Double Whammy

10/10/2019 | By John Cumbelich

The suburban shopping center business is not in crisis. But the simultaneous presence of two unsettling dynamics in the industry are unraveling once proven assets, and stunting new development. The first of these ailments is the interruption (or is it the termination?) of the anchor tenant ...

Read More

Where Do You Retail?

04/10/2019 | By John Cumbelich

Retail brands that embrace the Omni-Channel approach to selling their wares seek to create unique silos beyond the retail store where merchandise can be delivered to customers. Catalogues, on-line stores, gift cards and partnerships with credit card companies are among the channels that retail ...

Read More

Retail Reinvented

01/09/2019 | By John Cumbelich

The San Francisco Bay Area is now home to not one but two of the most evolutionary new projects in the world of commercial real estate. The first, Apple’s 2.8 M square foot circular headquarters building in Cupertino, elevated the low-rise suburban office campus ...

Read More

Oakland 2.0

11/12/2018 | By John Cumbelich

Prior to World War II, Oakland was one of the major retailing markets in the West. In an era when the department store was the king of retail, serving as the ultimate validation of a retail marketplace, downtown Oakland was home to R.H. Macy’s, ...

Read More

Larry Legend

08/14/2018 | By John Cumbelich

Way back in the 1980’s, I developed my first really important and impactful client relationship. My client Larry worked for a fast-growing Fortune 500 video store retailer. He was in the fourth quarter of a career in corporate real estate that had begun in ...

Read More

Online Dating

05/16/2018 | By John Cumbelich

The real estate industry’s version of online dating can be found in places with names like LoopNet, Crexi, Commercial Search, CoStar and others.  These sites are built on the titillating premise of helping unlucky buyers and sellers, or landlords and tenants, to find the ...

Read More

Make it Fit

04/25/2018 | By John Cumbelich

In the past month or so, our firm has consummated leases with fitness brands CB Fit, Omni Fitness, F45 Fitness and The Studio. Over the same short period of time, we have also had discussions about current availabilities with Core Power Yoga, Orange Theory ...

Read More

Russ Solomon, R.I.P.

03/12/2018 | By John Cumbelich

The world of retail lost an inimitable icon last week with the passing of Russ Solomon, the founder of Tower Records, at his home in Sacramento. While Solomon was well known to the worlds of music, retail and real estate for achievements and innovations ...

Read More