“Over the past few years, the majority of restaurant construction has been confined to upscale activity,” Di Santo says. “That has changed in recent months as consumers are returning in all categories, including fine dining, fast casual and fast food. As a result, we expect a very robust pipeline for restaurant work in 2015.”

Englewood also recently began an expansion at white tablecloth restaurant The Purple Pig in Chicago, as well as the renovation of a Yard House in Kansas City's Power and Light District. Englewood is also working with Red Robin and Buffalo Wild Wings in the fast casual arena to roll out several new restaurants in 2015.

Stratford Square Mall in suburban Bloomingdale, IL, has been a popular retail destination in its market for decades, but its owners recently tapped Englewood to manage the mall's redesign, construction and tenant coordination, a good example of the recent trend to revitalize and revamp existing malls. “The traditional mall has faced an uphill battle as competition from lifestyle centers and online shopping has only increased in recent years,” says Di Santo. “To draw shoppers to malls, investors will be adding entertainment venues, fine dining and other features that cannot be recreated online.”

“People are willing to go out and spend money on services they cannot get at home,” he adds. “Entertainment options, such as new theater and bowling concepts, are both trending for 2015.”

And increased confidence among consumers has resulted in more foot traffic in malls, leading retail tenants to relocate from tucked-away corners to more expensive center-court locations. To offset the higher rent, many national retailers have decided to take smaller floor plates. And for shopping mall owners, this has meant reconfiguring areas with renovation projects.

“When more retailers are packed together, some can get lost in the shuffle,” Di Santo says, and some mall owners have responded by improving sight lines for shoppers. “Using a retail construction contractor to make both signage and showroom space visible to shoppers is imperative.”

For example, in Englewood's recent construction of Harry Caray's 7th Inning Stretch and Chicago Sports Museum in Chicago's Water Tower Place, signage was visible but potential customers could not see the restaurant space from the escalators. “To bring more exposure, we pushed out the restaurant space to make it more visible and inviting,” Di Santo says “We expect to see more retailers calling attention to their store locations through creative commercial construction problem solving.”

With the increase in ground up retail and restaurant construction and the reconfiguration of shopping mall space, national commercial contractors like Englewood have a lot to look forward to in 2015, Di Santo concludes.