What’s Happening
July 1-7, 2024
By Jeff Yates
This month is about retail real estate again. Let’s take a look at the market from a high view. The data reviewed here is for Pulaski County and was aggregated from CoStar data at the end of June 2024.
CoStar reports that Pulaski County is home to approximately 3,800 retail properties with a total floor area of nearly 37,000,000 square feet. The U.S. Census Bureau counted just a little over 399,000 people in Pulaski County during the last census. So, the total retail inventory works out to be almost 100 square feet of retail space for every man, woman, and child in the county.
Of the thirty-six million nine hundred thousand square feet listed in the total inventory, just under one million four hundred thousand are shown as available for lease. That translates into an occupancy rate of 96.2%. Conversely, the vacancy rate is only 3.8%. That is what is commonly called a tight market.
Of the limited retail space available just ten properties of the approximately 3,800 total properties report over 46% of the space available. Those ten properties report almost 640,000 square feet available. Let’s think about that. Ten properties, just ten, account for nearly half of the reported vacancy in Pulaski County. And one property, just one, accounts for 13% of the reported vacancy all by itself! Who knows which property that is? I’m buying lunch for the first correct answer. Send me an email with your answers.
Let me say here that the correct answer is NOT Park Plaza. We were in Park Plaza in the middle of June to go to Build-A-Bear Workshop. They have a neat deal where the birthday kid can get a furry friend for the price in dollars equal to their age. So for us this year’s bear was $4. Anyway, while at Park Plaza we strolled around and had a look at the property. Because that’s what I do. Occupancy was visibly good and is reported as being 94.5%. Everything was clean & shiny, and there were people carrying bags of merchandise. Malls today aren’t the malls of the 80’s, and retail continues to evolve toward omnichannel, but in-person shopping isn’t dead. If it was, would there be so little retail space available?
We could get off into the weeds and break down the occupancy data by areas of town, types of property, and other data points. And most readers would skip right over it. And frankly, my supply of spare time is running a little low this month. Suffice it to say that the retail real estate market in Pulaski County, and the metro area in general, is experiencing what most of America is reporting – which is strong occupancy. The area is also seeing rising rents. CoStar reports that asking rents are up over 4%. First-hand I can tell you that finding available retail space can be a challenge and that much of the space that is available has been available for a long time.
Reviewing the preceding month of property sales recorded in Pulaski County is a typical part of writing this column. For me, researching property sales goes back far enough in time that if you wanted information, you had to go to the County offices and look in up. And you had to pay for any copies you wanted. These days you can find most information with a few clicks and keystrokes on the computer. And there are still things that regularly make me wonder “why?”. The incident this month is the sale of a mobile home park in Jacksonville. The sale included three commercial parcels and ninety-six (yes 96) residential parcels. In May an entity named Heroes Park One, LLC paid $2,100,000 for the 99 parcels. It isn’t clear who Heroes Park One is. My typing and clicking on the Secretary of State’s website was unsuccessful in finding the entity registered. My wonder is why there are so many parcels for a single ownership. If anyone reading this knows a little about the history of the property and why it was parceled up the way it was, I’d be interested in the Cliff’s Notes version of why it is the way it is.
Another multi-parcel transaction came about with James Alan Walker’s purchase of six parcels on Benanna Ct. One of the lots has a 7,000 square foot office warehouse building. Benanna Ct. connects to the I-30 westbound (southbound, whatever) frontage road between Chicot Road and Shooter’s Sports Bar. The six parcel collection sold for $522,500.
A while back I mentioned some Zaxby’s restaurants in flux. In May three of them sold. One 3,230 square foot store on 0.92 acres in Jacksonville sold for $1,840,350. One 3,430 square foot store on 1.06 acres in Sherwood sold for $1,964,419. And a 3,422 store on 0.84 acres in Maumelle sold for $$1,745,231. All three were purchased from Oklahoma DND Group, LLC by Black Knight 24, LLC.
Hope you found something interesting this month. Check back again next month to read more about what’s happening in Little Rock commercial real estate. If you have questions or news, or some interesting commercial real estate new or events to share, you can reach me at jyates@flakecompany.com.
