tenants. That is
going to be an interesting thing to look at — not just this year, but over the next couple of years.”
“Competition among tenants for quality space is fierce, but owners of lowerquality space are now having to compete for tenants.”
Joe Parrott, CBRE
Will rents decrease with more availability?
According to the Datex report, retail rents increased only slightly (2.79%) in 2024, even as store closures increased throughout the year. Experts say that given the severe lack of new construction, rents likely won’t decrease across the board, but could in select areas.
CoStar’s Svec said that clustered vacancies will likely reduce the ability of landlords to increase rents at the same rate as the rest of the market, as new tenants will be competing with multiple other vacancies nearby.
“We are at a historic low for space, and nearly two-thirds of that space is B or C, so when we think about the higher quality opportunities, there just really aren’t a lot out there,” said Svec. “We are going to see rental growth slow in the areas where availability stacks up on top of each other. If you have a Joann and a Big Lots and a Party City and all three
are sitting vacant, that is certainly going to impact rents around that area on the larger boxes, but not as much on the smaller spaces.”
CBRE’s Georgia report showed a slight decrease in both average asking rents and average rent comps from 2023 to 2024.
“There’s two kinds of tenants out there: the ones that are seeking the best quality space, and the ones that are looking for the best deal,” said Parrott. “The ones looking for the deals are going to find more opportunities to expand this year.”
Parrott added that more deal-oriented rental agreements will take place this year, which will pull the average rent caps down, but will not be reflective of declining rates across the board on comparable space.
What’s next?
The spate of store closures has enlivened the ever-changing retail landscape. The good news for expanding retailers, however, is that some expect the closures to continue — especially as new tariffs begin to impact the global economy.
“We expect store closures to continue through the remainder of 2025, and at a pace that will outstrip the rate at which retailers are backfilling space,” said Al Williams and Michael Burden, co-heads of North American real estate services at Gordon Brothers, in a written reply to questions posed by Chain Store Age. “While select categories, particularly discount and service-based retailers, are expanding, overall absorption remains uneven. That said, the leasing market is showing real resilience in high-demand trade areas.”
Despite tough economic times, there is a potential bright side to store downsizing. Experts say retailers closing stores can potentially benefit both retailers looking to right-size, and property managers looking to bring new tenants – and life – to a property.
“Store closures can kind of get negative headlines, but in a lot of cases, it’s a good thing for some of these retailers,” said Hottovy. “We’ve seen such a shift in migration, and we’ve seen changes in consumer behavior. In some cases, store closures are necessary to make a stronger store portfolio.”
Jersey Mike’s plans to double its store count to 10,000 over the next five years.
Profiles in Leadership: Q&A With Gap Inc. CEO
Richard Dickson leads turnaround at apparel giant
By Marianne Wilson
Gap Inc. is in the midst of a turnaround that has been gaining momentum across its brands. Industry experts give much of the credit for the company’s improved performance and restored relevancy to Richard Dickson, who took the reins as CEO in August 2023 after serving as a top executive at Mattel where, among other things, he revived its iconic Barbie brand.
Chain Store Age spoke with Dickson about Gap Inc. and its path forward.
Gap Inc. has made great progress recently. Where does the company stand in terms of its turnaround and revitalization?
Gap Inc. has indeed made significant strides across our brands and platform this past year. We’ve strengthened our financial footing through greater operational and financial rigor, which has enabled us to focus on reinvigorating our storied brands, and that work is starting to show up in the metrics.
We’ve also seen positive market share growth, with Old Navy and Gap leading the charge. Each of our brands — Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta — is at a different stage in this journey, but all are showing promising signs of growth and renewed relevance. While there’s still work to be done, the progress we’ve made is encouraging, and we’re committed to maintaining this momentum
What are the company’s top priorities as it regains its footing?
First, as I noted before, we are committed to maintaining operational and financial rigor. That is critical to ensuring we have a strong foundation to support our strategic initiatives and are managing our resources efficiently.
Second, we are strengthening our platform by leveraging technology and enhancing our operational capabilities to drive efficiency and effectiveness across the organization and our massive global supply chain.
Third, we are reinvigorating our brands
for growth by reconnecting with our customers, delivering trend-right products, and amplifying our brand stories through culturally relevant marketing.
Finally, we are reigniting a culture of creativity within our organization, encouraging innovation and fostering an environment where new ideas can thrive.
Together, these priorities are enabling us to drive sustainable growth and reestablish Gap Inc. as a leader in the fashion industry. You can see our progress reflected in market share growth across our brands, and a higher stock valuation on Wall Street.
Gap has quite a heritage. How does the 55-year-old company balance its past with its present — and future?
Gap Inc. has a rich heritage of shaping iconic American style and culture, and as we just celebrated our 55th anniversary, we are deeply committed to honoring our past while driving forward into the future. Our strategy is rooted in reinvigorating our brands by drawing on what made them special in the first place, while continuously evolving to meet the needs and desires of today’s customers. For example, leveraging our heritage to inspire modern, culturally
relevant campaigns, such as the “Linen Moves” campaign, where we combined classic styles with contemporary trends.
As we look to the future, we will continue to celebrate our heritage while embracing new ideas and opportunities to shape the next chapter of Gap Inc.
What role does a company’s culture play in its overall performance? Has it changed over the years?
As the saying goes, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” A company’s culture is pivotal to its overall performance, so at Gap Inc. we are building a culture rooted in creativity and customer-centricity.
Over the years, we’ve seen our culture evolve from one of complacency to one of greater accountability, and this ongoing shift is crucial as we evolve into a truly high-performing organization.
“Location, location, location” used to be a mantra in retail. Fast forward to 2025 what do you see as the fundamentals retailers must get right to appeal to customers and succeed?
Retail is detail. A consistent and trustworthy customer experience across online and in-store channels is essential to build and retain customer loyalty. Storytelling is also vital, as it helps brands connect with customers on an emotional level, making them more than just places to buy stuff.
Looking ahead, how do you anticipate retail changing during the next decade?
We have a stable of iconic American brands, so our task is to stay abreast of trends, without becoming trendy. I think this means embracing new ideas and evolving alongside the consumer to stay relevant in a dynamic landscape.
Ultimately, the goal is to maintain a seamless and engaging brand experience that resonates with customers across platforms and drives sustainable growth.
Richard Dickson has led Gap Inc. since August 2023
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Retail Workers Want Better Security
Theft, crime takes toll on hiring and retention
By Marianne Wilson
Theft and crime are driving retail workers to look for new roles.
More than four in 10 retail workers in the U.S. say they are likely to leave their current job in the next 12 months due to personal safety concerns, according to research conducted by the Loss Prevention Research Council in partnership with Verkada.
The study found that safety concerns are widespread.
More than one in four (27%) retail workers reported they have felt unsafe at work. Their top concerns were theft (68%) and customer aggression (51%) or harassment (48%).
Their fears aren’t unfounded: Fiftyfour percent of retail workers experienced or witnessed customer aggression in their workplace at least once in the past 12 months. And 60% said the same about theft.
The threats are taking a toll on retention as well as hiring. Nearly 20% of retail workers report they have considered looking for a new job due to personal safety concerns. At the same time, retailers face hurdles when they’re backfilling these roles. More than a third (37%) of store managers agree that concerns about safety are a barrier to hiring.
Better Security
Retail workers believe better security would help: Nearly three in four (71%)
retail workers who have experienced some type of violence at work say they would feel safer with enhanced security measures and 74% also think their company should increase security.
Those same respondents say that theft (77%), robbery (76%), and physical assaults (61%) could have been prevented had better security been in place.
But there is a disconnect between workers’ experiences and what they (and their employers) are doing about the same. Nearly one in four (22%) retail workers say their workplace has minimal to no security and 62% say that their company hasn’t changed the level of security measures in their company in the last 12 months.
“It’s unclear if retailers are actually not changing their security posture, or if they’re not effectively communicating those changes to their frontline employees,” the report stated.
As to the kinds of security that they want, retail workers report that video security (48%), on-site security guards (47%) and alarm systems (45%) would make them feel the safest. Other security measures referenced include panic buttons (30%) and parking lot surveillance towers/units (30%).
Interestingly, women are more likely than men to report that panic buttons would make them feel safer (38% vs. 23%). And folks in cities and suburbs are more likely than those in rural areas to report that weapons detection systems would make them feel safer (28% vs. 15%).
However, respondents were more likely to report that vehicle identification/LPR technology would make them feel safer than city or suburban counterparts (24% vs. 17% and 10%, respectively.
“Retail is a cornerstone of the economy, supporting one in four American jobs,” said Read Hayes, Ph.D., executive director of the Loss Prevention Research Council. “The unfortunate
Violence differs by area and retail category
Although retail workers in cities report experiencing violence more than their suburban counterparts, the suburbs are still feeling the impact. Those working in the city are more likely than those in the suburbs or rural areas to have experienced robbery (22% vs. 16% vs. 11%) and smash and grabs (19% vs. 13% vs. 12%).
Workers in the city are more likely to agree that they would feel safer if there were more security measures in place.
Retail workers in cities also rated their security higher than their suburban counterparts.
Grocery stores and big box/superstores are the most common places retail workers encounter violence (21% each), followed by retail warehouses or distribution centers (15%). Other common places include department stores (17%) and specialty stores, such as a Hallmart store or jewelry shop (15%)
reality is that today, retail workers are being asked to shoulder unacceptable risks every time they clock into work.”
Reporting
Retail workers also need better mechanisms to report these threats to law enforcement. Only half of respondents always report violent incidents to police/ law enforcement. The number drops even lower when asked about witnessing a coworker(s) experiencing physical violence, where only 44% reported to police or law enforcement.
Easier tools and mechanisms for retail workers to report incidents would be welcomed, as would faster response times. In-depth interviews revealed that in some cases, offenders left the store before police arrived on the scene.
Responses from employers and law enforcement to reports could be improved: Thirty-two percent of those who have reported multiple verbal threats to their employer have been dissatisfied with the response.
Safety concerns are widespread among retail employees.
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SPECS Puts Spotlight on Brick-and-Mortar
CSA’s annual show focused on store development, facilities management
By Marianne Wilson
Retail executives and suppliers involved in the planning, design, construction and maintenance of stores, restaurants and non-traditional concepts came together at Chain Store Age’s 61th annual SPECS Show.
The event, held March 9-11 at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas, attracted leading retail companies that, combined, operate a total of more than 350,000 stores. All sectors of the industry were represented, from discounters, specialty stores and supermarkets to convenience stores, home-improvement centers and more.
