How should institutional capital allocate to retail nationally in 2026, and which sub-sectors and geographies warrant conviction versus selectivity?

This page is a national allocation framework overlay. Retail Investment Thesis 2026 is the canonical analysis establishing the investment case — the Ares/Whitestone $1.7B take-private, the CBRE "Walking on Sunshine" vintage thesis, grocery-anchor durability, food hall NOI mechanics, urban high-street recovery evidence (Williamsburg, Mag Mile, Times Square), and the five underwriting rules. That page should be read alongside this one, not instead of it.

This synthesis adds three layers the thesis page does not cover: a structured sub-sector allocation framework, DB-sourced market data grounding the Sun Belt retail strength claim, and cross-references to the metro allocation analyses that contain the most investable specific market signals.

Use National Retail Market Ranking 2026 for the market-level ranking companion. This page remains the subsector and allocation-framework layer; the market-ranking page separates Charlotte / Greenville-Spartanburg / Nashville / Raleigh-Durham conviction from corridor-specific Boston, New York, Austin, Miami, and Houston evidence.

The broad "retail is dead" narrative has not matched the best current evidence for quality retail, and institutional capital is again underwriting select formats as investable. The current source stack supports a low-vacancy quality-retail thesis rather than a single DB-backed national vacancy series. Charlotte's retail vacancy is 2.9% — the #1-ranked U.S. retail market per CoStar. Greenville-Spartanburg metro vacancy is 3.3%; the Greenville-Spartanburg 3.7% and Greenville County 4.0% rows are availability-rate observations. Denver is at 4.9% availability. Houston is at 6.0% — with Inner Loop product showing even tighter fundamentals. DFW retail asking rents at $26.23/SF, with the occupancy / durability thesis coming from metro-page and source-note synthesis rather than a current DB occupancy row.

The Source Collection: CBRE Insights Market Reports Public Crawl 2026 adds a current national CBRE retail source to that premise. CBRE's Q1 2026 U.S. retail figures showed 4.9% availability, $24.59/SF average asking rent, low completions, positive net absorption, and a clear suburban-over-downtown availability split. The allocation implication is not "buy all retail"; it is that the best retail capital lanes remain supply-constrained, consumer-supported, and operating-intensive. Phoenix's Q1 construction / absorption outlier belongs in Sun Belt growth-corridor diligence, not as a generic development green light.

The dedicated Source: CBRE Q1 2026 U.S. Retail Figures note now verifies and imports the clean public rows from that CBRE page. The underwriting implication is still selective: a 4.9% national availability rate and $24.59/SF average rent support the supply-constrained retail premise, while the downtown / suburban split says hybrid-work geography matters more than the national average.

Source: CBRE Inland Empire Retail Figures Q1 2026 adds a local Southern California retail row to the national selectivity framework. CBRE reported 6.9% Inland Empire availability, +418K SF of Q1 net absorption, 185K SF of deliveries, flat $1.71/SF/month NNN asking rent, and $736.9M of Q1 investment sales volume boosted by Victoria Gardens. The allocation read is positive but not one-directional: demand and liquidity improved, while flat rent and big-box supply keep landlord pricing-power claims gated.

Source: CBRE Orange County Retail Figures Q1 2026 adds the coastal scarcity version of the Southern California retail screen. CBRE reported 3.9% Orange County availability, +21K SF of absorption, 5K SF of deliveries, $2.56/SF/month NNN asking rent, and $436.1M of Q1 investment sales volume. The source supports selective scarcity retail and redevelopment watchlist work, but leasing-volume decline and missing cap-rate / tenant-sales detail keep broad rent-growth claims gated.

Source: CBRE Puget Sound Retail Figures Q1 2026 adds a Pacific Northwest cross-check: 4.0% availability, -7K SF absorption, low deliveries, $25.20/SF marketwide asking rent, $39.05/SF Eastside asking rent, and $176.3M of investment sales volume. It fits the national page's retail selectivity frame: service-oriented, necessity, and high-income submarkets can be investable while larger discretionary space remains restrained.

