For a decade, the headlines insisted the shopping center was dying. They were wrong — or, more precisely, they misdiagnosed the patient. What was actually failing wasn’t physical retail. It was a tired model: oversized boxes, stale anchors, and a tenant roster assembled to fill square footage rather than serve a community. Fix the tenant mix, and the same real estate comes roaring back. That’s not a theory anymore; it’s what the numbers show.
The “Retail Apocalypse” Was a Misdiagnosis
Start with the premise everyone got wrong: that e-commerce would swallow retail whole. It didn’t. Online sales have flattened out at roughly 17% of total U.S. retail — which means about 83 cents of every retail dollar is still spent in a physical store. The internet took the commodity, repeat-purchase business it was always going to take, and then it plateaued.
What truly collapsed were the anchors that had stopped earning their footprint — the Sears, JCPenney, Pier 1 and Tuesday Morning boxes that defined a generation of centers. When those went dark, the weak properties built around them went with them. But the market didn’t reject retail. It rejected bad retail real estate.
Share of U.S. retail sales that still happen in physical stores — e-commerce has plateaued near 17% (U.S. Census Bureau).
The Cure Was Curation
The centers that came back didn’t do it with a clever lease structure. They did it by changing who’s in the building. The winning tenant mix leans into exactly the things a website can’t replicate:
- Necessity. The supermarket anchor — the daily-trip generator that brings a trade area through the door 1.5 times a week, recession or not.
- Services you can’t download. Medical and “medtail” (urgent care, dental, physical therapy), where health systems alone now account for a large share of off-campus leasing, plus fitness — from boutique studios to the pickleball boom.
- Experience. Chef-driven and independent restaurants, food halls, and the kind of local concepts people drive to on purpose. Dining and entertainment are the new traffic engine.
None of those tenants is competing with Amazon. They’re competing for the best-located space they can find — and there isn’t much of it.
The Proof Is in the Vacancy Numbers
If the thesis were wrong, you’d see it in empty storefronts. Instead, you see the opposite. U.S. retail vacancy recently hit its lowest level in roughly 20 years — around 5.3%. Neighborhood and community centers are running near 6% vacancy, strip centers around 5%, and availability at unanchored strip centers has fallen to record lows near 4.8%.
Two forces are driving it, and both favor existing owners: almost nobody is building new retail, and the space that exists is far cheaper to lease than anything you could construct today. That’s the definition of a supply-constrained, landlord’s market — and it’s exactly where a well-tenanted, well-located center wants to be.
The Landlord’s New Job Is Merchandising
Here’s the shift I’d urge every owner to internalize: a shopping center is no longer a collection of leases — it’s a curated experience, and the landlord is the merchandiser. The best operators think like a hotelier managing amenities or a department-store buyer managing a floor: every space is a deliberate choice about what the customer encounters next.
From where we sit on Long Island and across the Northeast, that’s the opportunity in plain sight. A distressed or under-merchandised center in a strong trade area isn’t a problem property — it’s a repositioning play. Backfill the dark anchor with grocery, medical, fitness or food, edit the inline mix toward services and experience, and you don’t just fill vacancy. You re-rate the whole asset.
The shopping center was never dead. It just needed a better guest list.
- U.S. Census Bureau, “Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales.” Link
- Federal Reserve (FRED), “E-Commerce Retail Sales as a Percent of Total Sales.” Link
- JLL, “Medtail in Transition.” Link
- CRE Daily, “U.S. Retail Vacancy Rate Hits Lowest Level in 20 Years.” Link
- Matthews, “No Anchor, No Problem: Unanchored Strip Center Report.” Link
President & CEO, Schuckman Realty Inc.
Ken Schuckman is President & CEO of Schuckman Realty Inc., a retail-focused commercial real estate brokerage founded by Stanley Schuckman in 1978 in Hicksville, NY. With 30+ years of experience specializing in supermarket-anchored shopping centers, Ken is a CoStar Power Broker and member of X-Team Retail Advisors. He is also Co-Founder & Principal of BTF Capital Fund. SchuckmanRealty.com