The grocery industry is already focusing on how best to balance physical retail space against online retailing, but Amazon's Whole Foods buy is a significant vote of confidence in bricks and mortar, Kalvoda says.

“It does validate that there is a need for a physical presence,” he says, noting that Amazon ended its Amazon Fresh home delivery of groceries in New Jersey shortly after completing the Whole Foods acquisition.

“It will definitely cause Walmart and others to really up their game in the grocery space world,” he says. “For consumers overall, it will be a positive impact, but from a retail center owner's perspective, it's whether or not your center is anchored by a Walmart or Whole Foods, where you'll see the impact.”

For the Whole Foods-anchored centers, combining online ordering and store pickup could be a positive, because it will drive traffic to those stores, Kalvoda says, but he points out that if home delivery gets reintroduced, that could hurt the store volume.

“There will be a shakeout as to which grocers survive and get that right balance between online and physical presence,” he says. “The positive thing is the fact that Amazon is entering the physical world of grocery retailing as well as scaling back on some of the online, it does validate the need for a neighborhood center and grocery occupancy in those centers. In the long run, neighborhood centers should still be a good real estate investment.”