I am currently halfway through the development of a 6-story, 40,000-square-foot office building located in a close-in suburban community. I anticipate construction to be complete by early summer 2016. My project is not too distant from several other projects that include a mix of office and retail, with some including multifamily housing. The vacancy rates for the office and residential uses have remained under 7%, but I have noted an increase in the retail vacancies over the past several years, currently in the range of 12% to 16%. I had intended to attempt to prelease my approximately 6,500 square feet of ground floor space to one or more retail uses, but am beginning to question this assumption. What do you think, Ms. Real Estate?

—Rethinking My Retail Space

Dear Rethinking My Retail Space:

There is no question that in-store retailing is taking a beating from the change in shopping behavior accelerated by the availability of same-day delivery opportunities enabled by apps like Google Express. I reside in a downtown condo that houses a significant proportion of under-35-year-old residents, and can't help but notice that many of my young neighbors even have their drugstore items delivered, despite the fact that there is a CVS less than two blocks away.

Having almost a year before your project is completed buys you some time to see whether you can attract retail uses that also will appeal to your future office tenants, such as food services, spas, gyms and other consumer-oriented tenancies. Should you find you will have to offer overly generous leases to attract these tenants, spend some time investigating the possibility of attracting a maker space operation.

The demand for a broad variety of maker spaces has been on the increase, with some early purveyors of this type of collaborative workspace finding they can afford to move into bigger and more up-to-date real estate than the empty warehouse-type space that served as their birthing place.

The demand for places with the equipment needed to fabricate a broad variety of products with up-to-date digitally assisted tools is particularly strong in locations with significant number of Millennials. It would not be surprising to find a proportion of those working in the office component of your project will also sign up for part-time use of the maker space in order to avail themselves of the on-site equipment and the opportunity to collaborate.