The Montgomery Club turned into a standing room only on Sept. 9, when more than 170 eager industry professionals came out to learn about today’s retail at IREJ’s Chicagoland Retail State of the Market Conference.
The event, which began at 7:00 a.m., kicked off after attendees helped themselves to the hot breakfast provided and took their seats to listen to keynote speaker Michael Drew, principal at Structured Development, LLC.
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The ‘Market Update: Opportunities & Trends in Retail Industry,’ was led by a panel of six– Danny Jacobson, Cushman & Wakefield (moderator); Marci Carl, Bucksbaum Retail Properties; Dan Tausk, Mid-America Real Estate Corporation; Chris Ressa, DLC Management Corp.; Greg Kirsch, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank; and Anthony Campagni, RKF— where the group discussed the current leasing activity, retail challenges and influences, as well as the growing eCommerce business, future trends and their thoughts and predictions on leasing.
The second panel came up after a short break, to turn the attention to ‘Retail Strategies: Structuring the Deal/Building the deal, Start to Finish.’ Speakers included: Andy Stein, Clark Street Real Estate (moderator); Larry Kilduff, JLL; Todd Siegel, CBRE; Tim Jackson, International Contractors, Inc.; Daniel Rosenberg, Cohen Financial; and Tim Henry, Avison Young.
Topics of discussion were focused on special tenant needs, redeveloping exisiting space versus new construction and infill in today’s market, lender issues, and the beginning of the resurgence of “mom and pops.”