In addition, restaurants and non-traditional specialty concepts, including financial and health care, were also in attendance.
“Each year SPECS brings together the nation’s leading retailers and suppliers to provide the critical solutions and services needed to compete in the ever-changing retail landscape,” said Gary Esposito, SPECS chairman and VP of Chain Store Age, in opening remarks at the show. “Consumers expect great
store experiences and inviting well maintained spaces — two priorities that touch everyone in this room.”
The show included approximately 30 targeted educational sessions on the latest trends and technologies transforming the design, construction and maintenance of physical stores and restaurants, with insights from retailers and industry experts alike. The sessions, created by the SPECS Advisory Board, covered a wide range of topics, from the impact of AI on store development to the shortage of skilled trade labor to net zero buildings.
The Solution Center exhibit floor featured a diverse array of leading suppliers offering innovative solutions and services designed to provide a better store experience for customers as well as more efficient operations.
With everything on site and included in the program, SPECS provided plenty
of business partnering, collaboration and networking opportunities in sessions, at meal functions and on the exhibit floor.
Retailers and industry suppliers also had the opportunity met one-on-one during the Face-2-Face Information Exchange.
Keynotes
This year’s opening keynote was given by Troy Aikman, legendary football icon, NFL announcer on ABC television and successful business entrepreneur. Aikman, who was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006 and can be seen on ABC’s Monday Night Football, discussed his journey from football hero to business leader.
Aikman stressed the importance of teamwork during his keynote, something he has carried over from sports to his business ventures.
“My entire career has been around being part of a great team,” he told
Retailers and other attendees gathered at breakfast for the opening keynotes.
Keynote speaker Troy Aikman discussed his journey from NFL legend to successful business entrepreneur.
attendees. “That has allowed me to be successful. That’s the lesson.”
The day-two keynote at SPECS was given by financial journalist Ron Insana, senior analyst and commentator at CNBC. Insana, who also hosts the daily nationally syndicated radio program, The Market Score Board Report, delivered a sobering but ultimately hopeful message about the U.S. economy.
“The level of uncertainty around policy will make this a more turbulent year than we’ve seen in a while,” Insana said. But The U.S. economy is extremely resilient. It’s always moving forward and that’s still the case.”
Insana also touched on the growth and development of artificial intelligence during his presentation, noting that AI as a tool to improve efficiencies and drive lower costs is happening “faster than we anticipated.”
Other speakers included Read Hayes, loss prevention pioneer and director of the Loss Prevention Research, who discussed best practices for combatting retail crime. Hayes told attendees that environmental design, the use of data from drones and artificial intelligence analytics all support early detection of retail loss.
“The biggest gains however, are going to come from sharing raw data with local police departments — and this requires trust,” he said. “Crime and loss prevention
is all about partnerships and understanding each other.”
The show also included the presentation of Chain Store Age’s Retail’s Top Women Awards in Store development and Facilities. Nine outstanding female executives were honored (See story on page 24.)
SPECS 2026 will be held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., which is just outside of Washington D.C. The show is scheduled for March 8-10
CSA Retail’s Top Women Awards in store development and facilities management were presented at the SPECS Show
Noted financial journalist and commentor Ron Insana gave a keynote on the state of the economy.
Retailers and suppliers networked in the Solution Center exhibit hall, home to companies involved in store design, construction and facilities maintenance.
Gary Esposito, SPECS chairman and VP of Chain Store Age, welcomed attendees to the 61st annual show.
Retailers Get Creative Through Adaptive Reuse
By Zachary Russell
The concept of adaptive reuse is continuing to gain momentum as retailers look to transform old and often historic buildings into new spaces.
At Chain Store Age’s recent SPECS show, Kaitlyn Harness, senior designer, and Mary Heapy, senior associate, from sustainable design and engineering firm Arcadis detailed how companies are transforming older properties in the session “Adaptive Reuse: Bringing New Life Into Buildings.”
“Adaptive reuse focuses on repurposing existing buildings that have outlived their original purpose,” explained Heapy. “Retailers are becoming more aware of their carbon footprint, are looking to breathe new business opportunities into areas that are getting a little ‘tired,’ and are also looking for the opportunity to ignite social change.”
Harness and Heapy named the main drivers of adaptive reuse as fiscal responsibility, sustainability and community impact. With construction costs rising and labor issues impacting hiring, renovating and modernizing older structures can be a cost-effective way to bring new character to an area.
Adaptive reuse can offer a fiscal advantage for retailers, according to Arcadis, with cost savings ranging from 15% to 20% given there is often no or little demolition of the existing site, as well as not having to do utility work from scratch. This also saves new tenants time that would otherwise be spent planning a new project from the ground up.
On sustainability, lack of demolition eliminates much of the potential environmental impact, and allows new tenants to refit old buildings with sustainable materials. Adaptive reuse also aids in community impact by creating new
spaces in communities that may have been “neglected.”
“These buildings didn’t become abandoned or left behind for no reason,” said Heapy. “So we want to be as strong as we can to prepare the community for other things ahead.”
Despite the potential benefits, not all buildings are fit for adaptive reuse. Challenges include hazardous materials found in older structures such as asbestos, as well as accessibility compliance (with Americans with DIsabilities Act), additional environmental and zoning challenges, and more.
With construction costs rising and labor issues impacting hiring, renovating and modernizing older structures can be a cost-effective way to bring new character to an area
Different Types
Heapy detailed the different types of adaptive reuse: historic repositioning, historic preservation and mall repositioning.
“Historic repositioning is taking a historic building and then utilizing it with a new intent,” she said. “The example we have is the Uline Arena [in Washington, D.C.]. It was originally a basketball venue. At one point it was turned into a parking garage, and then it was left abandoned. In 2015, it was redone and REI built one of their flagship stores there. Now it is a beautiful retail space with offices and outdoor areas as well.”
Historic preservation is a similar adaptive reuse type, but instead of creating a new use for the old building, it is renovated and upgraded to meet its original purpose.
“An example of this is the Paramount Theater in New York City, which reopened in 2024,” noted Heapy. “Back in the 1960s, it was turned into a basketball court. It was brought back to be a concert venue just last year through a collaboration with Live Nation to make sure that it meets modern concert venue standards.”
Mall repositioning is a very common form of adaptive reuse, as e-commerce has changed consumers’ relationship with their local shopping mall. Now, formerly retail-only spaces are being updated to include mixed-use spaces, “revitalizing” the properties.
“An example of mall repositioning is Boston Quarter,” said Heapy. “It’s an ‘80s style mall, and it was renovated to be a mixed-use space that has offices, retail, and an event center with food halls.”
Arcadis’ largest example of adaptive reuse is Saks Fifth Avenue’s relocated flagship in Beverly Hills, Calif., which the retailer relocated from an adjacent building to a 136,000-sq.-ft., six-level space that was formerly home to Barneys New York.
The Arcadis-designed store features a Regency-style marble staircase and central skylight, accentuated by airy, pearlescent white atrium spaces and reflective columns on each floor to carry natural light throughout the space.
Metallic accents and playful pops of color including rugs, furniture pieces and vibrant wall coverings. Fixtures double as art pieces and appear throughout the space.
“Being designers, we’re always focused on how to integrate new designs with existing infrastructure in an existing building,” said Heapy. “There was a concept of duality between the old and the new, and we let that play into the final space. We weaved the Saks DNA in through the design of the space.”
Bridging the Skilled Trades Gap
By Zachary Russell
Amajor shortage of skilled trades workers is impacting the retail construction, maintenance and development sectors.
The challenge was addressed by speakers at the SPECS 2025 session, “Ensuring Future Workforce Success: Addressing the Skilled Trade Gap.” Panelists Mónica Muñoz, senior director of capital programs at DaVita Kidney Care, and Kate Cinnamo, executive director of nonprofit Explore the Trades, detailed the skills gap and what can be done to close it. (Explore the Trades is a non-profit organization that delivers information about plumbing, HVAC, and electrical to students throughout North America.)
Muñoz and Cinnamo are both members of the Skilled Trade Advisory Council (STAC), which aims to create awareness and opportunities on the growing need for skilled trades men and women.
According to Muñoz, the shortage of skilled trades workers began between 15 to 20 years ago, but was accelerated in the last handful of years by the COVID-19 pandemic. The shortage is being felt across the board — including in the electrical, plumbing, and flooring fields, just to name a few. Lack of craftsmanship, inflated costs, and increased lead times are all reasons for the skilled trade gap.
“It’s been hard to find the right labor to perform the way we expect them to,” said Muñoz. “Costs have also been escalating. Inflation is part of it, but the reality is that a shortage of labor increases cost. I have experienced general contractors either not being able to commit to projects, or extending projects, or not even being able
In construction alone, approximately 439,00 net new jobs are needed this year to keep up with demand, according to the Associated Builders and Contractors.
to take them at all because they don’t have the subcontractors either in that area or that field. This is a national problem.”
Challenges
Cinnamo told SPECS attendees that a societal shift toward pushing students to pursue college and university degrees and changes in the public education system both played a role in creating the skilled trades labor gap that is impacting the industry today.
“A lot of us in this room remember taking some sort of shop class in school, and slowly but surely the focus became standardized testing, taking away from those hands-on technical education classes,” she said. “It’s sort of this perfect storm of lack of awareness and reduced school funding for these classes. That has contributed greatly.”
According to recent data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are 1.7 million fewer Americans in the workforce now compared to February of 2020. In construction alone, approximately 439,00 net new jobs are needed this year to keep up with demand, according to the Associated Builders and Contractors, a national construction industry trade association representing more than 23,000 members.
Muñoz and Cinnamo explained that one of STAC’s main objectives, through education and hands-on programs, is to expose the next generation of workers to the trades, as the current generation of skilled trade employees begins to age out of the workforce.
“There are resources out there for anybody who wants to enter the trades, that is the good news,” said Muñoz. “There are unions that can provide apprenticeships. They train you and you can keep on with that career path.”
Muñoz added that women are a growing demographic within the trades, citing educational programs such as the MyWIC (Mentoring Young Women in Construction) day camp, which is a free summer experience for teenage girls to
learn hands-on at various construction trade training centers.
“The population of women in the United States is over 50% today,” she added. “Encouraging and encouraging women to enter the trades has also been effective.”
Cinnamo added that changing the way the trades are spoken about and viewed is critical in an effort to end the “stigma” around not attending a university and instead opting for trade school.
“Higher education equals four-year college and university,” she said. “I think we have the opportunity now to shift that definition, so that if you are planning to get a higher education it also applies to the four-year apprenticeship that you’re involved in. Higher education is also the hands-on, on-the-job training that a lot of us have.”
