Fifteen years ago, the retail real estate consensus was settled. E-commerce would empty the malls, hollow out the strip centers, and leave landlords holding big boxes no one wanted. That consensus was wrong, and the people with the best data on why are the ones counting footsteps.
Elizabeth LaFontaine is Director of Research at Placer.ai, the foot traffic analytics platform used across retail and commercial real estate. She started on the sales floor and in merchandising, then spent more than a decade in retail and consumer insights at Macy’s, Stein Mart, and Circana. She joined me on The Real Finds Podcast to explain what foot traffic actually tells us about retail real estate value, which categories are winning in a K-shaped economy, and where landlords and lenders should be looking next.
Foot Traffic Is the First Line, Not the Whole Story
Every retail deal I see now comes with a foot traffic report attached. Elizabeth describes the data as consumers voting with their feet. It shows behavior before anyone reaches the register, which gives owners, tenants, and lenders a shared set of facts to negotiate from.
She was equally clear about its limits. Foot traffic is the top of the funnel. Since the pandemic, shoppers have visited more retailers and visited them more often, but that does not always translate into larger baskets or higher conversion. In her view, traffic is most useful when it is paired with sales and tenant performance data. I would put it more bluntly for anyone underwriting a center: a traffic report is a starting point for diligence, not a substitute for it.
The $4 Line
The most useful number in the conversation was a simple one. Consumers have remained resilient through years of weak sentiment and economic uncertainty. According to Elizabeth, the one trigger that has clearly changed behavior in Placer.ai’s 2026 data is national gas prices rising above roughly $4 per gallon.
Past that threshold, shoppers change which categories they buy, visit less often, and shift channels. For a retail landlord, that belongs on the same dashboard as the rent roll. Tenants that sell value or convenience hold up when fuel spikes. Tenants that depend on a discretionary trip feel it first.
Value Is Winning the K-Shaped Economy
Elizabeth sees a widening gap between upper income shoppers, who still spend freely, and lower and middle income shoppers, who are increasingly constrained. Full price retail is being squeezed in the middle.
The growth is in value. Off-price chains such as T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, Ross, and Burlington are leading, along with dollar and discount stores and Five Below. She credits two things: the treasure hunt, which gives shoppers a reason to return every week, and a consumer who now researches and price-matches before leaving the house. Off-price is also one of the categories where e-commerce is barely a factor, which matters when you are deciding how much to pay for a center built around it.
I asked her which of these shifts are cyclical and which ones investors and lenders should underwrite. Her answer was the K-shaped split itself and what she calls mission-driven shopping, where consumers spread their spending across more chains than they did before 2020. She expects both to persist even if the economy improves, because the behavior is now ingrained.
Malls Are Back, and the Format Matters
Malls are not something I expected to call a value play ten years ago, yet we are seeing redevelopments work across Chicagoland, from strip centers to full mall repositionings. Elizabeth treats malls as a barometer for discretionary spending and a returning third place, with Gen Z driving part of the comeback.
Which mall format leads changes from year to year. Indoor malls led growth in 2025 after a heavy reinvestment cycle. In 2026, open-air lifestyle centers are growing fastest as they reset tenant mix and add dining. They function as community hubs: a grocery stop during the week and a place to browse on the weekend. Outlet centers are the surprise laggard. They should be built for a value-hungry consumer, but off-price chains are winning that trip instead.
Tenant Mix Beats a Single Anchor
On the investor side, I hear a constant debate about whether a center needs a strong anchor or a diversified roster. Elizabeth’s data points to diversity as the lever that moves performance. Grocery anchors matter because they create the routine trip, but what makes a center work is the lifestyle, dining, service, and value tenants around the grocer that turn one errand into several.
Retailers are making the same calculation from the other side. Fleet expansion for its own sake is over. Tenants are choosing the right center and the right format, and in many cases that means a smaller, convenience-oriented footprint instead of a default big box.
The Suburban Renaissance
The trend that matters most for our market is migration. Placer.ai’s data shows a suburban renaissance that began in 2020 and has been reinforced as millennials and older Gen Z move into family formation. Those households want the brands and experiences they had downtown, closer to home, and metro-based brands are following them.
The office side of the equation is the mirror image. Downtown retail that was built around lunch and coffee has lost traffic, especially on Mondays and Fridays. Elizabeth said return to office nationally is still at about 70 percent of the 2019 baseline, with New York and Miami recovering fastest and West Coast markets now catching up on the back of the AI boom. Retail that serves commuters has to be built around convenience again, while suburban centers near where people live are capturing the difference.
Overrated, Underrated, and What Comes Next
Her overrated pick was experiential retail as it was pitched before the pandemic, with technology and spectacle at the center. Experience still matters, but she defines it as service: did the customer leave satisfied and feel they received value? Her underrated pick was a second wave of digitally native brands opening physical stores, which few other categories are doing at scale.
She also flagged small indulgences as the trend the industry should discuss more. Books, crafts, and games such as mahjong are growing because consumers want small wins and reasons to gather when budgets tighten. Bookstores are the clearest proof point. They were the first category disrupted by e-commerce, and physical bookstore traffic is now growing again.
Looking ten years out, she expects the lines between categories to keep blurring. Consumers do not think in terms of grocery, convenience, big box, or warehouse club. They think about their own needs, and retailers that compete across those lines will force more innovation from everyone.
What This Means for Suburban Retail Owners
For owners and lenders in Lake County, Illinois and across the Chicago suburbs, the takeaways are practical. Underwrite the whole tenant mix, not only the anchor’s credit. Watch fuel prices next to occupancy and sales. Favor value, convenience, and service tenants, and treat open-air and grocery-anchored centers near growing suburban populations as the format with momentum. Before you price a center or sign a lease, check current conditions on the daily-updated RFP Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Index, then talk to our brokerage, management, and development team. And catch the full conversation with Elizabeth on The Real Finds Podcast.
Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, lease, or invest in retail, shopping center, or mixed-use property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q3 2026.