Retail

By Taylor Williams DALLAS — It’s an exceptionally challenging time to be developing retail space in the metroplex. Pick your poison: Interest rates that have tripled in two years, restricted proceeds from lenders, longer entitlement and permitting times, limited land for new projects. Between all these barriers to growth, the deck is seemingly stacked against brick-and-mortar retail developers these days, despite the fact that in Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), occupancy is very high and population growth shows little sign of slowing. Of course, each of those factors is exacerbated with large-scale developments. More land and rentable square footage require the raising of more debt and equity, which translates to heftier interest and dividend payments, respectively. If the site is an assemblage, then predevelopment is more time-consuming, and with the push outward to new suburban paths of growth, those sites may not already be zoned for retail. If rents aren’t trending upward, those factors alone can kill a project in its infancy. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. For all these reasons, some owner-operators see opportunity in building smaller …