June 16, 2024

Putting Boots on the Ground at Trade Shows Emerges As Part of the Strategy

Las Vegas, Nevada

Seven years ago, officials of a Chicago suburb sought a developer to revitalize a nearly 30-year-old vacant office campus. It was no small task: They wanted to re-imagine and add uses, including retail at a former AT&T outpost with roughly 1.6 million square feet of space.

Local economic development representatives from Hoffman Estates, Illinois, arranged to connect with an out-of-state developer at the retail real estate industry’s biggest trade show, the ICSC conference, in Las Vegas. The New Jersey developer came to see the AT&T site — and ended up buying it. Now the $200 million redevelopment, called Bell Works Chicagoland, is underway.

More municipal and county officials across the country are taking a cue from counterparts in places including Hoffman Estates by proactively seeking out, meeting and courting retailers and developers. Government and economic officials are heading to conferences such as ICSC’s annual gatherings in not only Las Vegas but New York and other cities. There were roughly 80 municipalities on the retail real estate trade show’s floor last month at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

At the event, representatives of large cities such as Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, and Newark, New Jersey, rubbed shoulders with officials from places such as Albertville, Alabama — population about 28,000 — to promote their locations. Kevin Kramer, Hoffman Estate’s economic development director, was part of an ICSC panel this year that included Lynn Spruill, the mayor of Starkville, a college town that’s the home of Mississippi State University, an institution with more than 22,000 students and about 800 faculty members.

“Over the last 10 years, a lot of communities are starting to realize how important retail recruitment is,” said Elliott Cook, director of real estate for Retail Strategies, a national real estate consultant to municipalities on retail recruitment.

These cities and towns seek the kind of results Hoffman Estates had in 2017, a redevelopment case study Kramer presented at ICSC. In April 2017, a Kramer colleague attended an American Planning Association in New York, later toured Bell Works and had a meeting at ICSC before Holmdel, New Jersey-based Inspired by Somerset Development bought the 150-acre AT&T campus at 2000 Center Drive in Hoffman Estates for $21 million in March 2019. A spokesman said Zucker was out of the country and couldn’t be reached to comment.

Of course, small towns aren’t the only ones stepping up the self-promotion. Some big cities undergoing transformations are looking to change outdated perceptions about themselves and to tell their success stories to retailers and developers. In some cases, that means offering updates on the luxury multifamily housing that’s planned for their downtowns, a move aimed at bringing new residents and creating demand for grocery stores, service-oriented shops like nail and hair salons, eateries and entertainment venues.