Among the region’s lifestyle and grocery-anchored centers (malls are a different story), negligible vacancy is the norm, not the exception. Springfield Plaza, for example, a 260,000-square-foot grocery-anchored center just off the Springfield mixing bowl, is less than 3% vacant, with three storefronts out of 50 available for lease, according to Rappaport’s site plan. Rappaport’s Village at Leesburg has just a handful of vacancies out of 76 available.
At Bethesda Row, there are only two retail storefronts available, totaling 810 square feet, out of 85 and more than 400,000 square feet, per Federal Realty Investment Trust’s (NYSE: FRT) tenant roster. The Peterson Cos.’ Fair Lakes Center has a single, 3,600-square-foot space available out of 306,000 square feet, another 1% vacancy.
Rappaport manages and leases roughly 75 retail centers, largely in the D.C. suburbs, and there isn’t a big-box available in any one of them, Henry Fonvielle, Rappaport president, told me. At the big suburban centers especially, he said, the fashion retailers that shuttered due to the explosion of online shopping, among other reasons, have been replaced by new entertainment, service and even new fashion concepts — many of which were online only to start, but have since branched out to brick-and-mortar.
“We are experiencing fantastic demand from new concepts and there is no new supply,” Fonvielle said.