And although technology is shaping the world, including the fields of construction and maintenance, the need for skilled workers will still remain.
“Artificial intelligence will surely play a role in how the trades are performed or managed, but there will always be the need for manual labor,” said Muñoz.
“That will never go away. There are technological opportunities, and I think the call to action is for us to get involved one person at a time.”
Kate Cinnamo is executive director of Explore the Trades
Using AI to Enhance Predictive Maintenance
By Dan Berthiaume
Artificial intelligence can help retailers reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of facilities maintenance operations.
That was the theme of the SPECS 2025 session, “Getting ‘Smart’ About Facilities: Using AI to Improve Maintenance Operations.” Paul Tidwell, president of digital at technology consulting firm Geniant LLC, explained how retailers can leverage AI to predict facility equipment failures before they occur.
“Unplanned downtime due to equipment maintenance is problematic from a customer experience standpoint,” said Tidwell. “Reactive maintenance is just more expensive, especially if you have aging infrastructure.”
Tidwell noted that retailers have to maintain mechanical infrastructure and buildings, as well as environmental standards. All this can all become costly and have a negative impact on customer experience if performed reactively.
However, AI can enable retailers to conduct dynamic, real-time analysis of their entire facilities environment to help maximize operational efficiency while minimizing any customer discomfort, the speaker said.
Smart building management
Retailers have been generating terabytes and petabytes of data about their buildings, according to Tidwell, and now they need to use AI to aggregate control of their building data.
“You can perform tasks like automatic fault detection, so you can get faster issue detection and resolution,” said Tidwell. “We are already seeing real case studies around AI-based consumption monitoring and real-time adjustments that can drive some efficiencies.”
Tidwell said that retailers can build predictive maintenance systems in-house as well as select from a range of quality third-party predictive maintenance solutions.
Drones
Tidwell also discussed the utility of drones in supporting predictive building maintenance efforts.
“There are also drones that have magnetic armatures and wheels that can perform building and infrastructure evaluation,” he added. “You can start looking at how that could be leveraged across a bunch of retail facilities where you can look at not only the current state of a facility, but at that facility over time.
Tidwell said periodic drone-based reviews of building infrastructure can enable retailers to track developments such as how a roof is aging or whether cracks are getting bigger, without the need for people to manually review the condition of facilities until a drone has identified potential issues.
“You can use drone fleets to perform those tasks more frequently with less overhead and quicker results,” he explained. “It’s much faster for a drone to fly around the building, and then you can use the general review of that footage and have somebody go climb the building.
“Your best engineers may not be the ones who want to go climb up the side of a building, but they will sit in an office and review footage that’s been flagged by the revision system,” added Tidwell.
Refrigeration and HVAC
Tidwell also touched upon how predictive maintenance can help retailers control the costs and performance of refrigeration and HVAC systems.
“If you can extend refrigeration and HVAC equipment life by two to three years, that’s pretty meaningful,” Tidwell said. “Also not having a refrigeration unit go down with spoilage and the cascading effects that result is a big benefit of predictive maintenance.”
Tidwell cited the pressure that increased usage of large language models (LLMs) and other advanced artificial intelligence solutions is creating on the nation’s power
grid as another reason to perform predictive maintenance of refrigeration and HVAC equipment.
“AI can also help you reduce the maintenance and energy costs for refrigeration and HVAC systems through predictive maintenance,” he said. “It also can help you achieve your organizational sustainability and carbon footprint objectives.
Looking at the cost of launching a predictive maintenance program for refrigeration and HVAC, Tidwell said the up-front costs are lower for a smaller organization, but a larger enterprise will achieve value more quickly.
“If you have 50 stores, it’s going to cost you less to roll out predictive refrigeration and HVAC maintenance,” explained Tidwell. “There are fewer stores to put it in, but a longer time to value because of the scale factor.”
Conversely, Tidwell said that economy of scale means that a retailer with more than 100 stores will have higher upfront implementation costs but faster ROI. In addition, he reviewed what he called some “indirect savings” from these programs.
“You will get fewer complaints and better compliance,” said Tidwell. “You will be able to redeploy new capital against more meaningful business objectives for your organization, instead of just trying to kind of manage equipment lifecycle improvements.”
Paul Tidwell, president of digital, Geniant LLC
CSA Retail’s Top Women Awards.
Class of 2025 in Store Development and Facilities Management
By Deena Amato McCoy
Nine outstanding female executives in store development and facilities management were honored with Chain Store Age’s Retail’s Top Women Awards.
CSA’s Retail’s Top Women Awards program recognizes the crucial role that women play in key areas of retail operations. This year, the top women in store development — including store design and construction — and facilities management were honored at an awards presentation at SPECS.
The recipients of the 2025 awards in store development and facilities management are listed below.
Catherine Barnes
VP, facilities, energy and store development, RiteAid
Barnes began her career in interior design, but always had a passion for facilities and development. She parlayed her passion into a 25-year career that spans real estate, property management, facilities, construction and store development.
”Having a seat at the C-suite table is rare in the facilities and development world, so
being able to execute changes at this level has been an accomplishment during my eight years here [at RiteAid],” she said.
April Crofford
Senior director, store facilities management, Dollar General
In her current role at Dollar General, Crofford leads a team of approximately 125 individuals dedicated to executing the company’s facilities programs across more than 20,000 stores nationwide.
Prior to joining the discount giant in 2016, Crofford spent approximately nine years at Sam’s Club, supporting outside sales, membership retention, growth and in-club experiences.
Juliana Gois
Global real estate director, Nike
Gois started her career as an architect and, as her career progressed, her interests transitioned into construction and real estate development.
After joining Nike in 2020 as a retail construction manager, Gois was named senior store construction manager a year later, leading a 100-plus store construction
program across multiple store concepts in North America. She was appointed Nike’s global real estate director in August.
Heather Lindsay
Director of construction, Academy Sports + Outdoors
Lindsay joined Academy Sports in 1996 as a store associate. Over her 28 year-tenure with the company, she has moved up the corporate ladder taking on various leadership roles across construction.
In her current role, Lindsay leads the company’s new store and remodel construction teams. Her advice to women in the field: “If you´re passionate about a career in construction, don´t let anything hold you back.”
Meyers’ career at Schnuck Markets began 49 years ago as a clerk typist in the grocer’s facilities department. From there, she continued to take on roles of increasing responsibility.
As Schnucks’ director of facilities and
Retail’s Top Women in Store Development & Facilities Management Awards honorees were (L to R): Nicole Price; Heather Lindsay; Megan Schimmelpfenning; Amy Ward; Nancy Meyers; Ann Scott; April Crofford; Juliana Gois and Catherine Barnes.
equipment maintenance, Meyers manages a team that oversees all facilities, equipment, refrigeration, HVAC and energy management operations for 114 stores.
Nicole Price
Facilities manager, North America retail, MillerKnoll
Price’s almost 20-year career at MillerKnoll spans various roles and expertise across facilities management, budgeting and leading store development initiatives.
One of her proudest achievements: opening communication and fostering collaboration with internal stakeholders — a move that enables Price to successfully execute capital reinvestments and store development projects companywide.
Megan Schimmelpfenning
Senior design manager, Heartland Dental
Schimmelpfenning oversees the design team at Heartland and manages the company’s portfolio of new build projects from the design phase through permit completion.
During her nearly five-year tenure at Heartland, Schimmelpfenning counts as one of her biggest accomplishments managing and opening a group of second- generation conversion projects, which became the blueprint for future second-generation process improvements.
Ann Scott
Senior director of electric vehicles & utilities, 7-Eleven
One of the first females to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with a degree in electrical engineering, Scott has led soldiers in multiple countries, been a project manager at a major Dallas/Fort Worth-based design firm and spearheaded The Army & Air Force Exchange’s sustainability, real estate planning and new and existing construction activities in North America, Europe and Asia.
Scott takes pride in being one of the senior leaders on 7-Eleven’s construction, engineering, energy and facilities team. She leads 7-Eleven’s EV charging and utilities team which manages operations across more than 12,000 stores in the United States and Canada.
Amy Ward, Director, store design & planning, Schnuck Markets
Ward joined Schnuck Markets in 2016 as a project managerof facilities design — a year later she became manager of store design and planning.
In her current role, Ward a three-person team of designers whom she credits being instrumental in helping her build, establish and refine corporate standards for decor, store and fixture design, prototypes and design specifications companywide.
A Fresh Coat: Revitalizing stores with paint refreshes
From creating an inviting atmosphere and transforming a store to spotting underlying maintenance issues, a fresh coat of paint is one of a retailer’s most cost-effective investments. Rich Kilgannon, president and CEO of Arch Painting, spoke with Chain Store Age about the benefits of painting refreshes.
How does painting contribute to a store’s overall ambience and customer experience?
The overall physical appearance of a store is the first impression that retailers make on their customers. Curb appeal draws customers in, and ambiance helps encourage them to stay. A fresh coat of paint immediately improves the appearance of a space.
A building can go from looking drab to brand new with a fresh coat of exterior paint. Also, interior walls will look clean, light and bright after a new coat of paint. We consider it giving our customers a business advantage in today’s fiercely competitive environment.
Should painting refreshes and the like be part of a store’s regular maintenance plan? Absolutely. Painting is an important part of any store’s preventative maintenance plan. The visual appearance of the paint can be a ‘canary in the coal mine’ for underlying maintenance issues.
Bubbling or cracking can indicate air pockets or moisture presence, whereas fading or staining can be signs of water intrusion or harsh conditions (sun exposure, for example). Correcting small problems is the best way to avoid costly maintenance issues in the future.
What are the early signs that a building exterior needs a painting refresh?
Exterior paint has a long life and is designed to be weather resistant. Any signs of damage to the paint — fading, flashing or staining from water damage — means it’s time for a painting refresh. It’s important to remember that not only does a fresh coat of paint keep a store looking good, it also protects the building itself. Correcting minor
painting damage will not only give the property a facelift, but will also protect it from additional damage.
About how often should the interior of a retail store or restaurant be given a painting refresh?
We recommend that interior retail spaces be painted every two to three years. But keep in mind that high-traffic areas will need to be touched up more frequently. Spaces that are highly visible to customers will need more frequent maintenance.
Entryways, the payment area, changing rooms and corridors to the restrooms are often more likely to get scuffed up, simply by the sheer number of people regularly in the space.
Tell us about Arch Painting and the services it provides.
