GlobeSt.com: It's no secret the recession hit the County pretty hard. How has retail there recovered?

Swieca: Slowly. It is recovering and stabilizing. Clearly the worst is over. For the Inland Empire, we pretty much turned the corner some time in early 2011. But retail is a little different, than say, industrial. This area for industrial has always been bullish. The mix of the freeways and the proximity to the western and southwestern United States has always made San Bernardino County a desirable area for industrial. The industrial market changes a lot more rapidly than retail. A shopping center doesn't happen in just a matter of six to nine months when it comes to development. It takes years. Even though we turned the corner some time in 2011, the real proof of that isn't going to show itself until the end of this year or some time in 2014.

GlobeSt.com: What kind of retail is lacking in the area that you would like to see arrive?

Swieca: With the recession, where do you go when you're not making as much money? You go to the discounters. We saw the emergence of tenants that were new to our market, such as Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and Dollar General. They all came here at the same time. We had 99 Cent Only stores, and they grew rapidly in that time as well. What we really didn't see were the soft-good tenants. We didn't see much of the clothing stores. We also didn't see the higher-end supermarkets. We still have yet to see a Whole Foods or a Bristol Farms in the Inland Empire. They just don't believe that this is the market for them.

GlobeSt.com: When retailers are thinking about entering the area, how do you sell it?

Swieca: First, we try to anticipate what they are looking for. The bottom line is what made this are so attractive from 2000 to 2008 was the residential growth. Our boom in 2000 compared to our boom in the 1990s was that we saw the introduction of much more expensive homes and more of the white-collar people were coming out of Orange and Los Angeles counties to live in the San Bernardino County area. For everybody, it is a matter of confidence in the residential marketplace. Not only did residential stop, the residential was over valued and over leveraged. It was going backwards. What I try to tell them is that the residential growth is poised to return. We're seeing signs of new growth, but it still isn't dramatic. There were housing tracts that were already finished with utilities and roads, and when the market crashed, everything just dropped. So this is an area that we believe is going to pick up again because we have a good element of that residential that can easily be updated and entitled to move forward.

GlobeSt.com: What about transactions? Are investors looking to buy in the area?

Swieca: It's still a little more glamorous to own real estate in beach communities and some higher-end areas, but what investors are looking at is the stability of an asset that they're looking to acquire and how that asset is positioned within a specific market. It's a matter of return on your investment. A dollar is the same color and the quality of the return on that dollar is the same whether it's a Bristol Farms in Laguna or a 99 Cents Only or a Raph's or Vons store in Rialto. Does the retail investment suit the market that it serves?

GlobeSt.com: Any other signs that the area is improving?

Swieca: Stater Bros., the local San Bernardino County grocer, is reinvesting its money into the area. They have opened new stores in Grand Terrace and Hesperia. They are under construction with a new store in Redland. It is a local, premier retailer that is very well thought of. They're growing and thriving.