If there ever was a time to open a storefront, it’s now. Three years after the pandemic shuttered many stores, commercial real estate is now a hot commodity.

Retail vacancies in the United States dropped to 6.1% in Q2 of last year, a 15-year low. But asking rents for shopping center spaces during that same time were 16% higher than five years ago, per Cushman & Wakefield. Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT) is one landlord that’s signing tenants for one of its newest developments in a major market.

• PREIT is filling out Springfield Town Center, a new development in Fairfax County, Virginia that is already ~95% occupied with tenants.
• Burlington is the latest tenant, and it will join the likes of the Lego Discovery Center, Lovisa, BoxLunch, Daily Thread, Carters, Macy’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Target, H&M, Sephora, Abercrombie Kids, and American Eagle.

“Mixed-use assets increase consumer dwell time, encourage return visits, and provide customers with an experience beyond shopping,” PREIT CEO Joseph Coradino told Retail Brew. “Serving as community hubs, they offer consumers a one-stop shop and offer tenants a built-in audience. By creating high-quality spaces that offer multiple services from different tenants, we are able to attract more customers and encourage longer stays.”

Springfield Town Center is exemplary of the kind of spaces retailers and their tenants want to occupy, Coradino said. The key to a successful mixed-use project is diversity—a blend of retailers, restaurants, activations, and office or residential space that keeps a continuous flow of people in and around the development. On top of other tenants such as Nordstrom Rack, Five Below, and Target, Springfield Town Center includes 460 apartments and a 165-room hotel.

Keep reading here.—KM

Metaverse Fashion Week 2022 spanned three days in virtual world Decentraland. The event featured more than 60 brands and Web3 projects, and included shops, fashion shows, and phygital sales. Dolce & Gabbana’s catwalk featured cat models, and Grimes performed live. And the whole thing came together in just three months.

When Head of Metaverse Fashion Week Giovanna Casimiro joined Decentraland in 2021, the wheels were already in motion to get a virtual fashion week off the ground.

“There is already an established economy of wearables in the platform,” she told Retail Brew. “There were already established designers creating 3D clothing and people consuming 3D clothing in that ecosystem.”

Casimiro is bringing the event back to that digital fashion ecosystem at the end of March. MFW 2023 will be a feat of both fashion and technology, bringing in AR and live components, not to mention a slew of new brands. To prepare, Decentraland has been tightening up the tech and partnering with other virtual worlds.

Casimiro herself has a background that spans pattern design and dyes in the physical fashion world and digital experiences including augmented and virtual reality. She also has a master’s degree and a Ph.D. focusing on art and mixed realities (That’s Doctor Casimiro to you!).

Building fashion week on the internet

Putting together MFW isn’t all that different from putting on a live event, Casimiro explained.

To get brands ready, there are three phases: onboarding, creative ideation, then several rounds of execution testing, she said. And this year’s batch of brands are coming prepared.

Keep reading here.—MA

Today’s top retail reads.

Testing new waters: UK brands eager to break into the US market are leveraging partnerships with American retailers to navigate the region and find their target customer. (Business of Fashion)

Moo-t point: Forget lab-grown meat; single-celled yeasts are shaking up the dairy industry with the potential for making lab-grown dairy a reality. (the Washington Post)

Big ambitions: Chick-fil-A is now eyeing markets like Asia and Europe for expansion, and it has a $1 billion plan for it. (the Wall Street Journal)

Docs for days: The collection of documentaries on Curiosity Stream has every other streaming service beat. With countless topics and new shows added every week, there’s entertainment for every interest. Get 25% off your subscription.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Every in-person retail pro knows that when lunchtime rolls around, you can’t go wrong with a trip to Sweetgreen. Marketing Brew sat down with the salad giant’s Nathaniel Ru, chief brand officer, to find out how they focus their growth strategy on a few organic ingredients.

At the mall, it’s where band tees are the only tees. In Retail Brew, it’s where we invite readers to weigh in on a trending retail topic.

In a Marketplace story about the National Customer Rage Survey, which asks consumers about raging at businesses, Scott Broetzmann, president and CEO of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting, who led the survey, said some consumers feel remorse after writing negative reviews.

“There is a component here of not really feeling particularly great after you’ve made some sort of public pronouncement,” Broetzmann said.

You tell us: Have you ever written a negative online review and regretted it after for being too harsh? Cast your vote here.

Circling back: Last week, we asked about a Pennsylvania Chick-fil-A where anyone younger than 16 must be “accompanied by an adult,” according to Insider. We asked if you thought restaurants should be able to ban unchaperoned minors. You really do, with 92.3% of you supporting restaurants’ right to ban minors, 7% saying restaurants should not be allowed to ban them, and 0.6% didn’t know or weren’t sure.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• When will CPG prices come down?
• How fit-tech is revolutionizing shoe shopping
• Our takeaways from eTail West 2023