Arch Painting is the leading national provider of paint contracting services. In business since 1997, we have more than 800 crews nationwide and complete more than 10,000 jobs each year. We work with retailers across the country with both single and multiple locations to keep their stores looking fresh, clean and modern.
Our ability to delight customers reflects three things, starting with out commitment to delivering white glove service in an industry where, too often, relationships are treated casually. Second, it’s also a reflection of being a great place to work — happy employees are motivated to deliver great service.
Third, it reflects our use of innovation and technology to deliver great results faster and more efficiently. We see technology as essential to driving unmatched results.
What role does technology play in Arch’s offerings and how does it benefit customers?
We often don’t consider how technology comes into play with blue collar service industries like painting. But at Arch Painting, we have invested in several back-office and customer-facing
technology platforms that streamline our business resulting in speedier delivery and overall improved customer service.
The time we are able to save by using technology to streamline the administration of paperwork, estimates, work orders and contracts means that your project can be completed before other contractors are even able to schedule a walkthrough.
Does Arch provide painting services nationwide for multi-site clients?
Yes. Arch works with a number of multi-site retailers and restaurants nationwide. With over 800 crews, it is not uncommon for us to be at multiple sites of the same retailer on the same day. Our technology allows for seamless communication between the retailers’ facilities managers and our project managers allowing us to focus on unparalleled customer service.
What are some of the things a retailer should look for when contracting a commercial painting company?
It is essential to work with a contractor who has vetted crews for proper insurance and business practices. Beyond that, painters are in the service business, not just the painting business, and companies that are able to leverage technology to serve customers better can offer unparalleled customer service.
When painting contractors invest in technology their crews and project managers are better able to focus on customer needs, mastery of painting technique and rapid delivery of service.
Rich Kilgannon is president and CEO of Arch Painting.
LAS VEGAS
SHOW SCOOP
PAUL GHERMEZIAN on filling a center with fun
Laura Barr on space as a magnet for customers and talent
Stephen Congel on the mall business, present and future
Paul Weinschenk on 60 years of retail real estate innovation
Adam Ifshin on the ultimate power of the American consumer
Chris Maguire on the durability of retail
Al Williams & Michael Burden on redefining real estate services
Steve Cassella on the power of strategic leasing
Paul Kurzawa on the new retail experience
Kristin Mueller & Sean McNamara on a new formula for mixed-use property manageent
The GOAT himself at the opening of CardVault by Tom Brady at American Dream
CONTENTS SHOW SCOOP LAS VEGAS
Gordon Brothers’ Al Williams & Michael Burden, co-heads of North American Real Estate, acquired the Big Lots chain and immediately did a deal with Variety Wholesalers to take some 200 stores. They tell how they did it with the formation of a new team of ex-retailers.
Pacific Retail Capital Partners’ leasing EVP Steve Cassella explains how PCRP’s delivers made-to-order tenant curation results with leasing reps living in the communities they serve and working closely with property owners.
CBRE’S Americas Retail leader Laura Barr holds that elevating the workplace experience not only promotes employee engagement; it provides a competitive advantage in the race for talent, as well.
SRS Real Estate Partners chairman and CEO Chris Maguire on how--after nearly 20 years of constrained growth-retail development is finally rebounding with new investment, a growing pipeline of projects, and a notable uptick in new deliveries.
American Dream COO Paul Ghermezian maintains that his property has become the Madison Square Garden of retail real estate with signature events like Jonas Brother concerts, the Arena Football League’s ArenaBowl, and a spate of activations being planned for next year’s World Cup final at neighboring Met Life Stadium.
Pyramid Management Group CEO Stephen Congel holds that though, 20 years ago, traditional retail tenants made up some 90% of Pyramid’s malls tenants versus around 70% today, they remain the star performers that make guests stay longer and spend more.
JLL’s president of retail property management Kristin Mueller and managing director Sean McNamara tell about the institution of a new service unit at the global retail service provider called The Mixx—a leasing advisory that helps mixed-use center developers create bespoke identities for their projects and turn them into vibrant, market-leading destinations.
Centennial president Paul Kurzawa holds that the new competitive advantage in retail is about creating immersive encounters that make shopping an experience, not just a shopping trip.
Peterson Companies COO Paul Weinschenk tells the story of how, in 1965, builder Milt Peterson envisioned building suburban-based master-planned communities combining residential, office, retail, and hospitality uses and succeeded in turning his Peterson Companies into one of the creators of mixed-use development.
DLC Management Corp. CEO Adam Ifshin argues that retail is powered by the people, and that the implementation of tariffs will serve as a regressive sales tax on American consumers that could stymie spending.
When Nexus Capital failed to close on the Big Lots acquisition during the retailer’s bankruptcy, a full liquidation seemed inevitable. But Gordon Brothers had a different plan for handling the situation. Its team structured an unprecedented deal with Variety Wholesalers to take hundreds of stores, preserving the Big Lots brand and saving thousands of jobs. The industry had never seen a deal like it.
Chain Store Age sat down with Al Williams and Michael Burden to talk about how they’re changing the game in real estate services.
CSA: Both of you had long careers in retail real estate before joining Gordon Brothers in 2023. Why the move?
Williams: We had built the first business of its kind focused entirely on helping occupiers optimize their real estate portfolios and reduce occupancy costs. After selling to a general brokerage firm in 2015, we stayed on but grew increasingly frustrated. The culture prioritized deals over relationships, and over time we felt the focus had shifted away from what mattered most--delivering real value to clients. Gordon Brothers gave us the platform to return to our core values and execute our vision for what real estate services should be--smart, strategic, and built to solve today’s most complex challenges.
CSA: How does that vision play out day to day?
Burden: We blend real time data, operational expertise, and access to capital. That’s what sets us apart. Our platform translates market intelligence into strategy and action. And we don’t just advise—we execute. The capital behind us gives us flexibility, whether we’re helping restructure distressed assets or supporting growth initiatives.
We’ve also built an outstanding team, including many with retailer-side experience. They’ve sat in that seat, made the tough calls, and understand how decisions actually get made. That insight ensures our strategies are not just sound but also practical and aligned with how clients operate.
CSA: Has the model delivered results?
Williams: Absolutely. In just 18 months, we’ve worked with over 30 national retailers, helped open more than 500 stores, and restructured or renewed more than 1,000 leases. The resulting savings are in the hundreds of millions. We’re also now providing
AL WILLIAMS & MICHAEL BURDEN on redefining real estate services
lease administration to many of our clients as part of a fully integrated solution. But the real value is helping clients move faster, make smarter decisions, and execute plans that actually work.
In less than 18 months, we’ve built the largest advisory service of its kind. That speaks volumes about the demand for a more strategic, intelligent approach to real estate.
CSA: Your LEGO engagement was another high-profile deal. How has that partnership played out?
Burden: LEGO wanted to grow, but in a thoughtful and structured way. They were not just looking for new locations. They needed a roadmap. They also wanted to optimize their portfolio and lower overall occupancy costs. We helped them build a strategy for sustainable expansion, filled the pipeline, and reduced expenses along the way. It is a great example of how we help brands scale with precision and efficiency. It has been an incredible partnership. We really value the relationship and love working with their team.
CSA: Do you consider yourselves disruptors?
Williams: Yes, but not just for the sake of being different. The industry has been slow to evolve, and expectations have changed. We bring together strategy, data, and the ability to execute. That gives clients real confidence in uncertain situations. The disruption comes from how we operate and how much more we’re able to deliver.
CSA: What the biggest thing that you think sets your team apart?
Burden: We sit at the intersection of insight and execution. We’re not just tracking trends, we’re helping shape outcomes. And with the broader Gordon Brothers platform, we often see what’s coming before others do. Whether a client is growing, repositioning, or managing older assets, we help them stay ahead of the curve.
Simply put, if there’s a challenge to solve, we have the tools, people, and experience to solve it, no matter where a business is in its lifecycle
Al Williams and Michael Burden are co-heads of North American real estate services at Boston-based Gordon Brothers
As executive vice president of leasing at Pacific Retail Capital Partners (PRCP), I’ve had the privilege of leading a team that thrives on transforming retail spaces into vibrant, high-performing assets. Our approach to leasing is rooted in a unique blend of expertise, strategic vision, and hands-on execution that sets us apart in the industry. At PRCP, we don’t just fill vacancies—we craft compelling retail environments that drive value for property owners, retailers and communities alike.
Our leasing reps are embedded in their communities and are responsible for day-to-day management of their assigned properties.
What makes PRCP exceptional is our vertically integrated model. From center management to development, design, planning, leasing, and local marketing, every facet of our operation works in sync. This holistic approach allows us to align leasing strategies with the broader goals of each property, ensuring a cohesive and impactful outcome. Our team draws on diverse expertise within the company to present a compelling case to retailers, making our shopping centers not just spaces, but destinations.
Members of our leasing team are a powerhouse of experience, many of whom have honed their skillsets at industry giants like Westfield, Macerich and Simon. This pedigree informs our day-today strategies, allowing us to incorporate best practices from the nation’s top REITs. Our flat organizational structure ensures that every team member, from senior leadership to on-the-ground reps, collaborates closely. This enables us to craft tailored leasing strategies that leverage the depth and quality of our portfolio to achieve the best outcomes for each center.
Our geographic reach is another cornerstone of our success. With a presence spanning coast to coast, PRCP combines national
STEVE CASSELLA on the power of strategic leasing
scale with local market expertise. Each leasing representative is strategically located, deeply embedded in their communities, and responsible for the day-to-day management of their assigned properties. This localized approach, paired with the support of our national accounts leasing team, large-format and restaurant specialists, ensures we deliver results that resonate on both a local and national level.
A prime example of our capabilities is our work at Bridgewater Commons in New Jersey. When we took over the property, we hit the ground running with a bold vision to elevate the center’s brand and merchandising mix. By the end of this year, we will have opened 21 new stores, many of which are high-performing national retailers with wide consumer appeal. Our efforts will completely transform the shopping experience for our customers by turning a previously underachieving asset into a thriving retail hub, showcasing our ability to reenergize properties through strategic leasing and strong retailer relationships. We fully expect that our strategy will result in Bridgewater becoming one of the most successful retail assets – measured by sales volume and repeat traffic – in the entire state of New Jersey.
Another testament to our expertise is our success in repositioning underperforming spaces and backfilling them with stronger operators. For example, we took back 10 Forever 21 boxes across our portfolio and successfully re-tenanted them to a diverse mix of national and regional retailers. The result? A remarkable 25% increase in net operating income compared to the previous leases. This achievement underscores our ability to not only fill spaces, but to enhance value through thoughtful tenant diversification and strategic vision.
