by Tom Boyd

If the dark, early days of the Internet are defined by the weird screeching sound of a dial-up modem, the current Internet age can probably be defined by the sound of a cash register pinging up yet another sale.

During the transformation from dial-up to broadband, the online retailer Amazon has become one of the biggest companies in the world, more than two-thirds of Internet users in the US say they have made a purchase online, and 68 percent of internet users say that using the Internet saves them time.

This may send a shiver of fear up the spine of your local brick-and-mortar shop manager, but rather than going off gently into that good night, retailers are finding that shoppers still love to shop … it’s just that now, rather than an in-and-out purchasing experience, more shoppers in key demographics are seeking a complete shopping experience.

This is where the “quick-and-easy” part of the Internet comes in. Today’s shoppers aren’t there to quickly pick something up and hit the road – they’re shopping with family and friends to make a fun day of it. Retailers, in turn, are seeking locations that can offer multiple activities, preferably in an area with a mix of housing, office and retail.

Trending away from strip malls and toward Main Street

Enter our latest report: RESTORE: Commercial and Mixed-use Development Trends in the Rocky Mountain West. In this 52-page study (which *phew* comes with a handy 4-page summary and interactive map), we examine how online shopping trends have come together with demographic shifts among Generation Y and Baby Boomers, and other changes in the wants and needs of the populace, to create a different trajectory for commercial real estate in the West.

The combination of these forces is pushing commercial real estate trends away from isolated shopping destinations (think malls and strip malls) and toward mixed-use, amenity-driven, pedestrian-friendly developments on Main Street, downtown, or in any kind of thriving town center.

RESTORE is a sister study to our 2013 study, RESET: Assessing Future Housing Markets in the Rocky Mountain West, which found, among other things, that 90 percent of survey respondents would prefer living within an easy walk to other places in the community.

With RESTORE, number one, we wanted to find out if national trends in commercial real estate are happening in our study region of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

Secondly, if these trends are happening in our region (which they are) we wanted to understand the nuance of these trends to figure out how they’re playing out in the Intermountain West.

And thirdly, we wanted to provide analysis and recommendations for realtors, developers, retailers, local government officials, and others in the commercial real estate world could properly deploy to capitalize on these developments.

One size never fits all

Just like elastic-band baseball hats sold in the mall, the one-size-fits-all label is usually sign that someone is stretching the truth (source: I am a man with an unusually large head).

 

And so it is with the Intermountain West, where national trends don’t always hold sway, and where the reaction to these trends must be considered in terms of local, on-the-ground realities. All too often, our local leaders are quick to try and jump on a national bandwagon, only to find out the hard way that what works in coastal communities doesn’t always work in the Rockies.

To tackle this problem, RESTORE took stock of 32 towns and small cities throughout the West and classified them into their tiers (A, B, and C). These communities are representative of the Intermountain West as a whole, so that, even if your town isn’t included, you can still find a comparable neighbor who was part of our study.

Our findings and the way forward

We found that there’s a world of opportunity for communities that take action to capitalize on these changing market trends.

The full report (pdf) is your best bet for in-depth information, and our 4-page summary is located here (pdf).

Perhaps our most useful tool is this interactive infographic, which provides a snapshot of each town, and can give you a sense of what RESTORE recommends for each of the small towns and cities involved in our analysis (click on the image below to see the enlarged, interactive version).

There’s a lot more to this report, and rest assured that we’ll be posting more about the implications of what we found during our research. Check back to this space and we’ll have more for you soon.

(Cross posted from Community Builders)