News Release - 3/5/98

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News Releases - Thursday, March 5, 1998

Contact: Mark Borsuk, Managing Director (415) 922-4740 / mark@borsuk.com

“Retailer Leasing Strategy in a Wired World” raises the prospect of online shopping giving landlords' tsoris. The upcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Real Property Analysis (JARPA) features the article.

Retailer Leasing Strategy points to an earlier example where information technology caused a sharp fall in commercial space demand. Fifty percent of the movie theaters closed between 1948 and 1963 while TV spread to ninety percent of the homes. Online buying may well exert a similar affect by cannibalizing in-store sales leading to vacancies and potentially lower rents. Retailer Leasing Strategy also examines the implications from Egghead’s move to cyberspace. The article goes on to consider store leasing strategy in this new retailing environment and calls into question the basic assumptions used to locate stores. Finally, Borsuk argues Wall Street needs to create a trading market for merchants and property owners to hedge the risks of occupying and owning leased space.

In his January 5 article entitled “Web sites cast big shadow over real estate leasing strategy" in Discount Store News he urged retailers to strategically plan for the coming shift in space use.

In a forthcoming analysis, “The Mad Mohel: Will Cybersurgeons Clip Retail REITs?”, Borsuk asks: Is online shopping’s impact on space demand going to collide with Wall Street’s securitizing retail space? [Mohel, a circumciser, (Yiddish) rhymes with “Doyle”.]

On Wednesday, June 24, Borsuk will join a panel discussing “The Impact of Technology on Real Estate” at the 1998 Western Building Show in San Francisco.

The Real Estate Transformation Group advises landlords, retailers and lenders on property strategy for the Information Age. In addition to consulting, Mark Borsuk is a retail leasing broker and real property attorney practicing in San Francisco.

The Real Estate Transformation Group wishes to thank Dan Mihalovich [http://www.mihalovich.com], an office leasing broker in San Francisco, for hosting the articles including THIRD WAVE CHUTZPAH. [http://www.mihalovich.com/tenant_brokerage/columns/chutzpah.htm]

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