Real Retail
Specialty: Specialty retail leasing and development
Management: Principals Maria Royer, Jennifer Seversen, Brynn Estelle Telkamp
Founded: 2005
Headquarters: Seattle
Current projects: Port Gardner Wharf, a 65-acre waterfront community in Everett; Ballard Blocks, a 136,000-square-foot mixed-use development just off the Ballard Bridge; High Streets at Issaquah Highlands, a 140-acre development with up to 750,000 square feet of retail, 3,800 homes and 2 million square feet of office space
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It’s good news for retail developers — at least around Puget Sound — that the American dollar is weak right now. Canadians are flocking across the border to shop here.
“The strength of the Canadian dollar ... fuels the retail sales equation,” says Jennifer Seversen, a principal at Real Retail who represents high-end shopping destinations such as Pacific Place. “From a retail standpoint that’s a positive thing.”
Her partner Maria Royer adds that the downturn in shopper spending other parts of the country are experiencing is not happening here.
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“Seattle ... is sought after from a retail perspective,” Royer said.
Retail pipeline filling up
At some point, the price of land — if it continues to go up — is going to curb the growth of retail development here, they say.
And by 2010, most of the major retail projects in the pipeline will be full.
What will the retail landscape look like then?
“With such scarcity of land, mixed-use will continue to be the trend,” Royer predicted.
Not just in the cities, but in the suburbs as well.
The days of the big one-story shopping center are numbered. “Land is too expensive to build a one-story building with a surface parking lot,” Seversen said.