At PRCP, our strong national relationships with retailers give us a competitive edge. We leverage these connections to secure high-caliber tenants and execute multiple deals efficiently. Whether it’s a large-format retailer or a local boutique, our team’s ability to navigate complex negotiations and deliver results is unmatched. We pride ourselves on being partners that retailers can trust to maximize sales and the value of their brand.
PRCP offers a proven track record, a seasoned team, and a strategic approach that delivers tangible results for our communities, retailers, and partners. We are evolving real estate for the next generation, and our vertically integrated structure enables us to do this effectively, efficiently and sets us apart in the industry.
Steve Cassella is the executive VP of leasing at Los Angeles-based Pacific Retail Capital Partners
Cassella (l.) with PRCP’s executive VP of development Jonathan Rood.
The goal of retail is to attract, retain, and convert customers. At the same time, retail needs to attract and retain talent— people who help bring the customer experience to life. How can retail attract both customers and talent? Through years of lessons learned in creating magnetic spaces.
Pivoting to physical: Before 2020, the workplace was just that—a place where people went to work. Then came COVID-19, and the workplace swung digital. Return to office has pushed the pendulum back a bit, but the nature of the workplace has changed. The physical space has lost its primacy. To attract the best talent, it needs to be more than convenient. It must become a place people want to be.
The quest for customers dovetails with the rising challenge of hiring and keeping employees who want a better workplace.
Retail knows this thinking well. Fifteen years ago, retail faced seemingly existential threats from cannibalization and e-commerce. Daunting vacancies dotted the retail landscape, while apocryphal rumors of a retail apocalypse echoed across the industry. Flash forward and now we’re marking five straight quarters of the lowest retail availability in history—4.7% in the United States.
How did that happen? The retail industry spent 15 years finding ways to turn space into place. More recently, retailers have been focused on putting the customer at the center. The goal: being as convenient as possible across every physical and digital channel. (Retiring obsolete stores also contributed to the rising occupancy rate. For a deeper dive, look for the upcoming Retail Space Conundrum: Navigating the Rise of Obsolete Space from CBRE Econometric Advisors.)
LAURA BARR on space as a magnet for customers and talent
Giving space its place: Retailers obsess about their real estate almost as much as they do about their customers, for good reason. Real estate is core to retailers’ business. They live or die by the way they monetize their real estate. A few blocks can have a multiplier or divider effect on customer traffic or impressions and sales.
With the stakes so high, solid data has gone from essential to critical. In the digital realm, retailers have deep data about their interaction with the customer. In the physical arena, the analytics are just starting to catch up. Closing the gap is a personal passion of mine. And it’s crucial as retailers race to make themselves as convenient as possible to the consumer, across both digital and physical channels.
To bolster this effort and our overall strategy, we have brought in Scott Schnuckel as Managing Director of CBRE Americas Retail. Formerly the real estate chief at Kohl’s, he led his team through dozens of store openings and relocations as well as redevelopment, lease restructuring, capital market plays and a transformational partnership with Sephora. His retailer DNA and penchant for deep thinking help break our ideas out of the box and into a new way of approaching retail space.
Making space for talent: What the physical store does for customers, the workplace does for talent. The muscle memory of creating space that attracts, retains, and converts customers gives retail an edge with employee engagement.
At the headquarters level, elevating the workplace experience not only promotes employee engagement; it provides a competitive advantage in the race for talent, as well. The same thinking applies at the store level, where the quest for customers dovetails with the rising challenge of hiring and keeping employees who want a better workplace.
What’s it worth? Recently, I have been hearing from more brands how they are balancing the CapEx for breakroom upgrades against the cost of high staff turnover. After all the expense of bringing the right customers to the stores, retailers can’t afford not to have the right talent converting them into sales.
As of this writing, tariffs are in play, and uncertainty is in the air. But this much is sure: Making the physical store attractive to both customers and employees creates a magnetic field of opportunity. And retail knows how to make that opportunity a reality.
(Thanks to Sarah Drew, head of Workplace Experience at Gap, Inc., for helping me evolve and inspire my thinking on this topic.)
Laura Barr is Americas Retail leader at CBRE
But, despite significant population growth over the past two decades, retail development has been minimal.
In the early 2000s, the United States averaged around 300 million sq. ft. of new retail construction annually. By contrast, only about 42 million sq. ft. of retail space was delivered last year, while the U.S. population has grown by more than 46 million people since 2005.
For years, retail real estate dwelled at the bottom of the pecking order for institutional investors. That’s no longer the case.
The old adage that “retail follows rooftops” has not held true in recent years.
Historically low vacancy rates are leaving retailers eager to expand with few available options. Strong leasing demand and rising lease rates are now creating urgency for new development.
Large national retailers like Walmart and Target have announced plans to open new stores—a positive indicator that often signals the potential for new developments, as these anchors are needed to spur additional growth.
Value retailers like TJX and Ross continue to expand aggressively. Food and beverage brands like Chipotle and Dutch Bros are on the hunt for hundreds of new locations.
An emerging trend among food and beverage brands involves targeting existing freestanding QSR sites—particularly those already approved for drive-thru lanes—as a faster, more
CHRIS MAGUIRE On the durability of retail real estate
cost-effective way to secure prime real estate. These properties not only offer favorable rents in high-traffic areas, but also come with existing drive-thru entitlements, saving valuable time and resources during redevelopment.
The cost of new construction is driving up shop space rents to $40 to $60 per square foot, but the sales that our clients are producing in these locations justify the costs. And the availability of freestanding space is on the rise.
The standard rule of 5-to-1 parking spaces is in the past. It used to be that a Lowe’s store needed to have 600 spaces. Now that’s down to 350, freeing up room for food and beverage and other new uses to open up in well-located, traffic-heavy locations.
In the 1970s, department store-anchored malls fanned out nationwide, occupying large spaces in prime locations. Their expansion continued through the 80s, serving as climate-controlled replacement downtowns. Even Woody Allen, the ultimate Manhattanite, spent a whole film in one in 1991’s Scenes from a Mall. Next came category killers and, in the past decade, mixeduse centers blending retail with office and residential space.
For years, retail real estate dwelled at the bottom of the pecking order for institutional investors. That’s no longer the case. The industrial market peaked, multifamily has softened, office space was abandoned, and investors began to embrace good retail real estate property because of its durability.
After nearly 20 years of constrained growth, retail development is finally rebounding, with a growing pipeline of projects and a notable uptick in new deliveries and starts across major metros. There will always be demand for new retail development. People’s wants and needs and habits change with the times, but we’re still human beings. We like to get out of the house and socialize. That’s human nature, and that’s never going to change.
Chris Maguire is the Chairman and CEO of SRS Real Estate Partners.
There’s a funny word that entered the retail real estate lexicon over the past decade: “Activations.” At most centers it defines things like farmer’s markets and yoga classes in green spaces. At American Dream, we do things a little bit differently. We still call them “Events,” which are defined by Merriam-Webster as “noteworthy happenings.” We stage some 800 of them a year, and our events team has become especially adept at making them noteworthy.
Near the end of March, we attracted a crowd in excess of 100,000 people with JonasCon, billed as the “ultimate Jonas Brothers free fan experience.” The event featured live performances by the band, DJ sets, Q&A panels, pop-up surprises, immersive experiences, and special guest appearances to celebrate the band.
The Jonas brothers themselves are fans of American Dream. New Jersey natives from Wyckoff, they bring their own kids to our Nickelodeon Universe Theme Park and our DreamWorks Water Park. They approached us with the idea for JonasCon and said, “We’d like to do this for our fans. Can we do this with you guys?”
Um, yes!
A few weeks later, thousands packed American Dream for the opening of a new tenant in a 1,200-sq.-ft. space, CardVault by Tom Brady. The NFL GOAT himself took the stage in one of our rotundas and fired souvenir footballs to fans lining the rails of our upper walkways.
Our ice skating rink serves as a multi-purpose arena for live sporting events. In 2024, it hosted the United States Curling Championships, the Arena Football League’s ArenaBowl XXXIII, and then was transformed into a basketball court for a 10-game appearance by the Harlem Globetrotters.
This year our hoops court hosted the second run of the National Basketball Players Association’s The Throne, a tournament that showcases top high school players headed for college ball and, eventually, the NBA. The men’s competition was won by a Long Island team starring Kiyan Anthony, son of NBA legend Carmelo Anthony who watched the games at courtside.
Our brands, too, are very active in using American Dream as an event platform. Hasbro hosted the Transformers One watch party
PAUL GHERMEZIAN on fun leadership
with a meet-and-greet with New England Patriots wide receiver and three-time Super Bowl winner Julian Edelman. Nintendo, Dragon Ball, Lilo and Stitch, NJ Lottery, Coca Cola, NHL are among the many other brands to have hosted events on the property.
We are currently gearing up for a spate of exciting happenings in 2026, when soccer’s World Cup finals will be hosted by the arena that sits across from American Dream: Met Life Stadium.
American Dream has become the Madison Square Garden of the mall business. Many more such singular events are in our pipeline. Just wait to see what’s next.
These kinds of events draw thousands and thousands of guests, but they also position us as the prime location for Bar Mitzvahs, high school graduations, and Sweet 16 parties. Kim Kardashian, Cardi B, Nikki Hilton, and Eli Manning have hosted their children’s birthday parties here. Jake Paul, Tracy Morgan, and Adriana Lima have also made great use of our property.
Though celebrities take advantage of all that American Dream has to offer, we aim for it to be a destination for consumers of all education and income levels. We invite them to walk it, grab a bite to eat, or sit in our garden. Everyone is welcome to our building to spend some glorious time seeing things and doing things that allow them to escape life for a while.
When Chain Store Age invited us to take part in their Show Scoop section with a thought leadership piece about the retail real estate industry, we looked at it as an opportunity to write a “fun leadership” piece. Because that’s what we position our property to be—a place to shop, dine, ride a roller coaster, body-surf at our water park. Fun is what we’re all about.
Paul Ghermezian is the COO of East Rutherford, N.J.-based American Dream
JonasCon
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In the early 2000s, the United States averaged around 300 I grew up in the mall business. My dad, Robert J. Congel, was a developer of warehouses and small retail centers in Upstate New York in the Sixties and Seventies. It was the beginning of the boom-time for large, enclosed shopping centers that served as mega-downtowns for folks living in a 20-to-30-mile radius. He envisioned the potential for malls in our region and, in 1970, founded The Pyramid Companies. It became the largest privately owned developer of super-regional malls in the Northeast United States. Today, our Destiny USA property in Syracuse is the tenth largest enclosed mall in the nation.