Source: Matthews Jacksonville FL Retail Market Report Q1 2026 adds a Northeast Florida household-growth retail cross-check. Matthews reported 4.9% vacancy, 91,800 SF of Q1 absorption, $26.12/SF asking rent, 2.0% rent growth, 200,000 SF of deliveries, 572,000 SF under construction, $187M of Q1 sales volume, and a 7.2% cap rate. The allocation read is consistent with the Sun Belt necessity-retail lane: Jacksonville works best through grocery, service, and neighborhood centers in growing residential corridors, while older trade areas still need tenant-sales and rollover proof.

Source: CoStar U.S. Retail Construction Pullback Q1 2026 sharpens the supply premise with a primary CoStar construction read: U.S. retail under construction was roughly 64.2M SF in Q1 2026, down from about 70.0M SF in Q1 2025 and below the prior expansion-cycle average above 90.0M SF. That supports existing-owner scarcity, but the release frames the shortage as a feasibility constraint from land, construction, labor, financing, and required-rent pressure. Allocation should therefore favor existing well-located retail and preleased pipeline exposure over speculative development that only works at above-market rents.

Source: IPA Single-Tenant Net Lease Retail National Report 1H 2026 extends the scarce-space thesis into freestanding net-lease formats. The strongest allocation lane is not generic single-tenant retail; it is food-centric and convenience-oriented tenant credit where vacancy is exceptionally low. IPA's table shows Q1 2026 vacancy of 1.0% for convenience stores, 1.5% for quick-service restaurants, 2.6% for grocery stores, and 3.5% for restaurants, versus 6.0% for drug stores and 6.4% for department stores. That keeps single-tenant net lease in the investable income universe while pushing pharmacy and department-store boxes into specialist dark-value / backfill diligence.

Source: B+E Convenience Store Cap Rates Year-End 2025 adds pricing discipline to that c-store allocation lane. The source's applied rows (market_observations.id=34289-34318) show year-end 2025 c-store listed inventory at 384 properties, average cap rates at 5.62%, and sharp dispersion by banner and format: Wawa averaged 4.83%, 7-Eleven 5.36%, Circle K 5.60%, fuel assets 5.58%, and non-fuel assets 6.87%. The allocation implication is not "buy every c-store"; it is that high-credit, fuel-service, long-term convenience-store income can screen as durable, while shorter-term, weaker-banner, non-fuel, or high-cap-rate geography exposure requires a wider exit-cap and dark-value case.

Source: CBRE U.S. Net Lease Investment Figures Q1 2026 adds a capital-markets check on that lane. Retail net-lease volume fell 21.3% year over year to $2.7B in Q1 2026 and represented 22.0% of net-lease volume, while industrial accounted for 58.3%. Retail net-lease can still be investable, but the current liquidity read is industrial-led and rate-spread disciplined rather than a broad bid for all single-tenant retail.

JLL's May 2026 global perspective adds an external cross-check for selectivity: retail leasing was active in core locations, U.S. Class A malls and general retail posted positive Q1 absorption, and lower-tier malls and power centers were weaker. That supports the page's quality-retail premise while reinforcing that retail allocation should remain format- and location-specific. See Source: JLL Global Real Estate Perspective May 2026.

ICSC's May 2026 pre-Las Vegas retail roundup adds the capital-markets confirmation layer: Newmark-referenced Q1 2026 U.S. retail investment sales reached $19.0B, 17 single-asset deals above $100M totaled $8.1B, CBRE still showed positive absorption and 4.9% availability, Colliers framed supply as constrained despite slightly negative absorption, and C&W pointed to mid-6% cap-rate stabilization for high-quality grocery-anchored centers. Treat that as source-family triangulation for institutional appetite and necessity-retail pricing, not as a standalone national metric table. See Source: ICSC Retail Heads Into ICSC Las Vegas in a Powerful Position.

Source: Cushman & Wakefield United States Outlook 2026 adds a broad 2026 outlook cross-check for the same quality-retail lane: C&W says retail fundamentals are holding firm, with strong leasing velocity, rising rents, and scarce new supply keeping quality space at a premium despite tenant margin pressure. That supports the existing scarcity thesis, but it does not turn obsolete boxes, weak malls, or tenant-margin-challenged formats into generic buy targets.

