(11-13-2021, 10:23 AM)tomh009 Wrote: A few years back I had a discussion with a DTK property owner who was trying to get a grocery store tenant, and he told me that at the time the big chains were telling him that DTK needed something like 10,000 more residents in order to warrant a downtown store. DTK has grown since and is definitely still growing. But is it enough? That's a question only the store planners can answer. Until now, nobody has bit, and it hasn't been a question of available space, either.
So, I'm not saying it won't happen, but having a nice retail space for a grocery store doesn't guarantee a grocery store tenant.
The proposed grocery store is part of the last phase, so it's a pretty long ways out. A building like that is probably 4 years from start of construction to full occupancy, and they haven't even started selling earlier phases. By the time it's open I have little doubt that DTK will have added 10k residents.
I also think they have to have a tenant already interested. It's one thing to try and attract a grocery store tenant to a generic retail space, but this space is purpose designed to be a grocery store. I don't think they'd build loading docks, or design the parking garage around a grocery store, purely speculatively. They'd just make it another floor of office, rather than risking a whole floor of space on a very specific speculative tenant.
Maybe the space could also be used by a big box retailer, but we're even less likely to see a Best Buy or something setup in DTK than we are a grocery store.