Adam Ifshin, founder and CEO of DLC Management Corp.

What were the biggest issues or concerns among the people at ICSC last year? What's changed since then with relation to those concerns, and what do you think are going to be the biggest topics this year, the biggest concerns that they're going to have?

Those were some of the questions sister publication, Real Estate Forum, asked a group of experts during a retail rountable in preparation for the upcoming ICSC RECon show in Las Vegas. The consensus? “For people who are deeply in the trenches, our view is, enough already about e‑commerce.”

That thought was according to roundtable participant, Adam Ifshin, founder and CEO of DLC Management Corp. in Tarrytown, NY, which owns and operates primarily value-add retail real estate assets in the eastern half of the US.

“We have a longer backlog of new deal leases in our legal department, which has 14 people, than we've ever had in our entire existence,” he says. “Deals have taken forever because a lot of retailers have cut a lot of overhead staff. So they're slow on docs, but DLC leasing volume does not suggest the depth of brick and mortar retail.”

Quite the contrary, he continues. “It suggests that at least what we're doing, where we have it priced is exceedingly healthy. So we're very bullish about what the fundamentals are, and we're very bullish about, you know, if own it at the right basis, there is tenant demand because there is very little to no new development.”

Ifshin says that for people who are deeply in the trenches, it's about, “can we just focus on the business please and not have to constantly answer 8 billion questions about e‑commerce this and e‑commerce that? Nobody has ever sold groceries on the Internet and done anything but lost their shirt, right?”

He adds that “Amazon has yet to make money selling shirts online too for the record. So as long as they have a 550 P/E, I guess they'll be able to continue to have a huge impact, and I'm not suggesting they won't. But at least for us, I'm hoping that my 25‑person team that's going to be there [at ICSC] is focused exclusively on making deals because we got plenty of business to do, and I'm not worried about them having enough to do.”

Thomas P. McGuinness, president and CEO of InvenTrust Properties Corp., an Oak Brook, IL-based REIT invests in, redevelops and operates open-air retail centers nationally, absolutely agrees with Ifshin that “the grocery business will hardly be affected by the internet.”

And as to the hard and soft goods retailers, McGuinness says that, yes, some are failing, but “we're rapidly coming to a middle ground, where the pure-play Internet retailers are opening bricks and mortar, and the old pure play bricks and mortar have online. It's called 'omni-channel,' but lord knows why since there only two channels. Anyway, the distinction between the two types of retail will vanish in a few years.”

McGuinness says that what we have now is a kind of reverse musical chairs. “Every time the music stops, one more retailer leaves the room and we have another empty store front. The concern is how are we going to replace all these tenants that have been falling by the wayside?”

But McGuinnes says we aren't failing because of the Internet. “If they were, you wouldn't have so many tenants like Ross and T.J. Maxx that are doing so well today. I attribute these tenant failures for the most part to the oversupply of retail and, more importantly, to their own internal inability to keep up with the times.”

While not a concern for high‑end, he explains that top tier malls and best-of-class neighborhood and community centers, is a real issue for power and discount centers in secondary locations. “The center in the third best location in a secondary town filled with anchors and junior anchors from 10,000 to 30,000 feet is in for 40 miles of bad road.”

GlobeSt.com is providing wall-to-wall coverage of ICSC's RECon show in Las Vegas May 20-24. Subscribe to the Retail Ticket for pre-event articles, live video interviews on site and post-conference analysis. Keep checking back with GlobeSt.com throughout this month and next for all the retail news and analysis you need to know as we gear up for this year's RECon event. And keep an eye out for the upcoming issue of Real Estate Forum, where these experts, along with others, dive deeper into current retail trends and forecasts.

And for other thoughts from experts who will be attending the upcoming ICSC RECon event, check out the articles below.

Experts Talk RECon; Creating Unique Experiences for Consumers

Are Retailers Hesitant to Execute Deals and Expand?

RECon's Strong Educational Value Draws DDG

How the “Retail Meltdown of 2017” Has Flipped the Script, Changed RECon Strategy

Why ICSC's RECon Already Feels Different This Year

Instant Insights /

Expert: “Enough Already About E-Commerce”

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