By Taylor Williams “People are still spending money.” That’s what Nick Skeparnias, principal at Agora Commercial Realty Partners, a full-service advisory and development firm, identifies as the single-biggest point of optimism about the state of the greater Philadelphia retail market. According to data from the U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. retail sales totaled roughly $774 billion in August, a 1.2 percent increase over the previous month. The Wall Street Journal also reports that spending in discretionary categories of retail, namely electronics and appliances, rose by 1.6 percent in August versus July. And according to both The Journal and Breitbart, the actual volume of retail sales in August exceeded economists’ expectations by anywhere from 40 to 70 basis points. Within Skeparnias’ simple, five-word declarative statement, there’s no question that “still” is the operative term. “Retail is only as good as the money that people have to spend on it,” he elaborates. “So when you consider the biggest concerns for this asset class, there’s nothing specific to retail itself, but issues that are more global. There’s always going to be something at the retail level; first it was e-commerce, then COVID-19. Now we have AI [artificial intelligence], and if that starts taking people’s …
