Retail

Twenty years ago, if you were to make the 100-mile drive along Interstate 5 from Los Angeles to San Diego, you’d be driving through crop fields, ranchlands and vast tracts of undeveloped land. Today, that same corridor in southern California is defined by commercial and residential development, so much so that it’s hard to tell where one city ends and another one begins. In recent years, California has become a feeder of the growing Texas population as businesses and households alike seek the tax benefits of relocating from the West Coast to Texas. Central Texas has been the landing spot for many of those firms and families as well. Consequently, the region’s overall population growth is laying the groundwork for a similar type of transformation along the Interstate 35 corridor connecting Austin and San Antonio. While retail normally follows rooftops, in Central Texas we see retail developers and investors — as well as their counterparts in the industrial space — targeting these markets in advance of the residential building boom that they feel is sure to come. In addition, the remarkable population growth of both of the corridor’s anchoring cities has cemented its role as a rising star in terms …