When I was a kid growing up in the Los Angeles area, I recall how excited I was to show visiting friends from the Midwest our new mall that just opened in 1973. It was a classic mall design with the four anchor department stores, a sunken seating area in the center and water features, all surrounded by a sea of parking. The mall, at the time named "Santa Anita Fashion Park" is now a Westfield property called "The Shops at Santa Anita". The parking lots are still full but replacing some of those retail anchors are packed restaurants, entertainment venues and higher-end stores.
The long-term success of any commercial real estate investment requires constant recalibration with the desires of users of the asset, consumers in this case, and reinvestment by ownership. The pandemic accelerated the shift to online retail and retail property owners are repositioning properties today to meet the need for more housing, to provide popular entertainment options and in many cases to create an "urban" feel to the suburban mall.
In this Coldwell Banker Commercial trend report we discuss the current dynamics in retail real estate and, in particular, malls. The best commercial real estate professionals listen for the objectives of clients, provide them with insights such as those in this report and then help those clients achieve success in real estate. With the insights of some of our professionals who have worked with retail property owners or studied the trends such as Faraz Cheema, MSRE, CCIM, SIOR Daniel Galvan, SIOR, CCIM John McClelland Mike Donnelly we provide an in depth look at some of the trends today.
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