Scott says that as his customers try to diversify, SIKON is also trying to broaden its horizons. "If you were a real estate developer doing mostly retail, you are doing other types of product today," he says. Still, Scott acknowledges, it is hard to get around the fact that construction opportunites have dramatically diminished.

"What we've seen in the last year or 18 months," says Karen M. Scott, a Stuart-based retail consultant, no relation to Dale Scott, is lots of renovation of existing grocery properties. "It is a prime time to renovate stores because labor costs are down and grocery stores, who usually depend on landlords to develop new shopping centers, put their own money into renovations," she says. If they are going to do that, it is less costly to do that now than in the past, says Scott.

But there is some new construction going on. Competition is heating up among grocery chains in South Florida and elsewhere in the state, says Dale Scott. Fresh Market and Whole Foods are expanding and Publix is building replacement stores on the same sites as existing ones, he says. The company has found that replacing a store is not any more expensive than remodeling one, says Scott.