By Taylor Williams The challenges are multi-faceted. The timelines are elongated. The costs are brutal. The capital is tight. The consumers’ incomes are strained. The prevailing logic favors buying over building. The list goes on. And yet some retail developers in Texas and Oklahoma see the current environment as one that represents a unique chapter in the saga of their business — one that makes them glad they do what they do. That sentiment is not just a factor of a post-COVID resurgence built on the realization that brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce platforms work better in tandem than in opposition. And it’s not just a natural byproduct of favorable supply-demand dynamics that have pushed retail occupancies and rents to record highs in most major markets. It goes beyond being the beneficiary of new capital flows as the commercial real estate darlings of the past decade — industrial and multifamily — have experienced softening fundamentals. The feeling is, in the words of Stevie Wonder, all these things and more. “It’s a special time in this business, even if it’s a different one,” says David Neher, president at Dallas-based Rainier Development Co. “There’s a fair amount of front-end risk and planning for …
