Evaluating Opportunities for Densification

SEATTLE—“We are seeing our institutional clients reinvesting in their existing stabilized assets because there is so much momentum that pricing starts to get out of whack.” So says Anjee Solanki, who has recently been named to the newly created position of national director, retail services | USA at locally based Colliers International, as GlobeSt.com reported exclusively.

“Within their own portfolios, clients are evaluating opportunities for densification, to add additional GLA [gross leasable area], to create new value,” she explains in the latest edition of Colliers International's Knowledge Leader magazine. “And it's helping them, as they go through their own internal analysis, readjust the value of their projects because they're able to reduce the cap rates to a certain extent.”

Bob Browning, VP of retail services at the firm, based in Washington D.C., says that in his region, the tenant side of retail is very active, especially on the food side. “You have a lot of new concepts coming in,” he says. “They're actually classifying a new category of fine casual dining: fine fast casual.”

Solanki adds that in some projects, “we're capturing space from traditional retailers and putting in these fast-casual concepts. They're fresh, they're new and in terms of sales, they generate higher sales per square foot. They are the next junior anchors to a lot of these properties.”

Click here to see the full issue of Knowledge Leader.