The retail market is gaining tenants as fast as it is losing them. We have recently seen new demand from urgent care facilities for retail spaces, and now there is a new surge of fitness centers signing retail leases. Fitness operators—which includes a variety of classes, boxing gyms, yoga studios and the like—have strong revenues that allow them to pay premium rents and they help to create synergy in a shopping center by drawing health-driven tenants, whether restaurants, juice bars, athletic wear brands or health food stores. We sat down with Alex Koustas of The Agency for an exclusive interview to discuss the new trend.

GlobeSt.com: What is driving this new demand from fitness operators?

Alex Koustas: If we want to understand what is happening with this fitness trend in retail, we have to go back and understand what is happening to your standard retailers. A lot of the businesses that landlords have expected and grown accustomed to are no longer there. Or they might be there, but they are no longer profitable. We are finding that a lot of landlords have vacancy and they can't fill that space. Landlords are realizing that concurrently there has also been an uptick in physical fitness use. People are health conscious now and they want an active lifestyle, and there are a lot of new concepts in the market that lend themselves to a wide array of physical fitness use. The competition is fierce, and the price per class is going up. Classes can be anywhere from $25 to $35 per participant, and that adds up. Therefore, these businesses can handle the rent in a lot of these higher-level spaces that have now gone dark.