Source: Marcus & Millichap 2026 Retail Outlook adds a complementary Marcus & Millichap scarcity and capital-markets read. The public brief reported 2025 overall retail vacancy near 5.0%, open-air center vacancy of 4.5% to 4.7%, malls above 9.0%, less than 10M SF of trailing-12-month multi-tenant completions through Q3 2025, a record-low 30M SF 2026 construction forecast, aggregate retail cap rates around 6.8%, and retail transaction activity 12% above the 2014-2019 average. The allocation implication is format-specific: open-air and necessity-oriented retail can keep a scarcity premium, while mall exposure still needs dominant-asset proof.

Source: CBRE Retail - U.S. Real Estate Market Outlook 2026 adds the CBRE forward-looking counterpart to those source-family reads. CBRE expects limited new construction, near-historic-low availability, modest positive absorption, and stronger performance from grocery, value, service, restaurant, open-air, and high-income suburban formats. The allocation read remains selective rather than broad beta: older power centers, weaker malls, discretionary specialty tenants, and capital-improvement-heavy assets need explicit backfill, concession, TI, and tenant-sales underwriting.

Source: Marcus & Millichap Canada Retail Sales Research Brief May 2026 adds a consumer-demand caution that supports the same format selectivity from outside the U.S. In March 2026, Canada headline retail sales rose 0.9% to C$72.7B, but the source attributes much of that to gasoline prices; real retail volume fell 0.7%, core ex-gasoline / autos sales slipped 0.1%, and food / beverage retail outperformed building materials and garden. Allocation should therefore avoid reading nominal retail-sales growth as tenant-health proof and should keep grocery-anchored, essential, service, dining, entertainment, mixed-use, and urban high-street formats ahead of discretionary goods exposure unless sales productivity and tenant credit are proven.

The consumer backdrop is still nominally supportive: April 2026 U.S. retail and food services sales were reported at $757.1 billion, up 0.5% month over month and 4.9% year over year. Because those figures are not price-adjusted, they support a resilience premise, not a real-volume acceleration thesis.

Source: JLL Location-Based Entertainment Report 2026 strengthens the experiential-retail part of the selectivity point with primary-source JLL rows: 207 tracked concepts, 4,746 existing U.S. / Canada locations, 721 planned or announced locations, and 16.5M SF of planned demand. The trampoline / kid-zone segment is the clearest big-box-backfill lane, with 355 planned locations, 10M SF of announced space, and 61% of planned location-based-entertainment square footage. Treat it as an investable tenant-format signal for obsolete anchors, theaters, and midsize boxes, while still requiring property-level lease, sales, tenant-credit, TI, and occupancy-cost evidence before converting the category thesis into valuation assumptions.

The June 15 retail-format tranche adds two other operating-demand signals: fast-casual chains such as Cava can still add units in growth markets, and retailer rebranding / store-concept execution remains an operating moat rather than a passive landlord benefit. Treat these as format-demand signals only; the allocation page still needs property-level lease, sales, tenant-credit, and rent evidence before converting them into valuation assumptions. See Source: Location-Based Entertainment Retail Expansion 2026, Source: Cava Fast Casual Store Expansion 2026, and Source: JLL Retail Solutions Rebranding Unit 2026.

The question for institutional capital in 2026 is not whether quality retail formats are investable. It is which sub-sector and which geography, and whether the capital structure supports operational intensity. Retail Investment Thesis 2026 establishes that operational intensity is the primary moat — the buyers who can actively manage merchandising, leasing, and tenant mix create returns that passive capital cannot replicate.

Method caveat: this page does not rely on a single national retail vacancy series or a DB-ranked national retail league table. The low-vacancy quality-retail claim is a synthesis from cited metro observations and retail source notes, and applies mainly to modern, well-located necessity/open-air, select high-street, and proven Class A assets. It should not be read as a claim about all retail inventory, obsolete boxes, value malls, or every Sun Belt market.

Why: Daily-needs traffic, e-commerce immunity, long lease terms, and below-replacement-cost acquisition basis in supply-constrained trade areas. The Ares/Whitestone $1.7B take-private is convenience / necessity-focused institutional validation — 56 Sun Belt necessity properties at a 26.5% premium to unaffected price. That premium confirms institutional sentiment toward necessity retail, but it is not proof of grocery-anchored pricing by itself.

Anchor quality benchmarks: H-E-B (Texas dominant), Publix (Southeast dominant), Kroger/King Soopers (national), Wegmans (Mid-Atlantic/Northeast). Anchor selection matters — grocery market share dominance in the trade area determines the traffic floor.

