Texas Market Reports

The terms “experiential retail” and “mixed-use development” are both thrown around heavily in the context of 21st century commercial real estate. As buzzwords for the changing landscape of retail real estate and encapsulations of the preferences of millennials, the terms are as popular in their usage as they are arbitrary in their application. Is an apartment building with a ground-floor restaurant or coffee shop really considered mixed-use? Is it actually legitimate to think of buying shoes or jewelry as an experience? The answer varies depending on who’s asked. But the fact remains that dividing lines between certain property classes are beginning to blur. Increasingly, office and multifamily projects are designed to include food, drink and entertainment options, which have become the only real common denominators among mixed-use projects. Given that those three facets of retail involve spending on one-time, consumable products and services, they have become the face of experiential shopping and spending. Integrating retail development into mixed-use projects, as opposed to standalone shopping centers or pad sites, comes with its own unique challenges: parking, noise restrictions and sourcing contractors that specialize in build-outs for multiple property types, to name a few. But developers realize that no matter how much …

For the past several quarters, the headlines of most CRE publications in Texas and beyond have proclaimed the end of retail as we know it. By now, we’ve all heard the stories and seen the writing on the wall: e-commerce will kill the shopping mall; large anchors that landlords have counted on for decades are shuttering and Amazon will be the end of the retail storefront. It’s a familiar tale as of late. But amid the doom and gloom of store closings, Houston seems to be staying on top of the trends, as its retail market remains healthy and appears to be moving ahead. In fact, despite losing over 70,000 oil-related jobs since 2015, Houston’s retail market remains one of the strongest in the country, posting an average occupancy rate of 95 percent. In addition, employment growth in the retail sector grew 5.1 percent in 2016 amidst the oil bust. Despite these strong retail indicators in Houston, the aforementioned market changes do have an effect on the retail environment. And while retailers themselves need to make the biggest adjustments, developers and landlords are not without their own challenges. Like the rest of the country, Houston retailers must figure out ways …

South Texas is in the midst of a growth spurt in the commercial real estate industry. Within the area’s retail sector, demand for freestanding emergency rooms and cold storage facilities is growing rapidly. Though atypical, requests for such spaces are becoming increasingly common in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). An estimated 1.3 million people call the RGV home. Both Hidalgo and Cameron counties are equipped with multiple hospitals to meet the healthcare needs of residents. There are three freestanding emergency rooms in Hidalgo County and two in Cameron County, with several more currently in the pipeline. Three of the larger healthcare providers within the RGV — Doctor’s Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg (the largest hospital in the area), South Texas Health System, which has five hospitals in cities McAllen and Edinburg and HCA Hospital in McAllen — all have plenty of emergency rooms to cover the cities they serve. Between Harlingen and Brownsville, both the longstanding Valley Baptist Health System and the newer Harlingen Medical Center have plenty of emergency rooms to handle residents’ healthcare needs. Despite having this many established players in the market, new operators of healthcare real estate like Neighbors Health System, which owns and operates Neighbors …