The upswing in pop-up stores, as the short-term placements are called, is playing out in all sorts of ways,
and in all sorts of places — including dark malls, former grocery stores and shuttered art galleries, according to real estate brokers, landlords and tenants.
In 2012, when she started looking for physical stores to augment her online business, she had
to cold-call landlords directly, she said, because “brokers had never heard of pop-ups.”
Landlords are finally coming around, she said, but they may have no choice, as stores continue to go out of business.
Swooping in to capitalize on the rash of empty stores in New York
and elsewhere are some new brokerage-type businesses, which charge fees to landlords as brokers do and also sometimes market spaces concurrently with other agents
Pop Up Goes the Retail Scene as Store Vacancies Rise -
As traditional retail stores close and vacancies mount, landlords across the country appear newly receptive to leases
as short as a week, eschewing the typical 10-year time frame, even in locations that once shunned limited stays.
But the new stores can cause landlords to lose money, said Stephen Summers, the managing director of Highland
Park Village, an upscale shopping center near Dallas that is in the midst of a multiyear renovation.
