One of the more interesting discussions we had at last week's ICSC Western Division conference was with Fred Collings, senior vice president of retail leasing at the Irvine Co. Collings gave us an overview of his firm's 36 neighborhood centers and three regional assets in the Irvine Ranch, a large swath of land developed by the firm that takes up nearly a third of Orange County.

Here are some takeaways from what he had to share:

On how landlords select tenants in this environment: "Everyone is making sure the transactions work based on the sales transactions. We've got to be able to do the sale to make the business mode be effective. It's behoovent of us landlords to make sure we have the appropriate data to expect what we think sales should be."