News
RETAILER OPTIMISM
April 4, 2011
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| Walmart is looking to expand in Atlanta. It's just that the specifics haven't been worked out yet. Walmart's David Roetto (far right, with DLC Management's Mike Puline and retail broker Van Westmoreland) was one of our retail panelists at last Thursday'sAtlanta Retail Summit at the Westin Buckhead. He says the world's largest retailer is expanding stores with much different footprintsthan the big box category killer usually associated with it. (For example, its 15k SF Walmart Express stores and its Walmart Market concept, a 35k SF grocery store.) Both are designed to becloser in proximity to households. It was unclear if either of these formats were slated for Atlanta. But David did highlight the 75k SF urban store it's building with HJ Russell in West Atlanta. ?Walmart currently does not have a store of that size. But I can tell you over the next couple of years, you're going to see more of that,? he says. | |
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| Other panelists included GameStop's Thomas Eldridge, David, Chipotle Mexican Grill's Michelle Ryman, and Family Dollar's Jim Newburg. Most of the participants do still seek restrictions andexclusives on their leases but to differing degrees. Thomas says exclusives are more of a ?security blanket? against any mom and pop retailers that want to go into a center. ?We don't try and restrict anybody over 10k SF." Michelle says Chipotle loves restrictions, but that its appetite to expand has increased its willingness to take on location risk. ?We do seek hefty restrictions,? she says. ?We will go in front of a Moe's or a Lime Fresh … but we don't want to be out-positioned by them.? | |
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| Here we have Robert Mimms, one of the family members of Mimms Enterprises, who says recovery is evident. ?I feel that we're on an upswing, although recovery is extremely slow,? he told us prior to Thursday morning's event. Mimms recently acquired the Publix-anchored King's Market shopping center and Roswell Town Center, a strip center anchored by Big Lots. ?As a family of companies, we have been able to take advantage of this market even though in a lot of cases, you're still playing defense.? | |
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| We ran into Sean O'Brien, whose O'Brien & Co is a noted shopping center developer and owner. Perhaps just to confuse us, Sean told us some interesting news: he's now into multifamily. Last summer, he started Two Capital Partners and raised $7M to fund two apartment communities, one in Tallahassee and one on theoutskirts of DC. Sean says the 216-unit Tallahassee project will deliver next year and the Largo, Md. project—a Class-A 318-unit apartment community— will deliver in 2013. Both will be managed by RAM Partners. |