Entertainment and food and beverage options bring new guests to our malls, but it’s the wide variety of traditional retail stores that makes them stay longer and spend more.
Our operating philosophy was to have the biggest mall in every market we entered, located at the intersection of the major highway networks, and we wanted to include uses that didn’t typically go in an enclosed mall. In recent years, with so many department store anchors closing, most mall renovations include filling large open spaces with entertainment and food and beverage uses. That’s not a new idea at Pyramid. From the get-go, all three floors of Destiny USA were seeded with a wide variety of restaurants
STEPHEN CONGEL
On the mall business today and plans for the future
and experiential tenants, and we’ve implemented this leasing strategy across our portfolio.
Our formula for success at Pyramid is simple: Attract people from as far away as possible, entice them to stay as long as possible, and spend as much as possible. Entertainment, recreation and food and beverage options play an important role in getting shoppers into our malls, but it’s the wide variety of traditional retail stores that makes them stay longer and spend more. Traditional retail is still the lifeblood of our shopping centers and remains an important focus of our leasing efforts.
Twenty years ago, our malls had tenant mixes that included 90 to 95 percent traditional retail. Today that number is 70 to 75 percent, and we feel that is the sweet spot moving forward. The key is what you do with the remaining 25 to 30 percent and doing it in a way that benefits all tenants in your property.
As we actively evolve our existing portfolio, we are also working with our partners on new acquisitions to leverage our operating platform. With a longstanding track record of success in mall management, development, operations, and leasing, our bestin-class, in-house team brings a comprehensive, self-performed approach to every aspect of shopping center management. We excel at evaluating both properties and markets to identify the optimal mix of uses – whether it be retail, entertainment, dining, hospitality, or residential—to ensure the long-term financial health and vitality of each asset.
Pyramid has spent decades reimagining and remixing our centers for long-term success. A lease-up plan is more than just lines and logos on a page. It’s a strategic vision. Our strength lies in creatively curating the right tenant mix to drive revenue, enhance the customer experience, strengthen market relevance, and enhance the overall asset value—ensuring each property is optimized for sustained financial growth well into the future.
Stephen Congel is the CEO of Syracuse, N.Y.-based Pyramid Management Group
In the latter half of the 20 th Century, top retail brands left bustling downtowns and took up shop in mega-malls that drew demographically divergent customers from 10 to 20 miles away. Thriving mall developers were able to rely on building plans and tenant curations that worked as well in Boston or Los Angeles as they did in Grand Rapids or Knoxville.
Here in the 21st Century, however, with new retail construction at an all-time low, the most actively constructed retail setting is the mixed-use center--ground-up downtowns peopled by residents and office workers and hotel guests with more specific demographics and higher average income levels.
That’s what led us in JLL’s property management unit to introduce The Mixx, a group that coalesces the talents of specialized departments such as property management, marketing, placemaking strategy, and leasing advisory to help mixed-use developers establish unique identities for their projects and turn them into vibrant, market-leading destinations.
Meet The Mixx!
Every project is bespoke. The Mixx works with developers on properties in development, under renovation, or in distress and in need of some solutions. We start by identifying a client’s vision for a project.
At The Plaza Coral Gables development in Miami, we helped Agave, a developer with little mixed-use experience, with management considerations on how to properly establish operations during the development process of each element’s delivery.
One of the biggest challenges with onboarding and executing the property management phase of the project was getting
JLL introduced The Mixx to help mixeduse developers establish unique identities for their projects and turn them into market-leading destinations.”
KRISTIN MUELLER & SEAN McNAMARA
on a new formula for mixeduse property management
alignment between the individual asset classes and embedding a “one team, one goal” culture. The launch of JLL’s mixed-use advisory platform coincided perfectly with Agave’s needs at The Plaza Coral Gables and was instrumental in achieving this alignment.
The Mixx acts as a unifying force of JLL specialists in all classes of real estate to address the complex problems faced by mixeduse developers. This innovative structure aligns JLL’s diverse capabilities and resources to deliver exceptional value in the flourishing mixed-use real estate sector, which is reshaping urban and suburban environments and investment strategies within commercial real estate.
As mixed-use real estate continues to reshape commercial real estate and redefine community living, The Mixx meets a longterm market need by leveraging JLL’s collective knowledge and capabilities to provide clients with a targeted, efficient solution that addresses the unique challenges and opportunities presented by these dynamic developments.
Kristin Mueller is JLL’s president of retail property management and Sean McNamara is managing director of JLL’s The Mixx unit
in Retail Services
Capital Markets, Property Management, and Retail Advisory, combined.
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Since joining Centennial in November 2024, I’ve had the privilege of diving headfirst into a company with a remarkable legacy and an exciting future.
Centennial has grown from a regional player into one of the most influential retail real estate firms in the country, now with a portfolio spanning over 23 million sq. ft. across 18 states. This growth is a testament to the strength of our strategy and the unwavering belief that retail spaces should be more than just places to shop, they should be community hubs where emotional connections are made and celebrated.
The retail landscape has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last few years. Once deemed a sector in decline, the post-pandemic world has shown us that, at our core, humans are social beings. We want to get out of the house, we want to feel fabrics, taste food, and be part of the action. It’s no longer enough to just buy something—we want an experience. Retail has increasingly become a space for connections.
Today, retail is about creating immersive encounters that make shopping an experience, not just a transaction.
But with this renewed interest in physical spaces, the game has gotten more competitive and the execution more complex. Competing with a global product range and the speed of online delivery means consumers are no longer simply looking for items off the shelf. They want something more when they walk through the door, a better selection of brands and a richer, more authentic use of their time.
The days of the generic shopping trip are long gone. Today, the new competitive advantage in retail is about creating immersive encounters that make shopping an experience, not just a transaction.
This shift has led to a new wave of brands, particularly digitally native ones, opening physical stores. These new-to-market brands have reinvigorated the merchandise mix of retail centers across the nation. On top of that, exciting entertainment concepts like Netflix House and Cosm are helping to absorb the
PAUL KURZAWA on the new retail experience
vacancies left behind by traditional department store closures.
Yet, despite this evolution, there’s still a significant amount of vacant and underperforming real estate out there. While this can be a headache for many developers, it’s a space where Centennial has always led the industry, unlocking value and creating opportunities through innovation, densification, and diversification.
This ability to reimagine and transform underperforming properties is at the heart of what we do. We don’t just sit back and hope for the market to shift, we actively seek out opportunities to repurpose spaces in a way that delivers value and meets the needs of today’s consumers. Whether it’s rethinking a vacant department store box or creating a dynamic mixed-use destination, Centennial has consistently demonstrated the ability to unlock potential where others see challenges.
One of the most exciting developments in this area has been Centennial’s strategic partnership with Lincoln Property Company. This alliance gives us the capital, expertise, and resources needed to accelerate growth and take projects to the next level. The power of this partnership lies in our shared vision to reimagine retail-anchored real estate, creating destinations that are not only relevant to today’s consumers but also adaptable to future trends.
At Centennial, we’ve developed what I like to call our “special sauce.” It’s our ability to create a bold vision, tell a compelling new story, and execute it with precision. The partnership with Lincoln gives us a unique competitive edge to tap into alternative asset class densification opportunities, while also providing access to capital markets that help bring our ambitious plans to life.
Together, we’re creating spaces that are more than just retail, they’re community hubs, places where people come together to share experiences and connect in ways that go beyond the transactional.
In short, we’re a rocket ship ready for lift-off. The future of retail is unfolding before us and, at Centennial, we’re prepared to lead the way. The opportunities are boundless, and with our team, our partners, and our strategy, we’re ready to continue innovating and growing in ways that transform the retail landscape.
T-minus 1.
Paul J. Kurzawa is the president of Dallas-based Centennial.
Innovative Spaces. Captivating Places.
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In 1965, Milt Peterson was working for a homebuilder in Fairfax County, Va., when he decided to strike out on his own. Fairfax, now one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, was fairly wide open in those days. A lot of land was available at a reasonable price, and Milt had a different idea of what could be done with some of it.
What he envisioned were master-planned communities, not the ones we see built on huge tracts of former farmland today, but MPCs that would enliven existing suburbs with residential, office, hospitality, and retail. During the 1970s, he and some partners undertook several such projects. One of them was Fair Lakes, at the interchange of Fairfax County Parkway and Interstate 66, and is credited for transforming Fairfax County from a bedroom community to a serious center of business activity and commerce.
We lost Milt Peterson four years ago, but his bold spirit of creativity and innovation still lives with us and always wil.
His most ambitious effort was National Harbor, which sits on a mile-long stretch of property on the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C., and welcomes nearly 15 million visitors a year. Situated on what had been a barren waterfront, National Harbor now houses the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, MGM National Harbor Resort & Casino, The Capital Wheel, 80plus shops and restaurants, offices, hotels and more than 2,000 residents.
In 1994, Milt bought a 100-acre piece of land in Gaithersburg, Md., a former golf course with a nine-acre lake. Today, it is RIO, a community with residential units and high-energy retail and restaurant tenants. Five years ago, Peterson launched a $30 million reinvestment in RIO. On the budget’s to-do list were new and enhanced options, a new brand identity to unify the 760,000-sq.ft. center, and physical plant upgrades such as the boardwalk around the lake.
PAUL WEINSCHENK on 60 years of retail real estate innovation
We at Peterson Companies work hard at keeping our retail and restaurant concepts exciting for RIO’s visitors and are now obtaining entitlements for 450 apartment units--the first phase of what will ultimately be 1,200 apartments on the property. We recently bid farewell to Joe’s Crab Shack and Macaroni Grill and said hello to Yardhouse, True Food Kitchen, and Silver Diner.
We’ve learned a lot of lessons at Peterson Companies over the years, one of the most important being that no two projects are the same.
In 1997, we took on the project of renovating the retail center of downtown Silver Spring, a D.C. suburb that had gone through a bad patch in the 70s and 80s. The municipality wanted to re-create the heart of the community, so we reinvigorated the zone with a bold new image—not with new tenants so much as with a new image.
A 300-ft.-long street mural inspired by sound and electricity waves zig-zags across Ellsworth Drive, now lined with bistro tables and shade umbrellas. A 20-foot- high flower-tower titled “The Queen of Blooms” has transformed an elevator tower a busy pedestrian center has been covered with murals. “Blumen Lumen,” a 25-foot-tall sculpture of folded, stainless-steel flowers that open and close as the sun rises and sets and, at night, is capable of reacting to human voices.
