Builders Break Ground On Another River Oaks Mid-Rise With Condos Starting At $1.5M

If the years since the onset of the pandemic were supposed to be some of the hardest ever for the restaurant industry, someone forgot to tell food halls.

Touted as the hottest new trend in retail five years ago, food halls came out of the crisis comparatively unscathed to standalone restaurants. And though not every destination dining venue made it out alive, enough did that industry specialists say it has proved its mettle as the safest investment in restaurant real estate.

“It appears to be the lowest risk that a food professional can take in opening up new ventures,” said Phil Colicchio, executive managing director and food, beverage and entertainment expert at Cushman & Wakefield. 

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Despite apparent consensus across commercial real estate that 2023 will be a year of hard times, conditions still may not be right for the distressed asset market to kick into gear.

Since the pandemic’s outbreak, opportunistic investors have salivated over the prospect of building owners stuck between a rock and a hard place on their loans.

But the private equity funds set up to buy distressed assets need debt of their own to deliver the returns promised by their sponsors — and they aren’t getting it.

"The first question is, ’Is there going to be distress?’” said Jason Hernandez, who leads Nuveen’s debt practice in the Americas. “And if there is but there’s no liquidity, it’s very difficult to have a functioning distressed asset market. There are very few unlevered buyers.”

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