Nick Banks, Principal at Avison Young in Florida.

GlobeSt.com is providing wall-to-wall coverage of ICSC's Deal Making Conference in New York from Dec 10-12. Subscribe to the Retail Ticket for pre-event articles, video interviews on-site and post-conference analysis.

NEW YORK CITY— The International Council of Shopping Centers is hosting its Deal Making Conference in New York City from Dec. 10-12, and some attendees are most excited to learn about new trends, new tenants and new technology in the retail space, which has shown great optimism with innovation and incubation in the sector.

GlobeSt.com caught up with Nick Banks, principal at Avison Young in Florida, who will attend the conference, and he is most excited about the natural incubation that happens at the conference with new innovations in the space.

One of the ideas he bets attendees will have their eye on is the blending of online retail and traditional retail, as companies strive to achieve an omnichannel platform to sell their products and services, Banks tells GlobeSt.com. "The NY ICSC show is always a venue that showcases new concepts and ideas," he said. "This year, I believe we'll see several retailers emerge with innovative business plans that continue to blur the line between online shopping and the brick-and-mortar customer experience."

Overall, Banks said he is looking forward to another high energy conference, where he says optimism for retail remains high across most sectors, especially food and beverage. However, it is hard to focus on one area of retail when there is so much to watch out for in the space.

"There are fewer projects being developed nationally, but the ones that are coming online in the next few months are game-changers," he said. "We're seeing a lot of retailer's excitement focused toward major transit-oriented projects, large scale mixed-use developments, as well as entertainment and experiential-driven projects."