DB-grounded evidence: DFW retail asking rent and pipeline observations support the market's durable income framing, while the 95%+ occupancy language remains a metro-page / source-note synthesis rather than a current DB occupancy row. San Antonio retail absorption of 760,804 SF YTD through Q4 2025 — largest in the tracked Sun Belt set. Houston annual leasing activity of 8.0M SF through Q4 2025 was the highest of any tracked metro, with Inner Loop NNN rents at $30.44/SF.

Underwriting signal: Grocery-anchored cap rates clearing at 5.25–5.50% for core product (per Retail Value-Add Underwriting benchmarks). The 50-year hold logic documented in the Wilmington MA family-hold example — "never sell a performing grocery anchor in a supply-constrained trade area" — is the correct orientation for long-duration capital.

Caution: Centers with grocery anchors in weak trade areas (flat population, declining incomes, competing new-format grocery supply) are not the thesis. The anchor must have genuine dominance in its catchment.

Why: Sun Belt population growth translates directly into retail demand where household growth, tenant credit, and replacement-cost basis align. Charlotte is the national leader; Nashville and Raleigh-Durham have stronger preserved support, while Phoenix / Las Vegas coverage is thinner and should remain caveated until richer current retail observations are preserved.

DB-grounded evidence:

• Charlotte: 2.9% vacancy, $22.31/SF NNN, +7.4% annual rent growth (CoStar 2025), CoStar #1 national ranking
• Greenville-Spartanburg: 3.7% availability — second-tightest in the tracked set; Greenville County standalone availability at 4.0%
• Raleigh-Durham: $27.50–$28.84/SF NNN asking rents (Q4 2025), healthy leasing velocity
• Denver: 4.9% availability, $27.08/SF NNN, +2.4% rent growth
• Atlanta: 5.8M SF annual leasing activity (2025), $19.98/SF NNN
• Miami: 2.0M SF annual leasing activity (Q4 2025), $41.97/SF NNN (highest tracked metro for Sun Belt)

Caution: Power centers with non-necessity anchors (department stores, home improvement) carry more disruption risk. The DFW example — landlords actively encouraging departure of sub-$6/SF tenants when market is $15/SF — illustrates that below-market leases represent upside, but only if the landlord has the operational capability to backfill at market.

The Saks Global bankruptcy is the live 2026 cautionary example for department-store and luxury-anchor credit. Owned-store sales, lease shedding, and outlet-location closures can create both downside for landlords dependent on the tenant and opportunity for owners with recapture or backfill control.

New development signal: NewQuest's Texas Heritage Marketplace (Waller County, Houston metro) — 800,000 SF / 165 acres with I-10 corridor grocery-frontier positioning — is the most aggressive 2026 signal for greenfield Sun Belt retail development in undersupplied corridors. New development is penciling in corridors where retail is genuinely unserved, not in markets that already have density.

Why: The top tier is performing. Simon Property Group reported 96.4% portfolio occupancy at its 2025 fiscal year-end, which supports the case that dominant Class A malls can remain operationally relevant. It does not erase the impairment narrative for value malls, obsolete enclosed centers, or non-dominant trade areas.

Named market evidence: SouthPark (Charlotte) and Haywood Mall (Greenville) are secondary-market exemplars of the thesis — malls that generate genuine pedestrian volume, have current tenant rosters that institutions can underwrite, and are not facing the secular decline affecting mid-tier and value-oriented enclosed malls.

Underwriting discipline required: The screen is strict. A Class A mall in a top-20 market with a dominant trade area position, occupancy above 92%, and a tenant roster that includes experiential and F&B anchors alongside traditional retail earns allocation consideration. Everything below that standard — including secondary-tier malls in markets with competing Class A supply — does not.

Debt availability: Lenders will finance Class A malls with demonstrated performance. Enclosed mall product outside the top tier faces structural debt market avoidance.

Why: The best experiential retail performs as an embedded component of a larger mixed-use or destination district, not as a standalone acquisition. The Domain (Austin), Pearl District (San Antonio), South End (Charlotte), and comparable Sun Belt mixed-use corridors generate premium retail rents because foot traffic is multi-use and dwell time is structurally longer than in commodity retail.

