"Strolling the Agora..." the blog posts of Murray Shor, Shopping Center Digest

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Reporting On Over 7,100 major Shopping Centers and Malls In the US and Canada

Announcement: Directory of Major Malls has just released its 2011 dataset and products focused on the over 7,100 major shopping centers and malls throughout the US and Canada. DMM products includes shopping center and mall locations, details, physical features, demographics, tenant lists, site/plans with contact details including name, addresses, emails and websites. Available online, in print, on CD and through licensed datasets.

NYACK, New York (January 20, 2011) - The Directory of Major Malls has already started shipping and providing online access to its 2011 data and products. An aggressive research effort taken on by the research team at Directory of Major Malls over the past 12 months propelled the inventory of detailed listings to over 7,100 major shopping center and mall records and 290,000 store locations. The addition of over 1,190 listings is a 20% increase and coverage of 3.3 billion square feet of major shopping center and mall retail space in the US and Canada.

An important point to highlight in the Directory of Major Malls coverage is the effort toward continuous coverage of major future and proposed retail projects. Over 450 planned/future shopping center and mall locations are included in the comprehensive 2011 Directory of Major Malls dataset. Coverage of these proposed centers totals out to over 248 million square feet of future retail space with an emphasis on the retail shopping centers classified as Lifestyle/Specialty/ Mixed-Use.

In addition to efforts to expand the coverage of listings for major shopping centers and mall with approximately 200,000 sqft of gross leasable retail area, the DMM team has further increased the level of inclusion of site/leasing plans as additional insight into the physical configuration of the centers. Currently almost 50% of the listings include a site/leasing plan image of a level of the shopping center.

Additionally the 54 full-color metro area maps, a mainstay of the DMM products, have been further enhanced to show Urbanized Area imaging within the highlighted metro market areas and the locations of over 2,600 of the major centers pinpointed on the maps. The longitude/latitude coordinates used to determine the locations of the centers are manually verified for these locations as well as the complete dataset of all listings in the Directory of Major Malls products. These coordinates are available as an add-on dataset in the Directory of Major Malls semi-annual CD release as well as within custom licensed dataset used for integration in third-party GIS/mapping and analytics applications.

Another supplemental dataset for the Directory of Major Malls products is the Trend Demographic add-on dataset creating in partnership with Scan/US of Santa Monica, CA. This add-on component is available as both searchable and informative data fields portraying the four trend variables for 5, 10 and 20 mile radii around each of the US shopping centers in the DMM database. Access to this valuable component is available within the recently redesigned online subscription site at http://shoppingcenters.com, the Directory on Computer CD releases as well as custom dataset licensing.

"With over 30 years of active participation in the industry as a dependable source, the Directory of Major Malls products continue as the leading source of this specialized data to the shopping center, retail and financial industries." said Publisher Tama J. Shor. "Our research team has continued to maintain the highest level of accuracy with our existing inventory of listings as well as continually increasing our coverage."

"In these turbulent times for the retail industry," she continues, "it's even more urgent that a source such as DMM is available to provide retail real estate professionals and the financial industry with accurate, current information. With monthly updates to our online subscription site, Directory of Major Malls on the Web and the semi-annual releases of our licensed datasets and CD product, we're doing just that. Our daily mission is to identify and capture the ongoing ownership and personnel changes, store openings and closings, along with any new and redevelopment project activities."

Shor continues, "30+ years ago when the Directory was first developed, it was at a time when major enclosed mall development was in the early stages and the focus of many retail projects. All this time, we've maintained ringside seats and have watched shopping centers grow and transform several times over. The diversity in the types of retail complexes that now comprise this dominant part of the retail community is just amazing."

"Each listing of the 7,100 included in the Directory of Major Malls products is comprised of a variety of details with regard to location, demographics, physical features, a categorized tenants list and contact details in the areas of development, leasing, marketing and management. At this point in time, our brand name is a bit misleading in the sense that well over 50% of our listings are not enclosed malls as our name portrays but in reality the majority of our major shopping center listings are open-air in design and fall into a variety of classifications such as community, power and lifestyle/specialty and value-retail centers," Shor pointed out. "There's also an increasing number of projects that are planned mixed-use communities that have included a relevant amount of retail space mixed in with residential, office, entertainment and hotel space," said Shor.

"We're quite proud of the achievements of our research team and the longevity of Directory of Major Malls as a significant source to the industry for such an extended period of time. Our customer base covers any and all professionals involved in some aspect of the shopping center industry whether it be retail leasing teams, financial investors, development and management sector as well as firms involved in research, design, promotion, marketing and supplier end of the industry. We'll continue to be a dependable resource and look forward to expanding our coverage and expanding our partnerships to increase the exposure of the DMM dataset as an important element for retail analysis." Shor added.

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Directory of Major Malls, Inc. is based in Nyack, NY. It continues to be the leading source of detailed information on the major enclosed malls, open-air shopping centers, and lifestyle/specialty centers for over 30 years. DMM is used by retail real estate professionals, development and management companies, brokers and financial investment firms, service and supply companies, and government and academic research institutes.

The 2011 products include over 7,100 major shopping center and mall listings, 290,000+ tenant location,3,300+ site/leasing plans, 54 full-color metro area maps and the portfolios of the Top 50 Owner/Developer and Management companies which control over 70% of the industry.

The Directory of Major Malls data is available in our suite of standard products including subscription based on-line and "pay per record" access, on a semi-annually released CD, a hard copy 2,300 page print directory and through individual dataset licensing and a network of resellers. Details of Directory of Major Malls may be found at www.shoppingcenters.com.

For further formation, contact : Tama J. Shor, Publisher at P.O. Box 837, Nyack, NY 10960, phone: (845) 348-7000, Ext. 200, or email: publisher@shoppingcenters.com

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