LOS ANGELES—Retail sales in several Downtown Los Angeles areas rank in the top 1% in the state and country for retail revenue performance on a monthly basis, according to a new retail report from MasterCard that tracks retail sales revenue. The Downtown blocks that rank in the top 1% include the areas around L.A. LIVE, Figueroa St. between 7^th and 8^th Streets; 7th Street between S. Grand Ave. and S. Flower Street; and locations on Broadway. The report was generated through the MasterCard Retail Location Insights, a new product that launches this week at ICSC in Las Vegas. The product can track retail spending by MasterCard users down to a city block.

“We have, in essence, created a score for the retail real estate market, which will provide more transparency for the sector. We think it is absolutely unprecedented, and that is what really excites us about it,” Gary Kearns, group head for information services at MasterCard Advisors, tells GlobeSt.com. “By having this data, we can look at census-bloc areas and provide some insights to tenants there now, tenants looking to be there or investors, and help them understand how to compare one block to another in the same market. Retail commercial real estate has been a lot of third party or anecdotal sales figures, and with so much money on the line, we wanted to fill that void.” The product has five individual scores: traffic, stability, revenue performance and ticket size, as well as an overall composite score.

While retail in the Downtown market is just beginning to take off, with more and more retailers planting roots there, market expert Derrick Moore, principal with Avison Young, wasn't surprised to hear that retail sales in the market are already trending at the top. “Downtown for years had been thought of primarily as a 9-to-5 retail market, and now a larger percentage of those workers have decided that they want to call downtown their home. You have one of the most sophisticated groups of consumers that are electing to live down here,” Moore tells GlobeSt.com. “It isn't just the millennials; it is professional-grade employees that are well educated and have a sophisticated palate. The spending dollars of that group and the repeat purchases are stronger than most areas in California. They are highly loyal to what was the limited retail offerings down here, to the point of out-spending other areas by 20 basis points.”

Moore notes that the Ralph's supermarket, which was the first grocery store in the market in 50 years, has the top performing service-deli in the country and the market itself ranks in the top 10 markets of 300 for that chain. At the time that it opened, there were only 40,000 residents in the Downtown market, but the success of the grocery store was really a catalyst for other retailers. “News has gotten out to the retail marketplace. Primarily, it started with the success of many restaurants. In an area that was never thought of has having any sort of commerce after 9PM,” says Moore. “There was great success with Bottega Louie, and then you started seeing more chef-driven concepts coming to downtown. That then attracted the fashion tenants, which is probably the fastest growing retail group that are looking to get into these spaces.”

The MasterCard Retail Location Insights looked at other top performing L.A. markets, too, to see how they stack up against perception. It found that Abbott Kinney in Venice ranked at the top for stability over the past three years, surpassing the Rodeo Drive, Melrose Place and Downtown markets. Overall, Melrose Place is the top luxury destination in the L.A. market, surpassing Rodeo Drive for total revenues, traffic, stability and growth; however, Rodeo Drive still won the top spot for single ticket size.  “Rodeo Drive still leads the pack when it comes strictly to selling price. So, the high-end retailers on Rodeo Drive are still delivering the highest concentration of merchants with the highest ticket size,” says Kearns. “Their ticket size is still the highest in the state of California.”