We soon learned that we had underestimated the growing wealth of the community. We felt that we needed to get a Whole Foods into downtown Silver Spring. It wasn’t easy, but we did it. We also added H&M. Both are doing phenomenally well.
Good retail real estate developers constantly must ask themselves, “Where does the consumer want to be?” Because that, of course, is also where leading retailers want to be.
We recently invested $110 million to add 30,000-sq.-ft. of retail space and 228 residential units to our Fairfax Corner development in Fairfax County. Last fall, we opened an Apple store in the new space. From Thanksgiving to Dec. 25, our traffic was up by 57% over the year before, all due to Apple’s arrival.
In 2025, Peterson Companies celebrates its 60th anniversary. We lost Milt Peterson four years ago at the age of 85, but his bold spirit of creativity and innovation still lives with us and always will.
Paul Weinschenk is the COO of Fairfax, Va.-based Peterson Companies.
You cannot bet against the American consumer and expect to win.
Despite the headlines shouting about bankruptcies, inflation, and global instability, the truth on the ground tells a different story. Retail sales are up. Store openings are up. Rent collections are ahead of pace. And it all comes down to one thing: the enduring strength of the American shopper.
For years, we’ve watched real incomes at different levels grow faster than inflation. Debt levels remain low, and despite the headlines in media, sentiment on the street is stronger than expected. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, March retail sales were up nearly 5% year-over-year, and the behavior we’re seeing in our own portfolio—renewals, rent growth, longterm commitments—is proof positive that retail is healthy. Consumers are evolving by shopping smarter at off-price and value-oriented stores, and often ahead of the curve.
At DLC, we say it plainly: retail is powered by people. And that means where the consumer goes, so does the retailer. That is how retail is winning.
The American consumer isn’t just holding up our economy. Without U.S. demand, economies like China, Vietnam, and parts of Europe face serious challenges. Like Atlas, the U.S. shopper is carrying the weight of the world.
But now we are facing misguided policies with the implementation of tariffs. They’re a direct hit. A regressive tax that punishes our growth. A consumer in China is not paying a tariff. They will be paid here, by Americans, at checkout.
The resilience of the consumer is reflected in the real estate market. In just the past week, we’ve seen early renewals, 15% rent bumps, national tenants locking in long-term extensions. One deal—a bakery in Florida—just bumped rent 15% with
ADAM IFSHIN on
the ultimate power
of the American consumer
Tariffs are a regressive tax that punishes our growth. A consumer in China is not paying a tariff. They will be paid here, by Americans, at checkout.
annual 3% escalations. Another? A high-end bike shop opted for an 8% immediate increase. These are healthy signals in a sector many wrongly wrote off years ago.
And yet, uncertainty still lingers. Retailers are watching policy decisions closely—especially as they will have to commit to goods for the holiday season. The devil’s going to be in the details.
If tariffs stick, it could be trouble for some. But others, especially those tuned into value, will thrive.
If you’re a policymaker, an investor, or a retailer—keep this in mind: don’t mess with the American consumer. They’ve proven time and again that they’ll find value, demand quality, and keep shopping through just about anything.
Our job as operators and investors is to meet them where they are. At DLC, that’s exactly what we’re doing. And if the consumer stays strong, so does retail.
Adam Ifshin is the CEO and founder of Elmsford, N.Y-based DLC Management Corp.
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How to meet your customers where they are – virtually
Today’s shoppers are spending more time than ever in digital spaces, and retailers need to turn those spaces into consumer touchpoints.
A few virtual consumer hotspots have emerged that retailers should seriously consider having a presence in, since their customers have already made a place for themselves there.
Metaverse
The metaverse is a broad term encompassing interactive gaming, virtual worlds and augmented/virtual reality headsets such as Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest and any immersive platform that lets users experience a lifelike simulation of the “real world.”
Perhaps no greater argument for the relevance of the metaverse to consumers (and the retailers selling to them) can be made than the persistent efforts Walmart has made during the past three years to maintain an active commercial presence across a variety of metaverse platforms.
These include Walmart’s limited-time interactive gaming experience called “Skyward,” which ran on a Minecraft Java server from March 21 to May 15. More recently, the retailer launched immersive in-game commerce experience,”Walmart Unlimited,” in partnership with 3D gamified media platform Spatial and the Unity real-time 3D development environment.
Walmart debuted in the metaverse by launching two experiences on Roblox in September 2022. A year later, it said it would deepen its commercial activity in
“virtual worlds,” becoming the first entity to sell select physical items on Roblox.
Video
The Internet is becoming increasingly visually focused, and consumers are spending more time consuming — and being influenced by — video content. There are a variety of ways retailers can interact with customers via video. Livestream shopping, which enables consumers to directly browse and shop products from live video streams, is becoming increasingly popular in the U.S.
In addition, YouTube has long been used as a customer touchpoint by a variety of retailers and expanded its e-commerce partnership with Shopify in summer 2024.
And of course, TikTok offers a robust e-commerce offering in the U.S., continues to grow in popularity here with consumers and retailers alike and appears to be headed for a deal that will let it stay open here long-term.
Influencers
Similar to video, influencers are growing in importance to retail. Numerous retailers have partnered with influencers, running livestream events using influencers as hosts, letting influencers curate special assortments and basing omnichannel marketing campaigns around content from participating influencers. But retailers can also work influencers into their customer engagement strategies even without a direct collaboration. Take the example of Taylor Swift, who is viewed by many as being the most influential consumer influencer of the past few years.
Target partnered with the pop megastar on two exclusive Taylor Swift releases, an official “Taylor Swift/The Eras Tour” book and a special edition of “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” album on vinyl and CD, on Black Friday 2024 and set sales records in the following 10 days.
Dan Berthiaume dberthiaume@chainstoreage.com
100 Years of Tech and Supply Chain Innovations
By Dan Berthiaume
ChainStoreAgeis celebrating its centennial year with a look at 10 technology innovations and 10 supply chain innovations that have had a profound effect on the retail industry over the course of the past 100 years.
The line between technology and supply chain can be a bit blurry at times, but we did our best to separate solutions that may have supply chain applications (such as EAS surveillance) from those that are primarily used in the supply chain (such as RFID). And of course, not all supply chain innovations of the past 100 years have been technology focused.
The 20 innovations that are profiled below and listed in rough chronological order all had a profound impact on how retailers source, transport, store, distribute, market and sell products to consumers.
TECHNOLOGY
• EAS surveillance
Introduced in the mid-1960s, electronic article surveillance (EAS) quickly gained popularity among retailers and remains a widely used means to prevent the theft or unauthorized removal of products from stores. EAS works by affixing radio frequency-enabled tags or labels that transmit a signal to detection systems placed at store exits.
When an item is legally purchased, the POS associate removes or deactivates the tag so the product can pass through the detection system without setting off an alarm. The system is simple, but effective enough that it is still a mainstream loss prevention solution 60-plus years after its introduction, without major design changes.
• Cash Registers
The first manual retail money-counting and storage device to be known as a “cash register” was patented in 1879 by
a saloon owner named James J. Ritty. A company known as National Cash Register (still in business today as NCR) purchased the patent in the early 1880s and began improving the model with features like receipt printing.
In the 1970s, technology companies including NCR, IBM and RCA began releasing the first digital cash registers, which had become known as point-ofsale or POS systems. Digital POS terminals had electronic displays and software that could be programmed to perform transactional and accounting functions. Networked POS systems, where all the POS terminals in a store ran off a single server, began appearing in the early 1980s and had become a standard fixture in retail stores by the early 1990s. Networked POS terminals offered advantages such as streamlined software updates, batch processing of daily sales, and connectivity with other enterprise systems such as inventory management and CRM.
Networked POS enabled the development of modern POS architecture, which includes mobile checkout, self-service kiosks, and unified
commerce deployments that manage omnichannel operations from the POS.
• Barcodes
The Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode and its descendants are largely taken for granted by both retailers and consumers, but the introduction of the UPC barcode in 1974 hastened the spread of digital POS terminals and changed retailing forever.
Before barcodes, which encode information into a series of bars and spaces in a manner inspired by the dots and dashes of Morse code, cashiers manually rang up product prices and retailers manually counted inventory. These were both labor- and time-intensive processes that were prone to error and abuse.
Barcodes enabled the instant scanning of product and price information, greatly streamlining checkout and inventory counting while reducing errors and fraud. They provided the added benefit of standardizing product information among all manufacturers.
The original barcodes have evolved into 2D and 3D barcodes, as well as QR codes which encode information
E-commerce is one of the biggest retail technology innovations of the past 100 years (Image: TippaPatt)
into 2D squares that can be read by smartphones and EAN codes which are used internationally. They also serve as foundational elements of time- and labor-saving retail practices such as automated robotic shelf scanning.
• Direct-response home shopping
The 1980s saw the introduction of TVbased direct response home shopping retailers, such as HSN and QVC, which have merged under QVC Group and now reach consumers via channels including TV as well as online, mobile, connected TV, social media and streaming.
Home shopping started out, however as strictly TV-based operations where customers would view programming, see live demonstrations of products, and then call a toll-free phone number to place a purchase.
Direct-response home shopping essentially brought phone order catalogs to life on the TV screen. In doing so, this commerce technology channel served to some extent as a blueprint for e-commerce, and much more directly as the precursor to retailers selling products via livestream and video platforms.
• Electronic shelf labels
Electronic shelf label (ESL) technology began appearing in U.S. retail stores in the mid-1990s, with Northeast grocer ShopRite among the pioneers to deploy the solution. ESLs replace traditional
paper shelf labels with an electronic label that typically uses liquid-crystal display (LCD) or e-paper technology to graphically display information such as price. ESLs are wirelessly networked to a central server, meaning retailers can automatically update ESLs in real time and easily track what information is being displayed on any shelf. Benefits include heightened pricing accuracy, significant reduction in cost and labor of marking and updating item prices compared to traditional paper shelf labels, and the ability to change prices for localized and short-term promotions and sales.
In addition, leading-edge ESLs can be used to count shoppers, track customer movement, and even deliver personalized discounts, messages and promotions.
• E-commerce
Hard to believe now, but until the early 2000s many retailers hesitated to launch e-commerce sites as they feared that selling products online would simply cannibalize sales of those same items from their physical stores.
Amazon was the first “digital native” e-commerce retailer to rise to prominence (exclusively selling books in the early days), although a now-defunct site called Netmarket is generally credited with conducting the first secure e-commerce transaction in 1994.
