Westchester County Business Journal 120919

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PRINT JOURNALISM: BECAUSE IT STILL MATTERS. DECEMBER 9, 2019 VOL. 55, No. 49

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250 Clearbrook Road in the Cross Westchester Executive Park in Elmsford.

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HANGING UP ON TELEMARKETERS

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MORE APARTMENTS FOR WHITE PLAINS

A hot market

RESTAURANT INDUSTRY’S GROWTH SET TO IMPACT COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

ROBERT MARTIN’S TIM JONES SEES A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR FLEX/INDUSTRIAL SPACE BY PETER KATZ pkatz@westfairinc.com

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ith the year 2020 just around the corner, Tim Jones, the CEO of Elmsford-based Robert Martin Company LLC, doesn’t have to rely on 20/20 hindsight to get a sense of what’s been happening and might happen next year in the real estate marketplace. He can just look at the leases crossing his desk.

“My guess is we’ll beat our first-year projections both in terms of the amount of square feet leased and maybe even the rental rates,” he told the Business Journal. Jones sees a bright future for the flex/industrial space that comprises a major portion of the company’s 6-million-squarefoot portfolio. “If we had another 500,000 feet of this space that we could lease in the

right configuration and size, we could lease it out in a short period of time. The flex market is very strong,” he said. Jones reported that Robert Martin has signed new and renewal leases with tenants for more than 300,000 square feet since buying a portfolio of 56 buildings in Westchester totaling 3.6 million square feet from Mack-Cali earlier this year. “The parks were pretty well leased when we purchased them and a lot of the leasing we’ve done is renewals. We’ve had several tenants expand and we’ve had several new leases as well,” Jones said. The $487.5 million deal was the largest commer» INDUSTRIAL SPACE

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BY PHIL HALL phall@westfairinc.com

RESTAURANTS ACCOUNT FOR 17% OF U.S. RETAIL SALES,

more than any other retail sector and restaurant sales growth has outpaced overall U.S. retail sales gains in recent years, according to the new CBRE report “2019 Food in Demand Series: Restaurants.” But while the continued expansion of this industry shows no signs of abating, changes in how restaurants operate could have an impact on commercial real estate. “While restaurants are less vulnerable than other retail categories to e-commerce encroachment, they’re still going through dramatic changes driven by advancements in technology and

changing customer tastes,” said Meghann Martindale, CBRE’s global head of retail research. “Retail-center owners will need to invest a lot of thought into which type of restaurant concept best fits their center and its clientele, as well as how to balance their center’s mix of food and beverage so that it doesn’t tip too far in any direction.” Among the changes impacting the restaurant industry is the proliferation of third-party delivery services, including Grubhub, Seamless, Eat24 and DoorDash, which had a 58% share of the meal-delivery market in 2018 and is forecast by CBRE to grow to a 70% share in 2022. CBRE pointed out an emergence of delivery-only restaurants, also known as ghost » RESTAURANTS

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