Nostalgic Retail Series
For most of the back half of the 20th century, if you needed motor oil, a Trapper Keeper, and a rotisserie chicken in the same ten minutes, Kmart was where you went. The blue light special was real. So was the fluorescent hum, the layaway counter, the shoe department carpet
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In May I moderated a session at ICSC Las Vegas called "The End of the Trade Area" with Meghann Martindale of Avison Young, Ethan Chernovsky of Placer.ai, and Sam Hall of Growth Factor. The premise was blunt: the radius-based trade area is a 60-year-old
Nostalgic Retail Series
For about twenty years, if you wanted a leather jacket, you went to the mall, and you went to Wilsons. The smell hit you before the sign did. Racks of bombers and blazers, a wall of gloves by the register, a clearance rack that swelled every February. If you got
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Retail real estate is having a victory lap. Vacancy near historic lows. Rents up. J.P. Morgan talking about the strongest shopping center valuations in a decade. Landlords are taking bows. Here's my problem with the celebration: a lot of it isn't earned. Yes. This is
Nostalgic Retail Series
The parent company died in 2001. A few of the stores survived and are still open in 2026. If you ever bought name-brand shampoo off a stacked delivery case, under a handwritten sign, in a box the size of a grocery store, you shopped Drug Emporium. And if you
Nostalgic Retail Series
If you had a job interview in 1991, you shopped at Casual Corner first. The blazer. The coordinated separates. The sales associate who somehow made every woman feel like she was buying exactly what she needed. Casual Corner didn't sell clothes, it sold a version of who you
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Same macro environment. Same interest rate cycle. Same headlines. Opposite outcomes, depending on whose balance sheet you're looking at. Ask anyone outside this industry what happened to American retail last year and you'll get the same answer: it contracted. Joann liquidated. Party City liquidated. Rite Aid
Nostalgic Retail Series
Fifty entries into this series, and this one might have the best name of them all. If you were a 90s parent who refused to buy whatever was advertised during Saturday morning cartoons, Noodle Kidoodle was your store. Educational toys, demo stations, kids playing in the aisles. The slogan said
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The most important word in CRE right now isn't AI. It's place. It's always been place. Let me explain how I arrived at that conclusion, and why it took a trip to Las Vegas to remind me. I just came back from ICSC. Two
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Why an industry built on the Power of Where has confused data with understanding, and what it costs the people making real decisions. Walk into any commercial real estate strategy session, retail planning meeting, or lender review. You will see a heatmap. It will be beautiful. It pulses with reds
Nostalgic Retail Series
Before Home Depot owned every weekend DIYer's imagination, Builder's Square was already there. Founded February 1970 in San Antonio as Home Centers of America by Frank Denny, a former W.R. Grace executive who saw the warehouse format coming a decade before most retailers did. Unusual
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Here's a pattern nobody's naming. A VP of Real Estate or a CRO gets hired. They inherit a data stack. They spend four months learning what the platforms do, which ones to trust, which reports matter. Somewhere around month six, they start asking the right questions.