The industry’s hesitancy to sell products online didn’t last very long. eBay
arose as another major digital native player in the mid-90s, and the launch of the Walmart.com e-commerce site in 2000 signaled a paradigm shift in how traditional brick-and-mortar retailers viewed selling items digitally.
The biggest sign of e-commerce’s overwhelming success is that it is no longer a novel offering, with nearly all retailers beyond mom-and-pop size offering some type of e-commerce.
• Pricing/markdown optimization
AI algorithms are now mostly discussed in the context of helping social media platforms serve highly personalized content streams to individual users. However, they first came to prominence in retail in the 1990s as a means of optimizing merchandising processes such as pricing and markdowns.
Traditionally, retailers executed pricing activities with spreadsheets, using human intuition and analysis of previous price performance to set the upcoming season’s levels. If a product underperformed, the price would be incrementally lowered until excess inventory was cleared.
In the 1990s, the emergence of algorithmic pricing and markdown solutions enabled retailers to take a much more dynamic approach to setting prices. AI provides merchants with a much deeper analysis of all the complex market factors that could affect price performance and allowed them to calibrate initial prices that would maximize both profitability and sell-through.
• Frictionless shopping
Frictionless shopping is the culmination of years of retailer efforts to offer customers a genuine “grab and go” in-store shopping experience where they can simply pick up the products they want and leave the store, with payment automatically deducted from a credit or debit account and no human cashier required.
Amazon was the first retailer to offer a holistic in-store frictionless shopping experience with its “Just Walk Out” technology, introduced in its Amazon Go convenience store format in January 2018. The technology has evolved over
Walmart is among those retailers using drones for delivery.
the years, but essentially leverages a combination of computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning that enables shoppers to shop the store, pick out they want and skip the checkout when they’re done.
Most frictionless shopping platforms which have followed Just Walk Out follow a similar technology model. Some versions are truly checkout-free and require no action on the part of the customer other than opting in and identifying themselves at the beginning of their shopping experience, while others require some type of biometric or mobile device scan to execute payment.
• Metaverse commerce
“Metaverse” is a broad term encompassing interactive gaming, virtual worlds, augmented/virtual reality headsets like Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest, and any immersive platform that lets users experience a lifelike simulation of the “real world.”
Facebook parent Meta did not invent the metaverse but brought it to widespread public attention when it changed its name from Facebook to Meta in fall 2021 with a public mission of making the metaverse the default platform for consumer connectivity.
The metaverse has not evolved quite the way Meta expected, but an increasing number of retailers and brands are providing interactive and promotional and shopping experiences based on metaverse technology. This includes shopping apps for AR/VR headsets, storefronts selling both virtual and physical goods within popular immersive gaming environments such as Roblox.
• Generative AI chatbots
Generative AI, which is based on machine learning, is a leading-edge artificial intelligence model that can create new content and ideas, including conversations, stories, images, videos, and music. It has existed in different forms for decades but came to prominence with the release of the OpenAI ChatGPT model in late 2022. Retailers have leveraged generative AI for a wide variety of uses, but the most widely publicized has been to serve as a platform for highly
interactive and human-like chatbots. With generative AI, retailers can offer chatbots that truly mimic human understanding and interaction during a customer service session, resulting in more satisfying resolutions and fewer follow-up inquiries.
Chatbots using ChatGPT technology can also handle much higher-level customer service requests than previous AI-based chatbots, giving human agents more time to focus on issues of maximum importance and complexity.
Generative AI is also increasingly popular as a supporting technology for advanced employee chatbots. These can perform functions such as answering on-the-job process questions, coaching new associates, supporting managers and even letting employees interact with enterprise systems using natural language queries.
SUPPLY CHAIN
• Cross-docking
Cross-docking, which streamlines case and pallet interaction and supports the movement of inventory from inbound receipt to outbound delivery, has been in use in the supply chain since the 1930s.
The strategy uses distribution centers as short-term waystations rather than long-term storage facilities, bringing product straight to the stores and on the shelves. Goods are picked, packed and replenished in stores, with trailers turned as quickly as 24 hours.
Modern cross-docking operations are heavily reliant on advanced technology to cleanly move products efficiently down lane to stores, including solutions such as warehouse management, transportation management and demand forecasting and inventory optimization.
• Less-than-truckload shipping
The deregulation of the trucking industry led to the rise of less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping in the 1980s as a way to more efficiently move small freight that is too big for postal or package delivery services but too small to cost-effectively deliver by a full-sized semi-trailer truck. LTL is popularly used to handle initial shipments of general merchandise such as toys and kitchen appliances from
suppliers to consolidation centers, at a cost that is usually considerably lower than full-truckload shipping.
Once LTL shipments reach a consolidation center, they can be kept together and palletized rather than broken down into individual boxes. When enough LTL pallets have been accumulated to combine into a full truckload, they are then shipped to stores.
• Drop-shipping
Drop-shipping enables a retailer to avoid storing its inventory by fulfilling customer orders directly from manufacturers and wholesalers. The model actually emerged in the 1950s as a way for mail-order catalog retailers like Sears and J.C. Penney to save warehousing and distribution costs and became popular in the early 2000s as a way to reduce e-commerce overhead.
The development of automated supply chain data sharing technologies and standards have helped streamline the adoption of drop-shipping and increased its popularity among retailers with e-commerce and direct-to-consumer sales channels.
In addition, retailers can utilize drop-shipping as a way of extending their product assortment via direct fulfillment from manufacturers and wholesalers without having to directly store or ship any additional merchandise.
• RFID
RFID evolved out of EAS technology in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t until the early 20003 that retailers began taking a concerted interest in its ability to track items at the pallet, case and product level. Requiring the placement of millions of tags on products at the source, which then must be scanned and read, RFID existed for years in a retail technology gray area.
Despite several mandates from Tier I retailers such as Walmart and Target for suppliers to bear the cost of source-tagging, RFID did not widely catch on until the past few years.
Modern RFID tags are not much larger than a speck of dust and effectively work with any product or environment, including those involving liquid and metal.
And reader technology has evolved from fixed and handheld mobile readers to include ceiling-mounted readers that can continually scan and monitor all the tagged products in a store or warehouse, as well as robots that autonomously scan items as they rove the aisles.
Add in RFID’s effectiveness at detecting counterfeit items and unauthorized movement of goods, and you have a mainstream supply chain technology. RFID is especially valuable for identifying and tracking soft goods and items in closed supply chains.
• Product lifecycle management
Product lifecycle management (PLM) is a holistic approach to product development that encompasses the entire development of a good from initial conception to final release in the marketplace. PLM emerged in the automotive industry in the mid-1980s and by the mid-1990s had spread to industries including CPG, consumer electronics and apparel.
While some retailers utilize PLM strategies and solutions to collaboratively manage product development with third-party suppliers, it is often used in closed supply chain scenarios, such as vertical retailing or private brand goods.
• CPFR
The idea of retailers and suppliers collaboratively sharing detailed supply chain information such as promotional schedules, inventory levels and sales forecasts may seem obvious today. But in the mid-1990s, supply chain silos would commonly produce disconnects such as retailers placing product orders without knowing the manufacturer was offering a rebate that would boost sales. The industry non-profit organization Voluntary Inter-Industry Commerce Standards (VICS) addressed this supply chain sore spot by introducing a nine-step methodology known as Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment, or CPFR.
While CPFR took some time to develop, once it took off in the late 1990s, the retail supply chain changed forever. CPFR produced substantial supply chain efficiency gains and cost reductions and brought down silos that had historically
divided retailers and their suppliers. The emergence of secure file transfer protocols and other technologies that streamline and automate the exchange of data has lessened retailers’ reliance on the formal nine-point CPFR model, but its spirit lives on and major retailers including Walmart still actively utilize CPFR as part of their supply chain strategy.
• Digital twins
Digital twins are interactive, artificial intelligence-based virtual models that serve as digital replicas of real-life objects and/ or environments. For roughly the past 10 years, retailers have been using steadily evolving digital twin technology to create photorealistic digital replicas of stores, warehouses, or entire supply chains.
Retailers can increase the value of digital twins by fusing spatial data with other data, including product location and historical order information, and uniting it all into a visual package that employees can interact with on a range of devices, including desktop computers, mobile devices and even AR/VR headsets.
As a result, retailers can run realistic virtual tests of different supply chain strategies and scenarios to discover potential issues, analyze costs and ultimately determine the most effective and efficient supply chain decisions much more quickly and accurately than previously possible.
• Micro-fulfillment
Micro-fulfillment technology automates picking and packing, using robotic systems to efficiently locate and retrieve products stored in a space too compact for human workers. It has mostly been used by grocery retailers seeking to streamline click-and-collect order fulfillment.
Micro-fulfillment enables effective, hyper localized fulfillment of online orders at store level without overtaxing store inventory or associates. They can also significantly reduce delivery costs, improve the consumer experience and create brand loyalty.
• BOPIS /BORIS
Omnichannel fulfillment options such as buy-online-pick-up in-store (BOPIS),
curbside pickup and pickup lockers all predate the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pandemic helped spur their widespread adoption.
BOPIS and curbside pickup provide immediate fulfillment for digital orders while also eliminating last-mile delivery costs, which can total more than half of the expense of moving a product through the supply chain.
In addition, BOPIS and curbside pickup bring digital customers to the store, creating opportunities to generate additional store traffic and sales that would not otherwise exist for online orders.
Buy-online-return-in-store (BORIS) offers similar benefits while also reducing the cost of reverse of logistics.
• Delivery drones/robots/autonomous vehicles
Retailers have been trying to streamline last-mile delivery with a variety of automated mechanisms.
Amazon spearheaded development of aerial drones when then-CEO Jeff Bezos mentioned the concept in a 2013 TV interview. But the first U.S. drone delivery was of a 7-Eleven Slurpee beverage using a Flirtey drone in Reno, Nev., in 2016.
Since then, drones deliveries have begun to take flight. Retailers including Amazon, Walmart, CVS and Walgreens are using a variety of third-party and proprietary models in pilot programs across the U.S.
Another option that is growing in popularity (primarily for takeout food delivery) is the sidewalk robot. Offering the safety advantages of avoiding vehicular traffic while traveling at low speeds, sidewalk robots are being leveraged in pilots by on-demand delivery platforms including Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub (Amazon tested its own proprietary model called Scout which was discontinued in late 2022).
Finally, retailers including Kroger and 7-Eleven, as well as delivery platforms including Uber Eats, have tested deliveries using self-piloting autonomous vehicles that travel public roadways. Especially as the retail industry facing a continuing shortage of human delivery drivers, wider deployment of all these delivery technologies is highly likely.
