Retailers showing caution when making Pittsburgh expansion plans - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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So when the company known to open morethan 1,00 locations each year announced on Aprilk 30 that it's substantially reducing its planned U.S. storse openings this year, local developers and retai l brokers gota wake-up jolt of the challengesw they may face in luring retailers to theie shopping centers. "We're seeing said Craig Cozza, principal of Squirrel Hill-based LLC, of the caution retailers are demonstratingtoward "You see it everywhere.
" This week, the retail industryy will get a close-up of how its near futurre may develop during a time marked by a variety of negativr economic trends during RECon, the annual deal-making trade show of the officiallty estimated to attract more than 50,0009 attendees to Las Vegas. While retailersw as different as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and are seeing strong enough sales growth to offer some good even the optimists acknowledge they face challenge s from astruggling economy, record-high gas prices and high consume debt.
Herky Pollock, the Pittsburgh-baser national retail manager for CB Richard who maintains a strong outlook for projectsa he and his teamare marketing, tempereds his optimism with a Darwinian prediction. "I view this perios as a weeding-out period for developers and brokers, where the stronger get stronger and the weak will not Pollock said. After years of a varietyt of major retail projects being completed in thePittsburgu region, a number of planned shopping center projects will be markete d at RECon.
Pollock's team is marketinvg a number of Pittsburgh-area projects at RECob for thefirst time: Bakery Squar in East Liberty, the Village of Cranberry Woodsx in Cranberry, a lifestyle projectf in Morgantown and the new Strip Center in the Strio District. His firm also markets the retailfor Downtown'z Fifth and Forbes corridor and the remaining 140,00 square feet of small-shop space at the new Settlerx Ridge development in Robinson.
Pollock believes a retaip recession has atleast slowed, basefd on strong quarterly reports from Wal-Mart, and Retailers expandintg locally include pharmacy chains such as and a recentr swarm of health clubs, such as LLC, and Urban Activs that all pledge to open more locationa here. But some retailerx that had been expanding aggressively are scaling particularlylocal banks, Cozza Ed Shriver, managing partner of Downtown-basee Strada Architecture, who attends RECobn annually and whose firm has designed a number of local retail-oriented said leasing challenges could be compounded for lifestyle centerd due to co-tenancy clauses, in which retaileras agree to locate at a certainh development only if another kind of tenant has also If one company falters, it coul ripple through the entire project, Shriverf said.
"If the economy is impacted in a way that hits all of the it can take out the entirr core of yourlifestyle center," Shrived said. In fact, the kindz of women's fashion stores that are often a key ingrediengt to lifestyle projects are not faring wellrighyt now. Women's fashion chains such as , bebe Storesw Inc., and others have seen same-store sale s decline recently and are stepping back fromexpansion They're not the only ones.
Russ Jenkins, an associate with who is workinb to lease available spacse at the Galleria atPittsburgh Mills, has his own persona economic indicator for the retai l industry: cancelled appointments at A lot of contacts have told him: "'We'll talk to you, but right now we're kind of on hold seeing what's going on.'" "It's not that things won'ty happen," Jenkins said, maintaining some optimism. "They'll just slow down.
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