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 7th and 8th 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.