By David Nicolson, president, Weitzman San Antonio In March 2020, health officials first used the term “pandemic” in reference to COVID-19. Since then, our communities, economy, commercial real estate industry and retailers and restaurants have gone through a year of challenges that few could have foreseen at the start of 2020. The fact that today we are in better shape than we could have predicted during the shutdown a year ago shows that the disruptions caused by the pandemic have been met with innovation, creativity and plain hard work. Here in San Antonio, those disruptions did result in a number of retail and restaurant closings. But since the second half of 2020, we’ve seen an upswing in tenant demand. In terms of closings, Sears closed its 150,000-square-foot store at South Park Mall and its approximately 134,000-square-foot store at Rolling Oaks Mall. With these store closings, Sears — once the nation’s largest retailer — no longer has a presence in the San Antonio market. Other closures include Stein Mart (three box vacancies), Pier 1 (five closed stores), Gold’s Gym (three closed locations) and Tuesday Morning (one closed location). Combined, these closings resulted in approximately 564,000 square feet of total vacancy being …