Investment implication: Experiential retail is most accessible as an embedded position in a mixed-use development or as an in-line retail component of a grocery-anchored or neighborhood center that has incorporated food hall or F&B density. The food hall economics from the CBRE source are specific on format cost: 10,000–15,000 SF at approximately $400/SF buildout cost, with percentage-rent lease structures that align operator and landlord incentives. The adjacent-NOI case is plausible but unquantified in the current source layer — dwell time may support leasing velocity on adjacent tenancies, but the lift requires operational proof.

Caution: A food hall is an enhancement layer, not a property type allocation bucket. It deserves capital only where the trade area, foot traffic, operator, lease structure, and adjacent merchandising support it. Otherwise it is expensive tenant improvement work with restaurant-cycle risk.

Why: Parking can create recurring cash flow in dense trade areas, event districts, mixed-use assets, and EV-enabled centers where supply is scarce and management control is real.

Investment implication: Treat parking as ancillary income attached to necessity retail, scarce high-street corridors, or destination districts. It can improve NOI and customer capture when priced correctly, but it should not be the reason to own a weak retail center.

Caution: Parking monetization is local-operating work. It depends on zoning, easements, customer tolerance, enforcement, event calendars, EV infrastructure, and merchant needs. Overcharging parking can damage the traffic moat that made the retail valuable in the first place.

Why: Vacant big-box and enclosed mall product is generating adaptive reuse examples rather than broad retail-income proof. The Kroger/DRA Advisors example in Louisville (former Lowe's acquired at $13M+, sold at $22.6M for grocery conversion) is a watchlist playbook: acquire the physical infrastructure at distressed retail pricing, and sell or develop for a higher-value use.

Relevant use cases: Industrial conversion (urban infill), housing conversion (especially in supply-constrained coastal markets), medical/MOB conversion, and data center adaptive reuse in select markets. These are not income-first acquisitions — they are land and shell pricing plays where the returns come from use transformation, not from retail operations.

Not suitable for: Income-first institutional mandates, short-duration holds, or capital that cannot tolerate development-risk uncertainty in the conversion process.

Highest conviction: Sun Belt population-growth markets where vacancy is below 5%, new supply construction economics are difficult (replacement cost math requires $40–50/SF NNN rents where markets clear at $25–35/SF), and in-migration continues to layer new household demand onto existing retail infrastructure. Charlotte, Greenville-Spartanburg, Raleigh-Durham, and Nashville represent this combination most cleanly.

Strong fundamentals, higher competition: DFW, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix. These markets are investable but pricing reflects institutional awareness — the Ares/Whitestone take-private confirms that Sun Belt necessity retail is no longer a hidden opportunity.

Gateway markets — format-specific only: NYC, Chicago, Boston. Urban high-street retail in irreplaceable corridors (Williamsburg, Mag Mile, Times Square) is institutional-grade but requires corridor-scarcity underwriting rather than broad urban-retail recovery language — ESRT paid $2,091/SF for vacant Williamsburg retail; Washington Capital paid 5.93% cap for Mag Mile retail with Bank of America and Chick-fil-A. The entry basis and the operational capability to manage lease-up in gateway corridors are both barriers to entry.

Weakest retail environments: Gateway office-stressed markets where retail foot traffic has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. SF and Chicago CBD (outside Mag Mile) are the clearest examples. The Chicago CBD retail market at $22.30/SF is not weak by absolute measure, but the demand base is uncertain relative to Sun Belt alternatives.

Debt availability: Functioning loan market for grocery-anchored at 5.25–5.75% spreads on 5-year fixed debt. The ESRT 10 Union Square East refinancing at 5.3% IO for 10 years (Target-anchored, investment-grade) is the best available public data point for institutional retail debt execution in April 2026. Grocery-anchored neighborhood centers in Sun Belt markets are broadly financeable at reasonable spreads.

Construction financing: Limited and expensive. Replacement cost math makes new retail development uneconomic in most markets — the 35–40% equity requirement documented in Texas markets is consistent with national lender posture. This is structurally favorable for existing owners.

Preferred equity active in conversions: Distressed mall and big-box conversion projects may attract preferred equity structures where the common equity contributes site control and entitlement expertise, and institutional capital fills the gap where senior construction debt is unavailable. Treat 9-12% current-pay preferred equity as a watchlist / observed-pattern assumption only where deal-specific support is preserved, not as a national benchmark from this page.

