CHICAGO-Patrick Owens is a senior vice president of retail advisory services at Transwestern (RECon booth C132F), where we will be doing video interviews tomorrow. He spoke to us about the changing retail real estate tenant market, how the grocery business is doing, and what to expect from RECon.

GlobeSt.com: How do you think the OfficeMax-Office Depot situation is going to end up for landlords?

Patrick Owens: It's symbolic of the rest of the market right now. They were already preparing for this transition, so a lot of the stores that they needed to close have closed. It's not going to result in as many closures as people anticipated when it was first announced, but at the same time, there is a general weakness in that size category. You're having discounters take spaces that they wouldn't normally attain, and fitness taking up what is traditionally backfill, and we're seeing a lot of non-traditional uses take those spaces, including medical. Medical, with the Affordable Care Act will continue to be more of a player in the retailer sector than in years past.