REAL ESTATE NEWS

Mixed-use developments have skyrocketed in popularity today for tenants — and landlords are taking their properties to another level with technology.

Scott Evans, founder and managing partner for TechTechGroup, Mickey Papillon, CRRP, CSM, VP of technology strategy at The Irvine Company, and Deborah Weinswig, founder & CEO, Coresight Research, discussed this topic in a panel at ICSC New York 2024.

FIRST PARTY DATA

Weinswig highlighted the advantages of using first-party data, in particular.

"If you have first-party data that other people find valuable, and we haven't even begun a scratch the surface of retail media, which, to me, is one of the greatest opportunities for, landlords and tenants, because you not only can monetize eyeballs, [but] you can understand the customer, the customer journey, and then fund innovation," she said.

Another thing Weinswig pointed out was smaller companies are building containerized data center to reduce costs.

"We've done a lot of work for retailers who've had issues with their whole POS going down on Black Friday, or whatever it might be. You now have the ability to control all of that, and this idea around control and being able to make your own technology decisions."

She added, that this is something that she thinks we'll see more of in the future.

CREATING A SEAMLESS EXPERIENCE FOR THE CUSTOMER

Papillon said that cameras have been useful for grabbing information including demographic trends such as gender, etc.

"We would use that with traffic patterns to say, how [are] we setting our hospitality and retailers across the campus? Are we maximizing it? Can we add more content to digital ad sales or through emails to drive people there? Can we add more content to digital ad sales or through emails to drive people there?"

However, Papillon warned that there aren't sufficient enough performance markers to understand how to utilize first-party data.

Something else Papillon noted was the importance of using data to create a seamless experience for the customer. He used examples of making sure properties were provided with stable Wi-Fi and parking with the control access system was easy and efficient to use.

"As [they] go home at night, you don't want it to feel like it's anything more than just a really good, easy, frictionless experience for them," he said of the customer experience.

"It actually takes thought ahead of time."

There's no question that live, work and play has been picking up momentum. An analysis from Yardi Matrix revealed that 43,700 apartments in mixed-use buildings were added to the market in 2021. That annual rate is up by more than quadruple from the count from in the decade prior. That's an important development for office, retail, and multifamily, most notably.

Source: GlobeSt/ALM