Anchor credit: Grocery anchor financial health is the primary income risk for grocery-anchored centers. Grocer bankruptcies (Winn-Dixie, Bi-Lo) and consolidation (Kroger/Albertsons) are ongoing. The screen is anchor market share dominance in the specific trade area — a Publix at 40% local grocery market share is a different risk profile than a Kroger at 18% in a market with five competing grocers.

E-commerce pressure on non-necessity formats: The portion of retail susceptible to further e-commerce displacement (apparel, electronics, home goods in non-experiential formats) has not finished its structural adjustment. Necessity and experiential formats are largely insulated; commodity retail tenants in power centers and malls are not.

Rate sensitivity on transaction volume: The bid-ask gap that has compressed transaction volume since 2023 will widen again if rates move meaningfully higher. Sellers of grocery-anchored product are holding (the 50-year hold logic, the 1031 bottleneck, the replacement cost problem) — forced sellers at attractive entry basis require credit events, estate sales, or fund-level liquidity pressure.

• Per-property cap rates from the Ares/Whitestone portfolio are not public; the $1.7B acquisition establishes portfolio-level conviction but not submarket pricing benchmarks.
• No food hall NOI-lift benchmark is available at the deal level from the CBRE source. The structural logic is sound but unquantified.
• Retail vacancy data for Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Boston is absent or thin in the DB relative to DFW, Houston, and Charlotte.
• The national low-vacancy quality-retail claim is a synthesis pattern from multiple metro and retail-thesis sources, not a single DB-backed national vacancy series.

Primary analysis (read this first):

• Retail Investment Thesis 2026 — canonical investment case; Ares/Whitestone thesis; food hall and parking mechanics; five underwriting rules; 10 named transaction sources
• National Retail Market Ranking 2026 — market-level ranking companion with confidence labels for Charlotte, Greenville-Spartanburg, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, DFW, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, Denver, Austin, Boston, and New York City

Companion retail pages:

• Retail Asset Enhancement — Food Halls and Parking Monetization 2026 — food hall buildout economics and parking-as-cash-flow thesis in detail
• Texas Retail Markets 2026 — four-node Texas comparison; replacement cost math; supply discipline framing
• Retail Value-Add Underwriting — 2026 benchmark tables; cap rates; leasing velocity; DFW below-market rollover case study

Metro allocation analyses (retail data sourced):

• Charlotte CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — 2.9% vacancy, $22.31/SF NNN, +7.4% rent growth, CoStar #1 national ranking
• Raleigh-Durham CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — $27.50–$28.84/SF NNN, tight vacancy fundamentals
• Nashville CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — 3.7% vacancy, $29.95/SF, Southeast quiet strength
• Houston CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — 8.0M SF annual leasing, Inner Loop at $30.44/SF NNN
• Denver CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — 4.9% availability, $27.08/SF NNN, +2.4% rent growth, 6.6% cap rate
• Atlanta CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — 5.8M SF annual leasing, $19.98/SF NNN
• Miami and South Florida CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — 2.0M SF annual leasing, $41.97/SF NNN
• Jacksonville CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — Matthews Q1 2026 retail vacancy of 4.9%, positive absorption, $26.12/SF asking rent, and a 7.2% cap-rate check
• Dallas-Fort Worth CRE Capital Allocation 2026 — durable retail income framing, $26.23/SF asking rent, and rent-growth synthesis; preserve that 95%+ occupancy is not currently a standalone DB observation

Entity and concept pages:

• Ares Management — Whitestone take-private acquirer
• Destination Districts and Placemaking — experiential retail and mixed-use context
• Wealth-Driven Demand Moats — luxury corridor and premium retail framing

Hub routing:

• Retail Hub
• Analyses Hub

• Adds experiential-retail demand evidence from the trampoline / indoor recreation tenant category. The primary JLL source is now preserved as Source: JLL Location-Based Entertainment Report 2026; use it for quantitative rows and keep source-jll-trampoline-parks-retail-growth-2026 as trade-publication color.
• Adds a national tenant-credit warning that high lease obligations can convert store-level weakness into occupancy and co-tenancy risk. See source-west-marine-bankruptcy-retail-lease-costs-2026. Caveat: Do not use as a broad retail demand-collapse claim; verify filing schedules and store lists before property-level use.