The South Florida ICSC Idea Exchange was very well attended, with a bold increase not only in the total number of professionals attending but also in the number of companies requiring space in the deal making exhibition area.
Retailers are actively looking for new sites with the restaurant sector clearly being the most active. New and shiny restaurant concepts such as PDQ (http://www.eatpdq.com/) are more active, as opposed to existing popular tenants pushing large expansion plans.
The Fast-casual space continues to be active, with most retailers preferring to be situated in a multi-tenanted building with strong co-tenancy.
The discount retailers remain active (Dollar General/Family Dollar) but there is some question as to how long those tenants can continue their expansion plans.
Macro-economic concerns remain, however those questions tend to be "how will rising interest rates affect deal flow" a step forward from the morbid 2008-2011 question of "how will we survive?".
Overall, leasing and development activity is up year over year and all market participants continue to be bullish stepping into 2014.
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