San Diego Big Box Leasing Picks Up

San Diego’s big box market is having a great year. Since the start of 2019, 25 big box spaces totaling nearly 429,000 square feet have been absorbed in the market, according to the latest big box report from CBRE. While leasing activity was strong, new supply coming online—largely from the Sears bankruptcy—left the vacancy rate flat compared to the previous report with a total of 29 available big box spaces in the market.

“The good news is that from the last survey, which we do every 6 months, we had an additional 15 more boxes,” Reg Kobzi, SVP at CBRE, tells GlobeSt.com. “That is a good sign. However, at the end of the day, we ended up with the same amount of boxes available as we did at the end of last year, so it was kind of a wash. Everything got absorbed in the Central Valley. It is really in the South Bay, North County and East County that still have the most availability for big box.”

The report classifies big box spaces as anything 15,000 square feet or bigger, but there isn’t a trend in terms of the size range that has been most popular. “Sears skews the numbers, because they are big. You can’t really use an average,” says Kobzi. “The good thing is that a lot of retailers with widespread closures are only closing under performing stores. It is not a clean slate.”