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What does the future hold for retail? INSIDE The ingenuity of merchants and shopping center owners is vital to their success Owner insights Five Points’ Welton Street shows resilience with community-driven concepts Restaurant trends PAGE 16 By embracing varied leasing options some are bringing in new retail and restaurant tenants COVID-19 leasing PAGE 11 November 2020 PAGE 10 W hile retailers have been impacted by the COVID- 19 pandemic, year-over- year U.S. retail sales are up 0.6% (August 2019 to August 2020) including e-commerce. When excluding e-commerce, U.S. retail sales were down, but only by 0.5% year over year. Each product type has been impacted by COVID- 19 differently. Generally speaking, the sales at neighborhood grocery centers and community centers have fared well as consumers have shifted to spend more on groceries than dining out. Malls have been slower to rebound in foot traffic as many consum- ers adapted to the convenience of online shopping, curbside pickup and easier access to open-center formats instead of closed formats. Retailers them- selves have accelerated their plans to improve their order online and pickup in-store presence. We also have witnessed an impact on retail- ers in urban environments – with street retailers in the central busi- ness districts anticipated to have one of the longest roads to recovery due to a slow return to office tow- ers and lack of business travel and tourism. However, there are seg- ments of retail that are performing well and trends we expect to con- tinue after the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. n What retailers are performing well? Sit-down restaurants, bars, department stores, apparel retail- ers, gyms and entertainment have been some of the concepts hit hard- est by the pandemic. So far in 2020, approximately 9,000 U.S. national and large retailers filed bankrupt- cies, but only 4,250 actual retail stores have closed, as of Sept. 16. Please see Page 17 Jon Weisiger Senior vice president, CBRE, jon.weisiger@cbre. com CBRE Retail centers in suburban markets are recovering faster as hardware store or grocery-anchored neighborhood retail centers have been the most resilient while residents spend more time at home. Pictured above is Cherry Hills Marketplace, a community retail center in Greenwood Village anchored by Trader Joes, TJ Maxx, Home Goods, Sierra Trading Post and Ace Hardware, which is being marketed for lease by CBRE.