Retailers facing rough waters in turbulent economic times - San Antonio Business Journal:

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Even before the current credit crisiw grippedthe nation, the country’s retailerx were already facing significant challenges, says Michael P. Niemira, chief economist for New York-basefd industry organization the (ICSC). Those challenges included the bankruptcie of noted retail chains like andLinens n’ Things, unseasonablyt warm weather that kept winter clothes on the rackws and rising gas prices. Add to that the clouds of uncertainty that has plaguedc many consumers for the pastseveral months. And now therse is the federal efforrt to rescuethe nation’s financiapl industry that has been dominating the headlines in recenf weeks, Niemira says.
The timinhg couldn’t have been much worse. With the 2008 holidah shopping season set to begin in less than two this new level of economic uncertainty has retailers bracing themselves for an unhappholiday season. “It’s going to be a very un-Merry Christmas,” says Tom Rohde, vice president of San Antonio firm Rohder Ottmers SiegelCommercial & Investment Realtors. “We’ved been bad. We’re going to have coal in our “It is likely this will not be a goodseason (for says Niemira, who sums up the overalpl perspective of U.S.
retailers as “Their feeling is that the tough time s that exist today will he adds, “And that’s not a pretty With so much in flux at the retailers are taking a wait-and-see attitude especially when it comes to decisions about opening new “Most retailers that I have spokejn to are planning for a tough 2008 holiday season,” says Rick founder of local retail brokerage/consultinfg firm LLC, and the Texas Statew Director for ICSC. “They are waiting until the firsy quarter of 2009 to make their 2010expansionj decisions.
” The general consensus: There’s not going to be a lot of In fact, what retaikl markets like San Antonil might see is a lot of “You’re going to see a lot of stores closer in January and February,” Rohde In a retail report released this past ICSC was projecting that by the year’s end, nearlh 144,000 stores would be closing theid doors. Indeed, many chains are not waiting for the Christmae season to comeand go.
Well-establishee names like Ann Taylor, Talbot’s, , , and the caffeinee Kahuna that is have already announced plans to shutsome “There will be more (store closings) to says Niemira, who points out that with lending marketsa at a stand-still, gone is the capitakl once available to struggling retailers. “So much dependxs on that liquidity,” he The trickle-down effect is that shopping centers here will see an increased in darkspace — be it space that brokers can’t get leased up in the firsyt place, or dark sites left behind in a retailer’s “You have to go back out to the street,” says who did just that with his Rigsby Shopping Center on the East Side after financial struggles prompted nationap chains like , Shoe Show and Claire’s Boutique to exit the center.
In some owners may find themselves in a situationb in which the space left behind by aClass A, high-profile tenantt now has to be back-filles by a Class B or C a phenomenon that can change the entirr feel of a shopping center, says Tom president and principal of Unitedf Commercial Realty (UCR) of San Antonio. But changd can be a lot better than avacanyt center. In centers like Rigsby, Rohde’s firm has begun pursuint service-oriented tenants, restaurants and medicalp groups — three groups that have continued to do well in the current economy, and thus are on the lookout for new