What Market Analysts Can Tell You About Main Street Retail That Planners Can’t
To the extent that daytime office workers were the drivers of your Downtown’s retail trade, the rise of hybrid work and decline in 9-to-5 footfall raises the stakes for such districts to develop or strengthen their DESTINATION APPEAL. The strategy for how exactly to accomplish this – catering to what kinds of consumers, with which types of businesses – necessarily involves a nuanced understanding of how prospective tenants view your Downtown within the broader competitive ecology. In my experience, however, planning processes do not always value this aspect of the analysis, preferring instead to fixate on place-specific variables like the built form, the public spaces, the urban design, the parking infrastructure, etc. – all of which are necessary but not always sufficient. Consider the case of Old Town Pasadena (CA), which I have been studying as part of my research for a retail strategy on Hollywood Boulevard. Virtually every narrative on its transformation from 1980’s-era blighted afterthought to top-flight (perhaps too chain-filled) shopping destination cites its historic fabric (protected by a preservation overlay), its ample and well-managed parking supply, its investment in the public realm, its embrace of smart-growth principles as well as the community’s enviable demographics. And yet, Old Town is not the only historic Downtown with municipal garages, enlightened planning and well-heeled residents – why did it, unlike most others, hit the jackpot with national brands? That’s not just about the place itself, but also, the still-latent opportunities in the larger regional marketplace at the early stages of Old Town’s reemergence (i.e. early to mid 1990’s). At that time, brands could locate in one or both of two nearby malls: Glendale Galleria, 6.2 miles to the west, and Santa Anita Fashion Park, 5.8 miles to the east. If such retailers also wanted to tap the fast-growing affluence in between, Old Town was the logical place for it (while also sitting just beyond the 5-mile radius restrictions that many mall owners at the time imposed on their tenants). Now that’s a pretty important factor, right? Which is why, in identifying a path forward (or trying to preempt an undesired trajectory), you need also to be engaging with your (more insightful) real estate professionals so as to better understand the market dynamics informing the needs and predilections of the retailer. It’s often more complicated than you might think.