This quote is from a recently released report by the National Retail Federation entitled "2007 Real Estate Lifecycles: Trends and Analysis." The full quote states, "Retailers struggle to find growth opportunities in a clearly hyper-competitive environment."

The report is based on a survey of 43 retail executives that gauges how real estate assets are managed to achieve revenue goals. While the report was primarily designed for retail real estate executives, it also contains insights into retail location procedures that can be valuable to communities seeking to grow their retail base.

One of the more interesting findings of the survey is the answer to the question, "How many sites do you screen for every site selected?" The answer: An average of 10 sites.

Why are nine sites rejected for every one selected? And why is it a struggle to find retail locations that "position stores in the marketplace to capture all available traffic while minimizing the cannibalization from existing locations"? Answers to these two questions should be of interest to community leaders; unfortunately the report only tersely mentions the causes for rejection and provides scant details. Most of the rejections focused on costs associated with locating and opening stores and costs such as real estate and energy that a community has little, if any, control over.

Communities do have control over one of the listed causes of site rejection: compliance requirements. Lengthened permitting processes, time-consuming regulatory processes and restrictive regulations are compliance nightmares that can result in a community being screened out of consideration.

Streamlining compliance processes improves "time to market," which has a great potential for positively affecting a retailer’s revenues and expenses. A lower time to market also mitigates risk, fends off competition and increases market shares for the retailer. And for the community, streamlined processes can be a lever of growth not only for retailers but also for other industries.

Time to market starts when a lease is signed or property is acquired and ends when the doors of the store open for customers. Any time shaved off the process goes directly to the bottom line. It was recently reported that the normal permitting process time in one metropolitan city was reduced from 18 to three months. Target Corporation stated that the costs saved by cutting 15 months from the permitting process paid for a new store’s construction.

Understanding the importance that retailers place on time to market and embracing programs and process that lower the time will help make a community more competitive and dramatically improves the odds of being the one in 10 selected.

View the May 2008 Buxton Report