ATLANTA—In the last few years, as consumer confidence has returned, investors' interest in the nation's retail sector has grown considerably, and this outlook was apparent at the recent ICSC conference in Atlanta.
“I found the conference very bullish and upbeat,” Kris Cooper, a managing director in the JLL Capital Markets Group, tells GlobeSt.com. The conference was held from October 28 to the 30th. “There is still plenty of capital available, both debt and equity, and a lot of people were very optimistic.”
“We keep filling up vacancies and rental rates also keep going up,” he says. But like many other experts, Cooper points out that all of this visible strength has yet to translate into a significant amount of new development. Some builders have taken advantage of the pent-up demand for new product by constructing a limited number of grocery-anchored centers, as well as some big-box retail, but primarily in top markets where both they and lenders feel especially confident. “A lot of those developers got burned during the recession,” Cooper says.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
