Adam Greenberg has spent his entire career at open-air shopping center owner and manager DLC. He's found that potential retail tenants keep focusing on more than just the property.
Retailers are choosing who they want to do business with, he said.
“Retailers absolutely care who their landlord is,” Greenberg, who joined the company roughly 15 years ago as a leasing representative, told CoStar News.
That's shaping how he and Elmsford, New York-based DLC approach its recently acquired portfolio of 10 open-air shopping centers across California and Seattle. The $625 million deal in the past year marks a significant push into the West Coast and comes with plans to open a Las Vegas office to support further growth.
He worked his way up to head of leasing, where he now oversees the firm’s national platform and relationships with retail tenants. That experience has helped him see that the desire of retailers to know their landlord needs to be central to DLC’s strategy of improving property performance through leasing.
Greenberg keeps that in mind as the firm focuses on upgrading the tenant mix and working with operators it knows can open stores and drive traffic.
This strategy comes as the volume of retail property sales over the past year has climbed by 19% year-over-year nationally, with investors gravitating toward grocery-anchored and necessity-based centers where steady demand and limited new construction have helped stabilize pricing and rents, according to CoStar data.
DLC, which manages roughly $3 billion in assets across 80 properties, has historically focused on the East Coast but is now planting a permanent flag in the West, Greenberg said, opening a Las Vegas office with four employees to support further growth in California and the broader Pacific region.
Greenberg said leasing demand in those centers is coming from quick-service restaurants, fitness concepts and health and beauty tenants — uses that generate frequent visits and drive traffic across a property. Those tenants are also prioritizing landlords that can execute quickly and consistently, particularly as many look to grow across multiple locations at once.
"Being well capitalized and operationally consistent is part of the pitch. We're a partner that can move deals from lease signing to store opening with speed and certainty," Greenberg said.
Landlords matter
With 15 years in the business, Greenberg has worked through multiple boom and bust periods of leasing across markets and property types, shaping his view that open-air, necessity-based centers are posting some of their strongest fundamentals in years.
He said retailers expanding in those centers are increasingly focused on landlord execution when evaluating new stores, particularly in competitive markets where delays can hurt performance.
That means assessing whether an owner has the capital to fund improvements, the leasing team to move deals quickly and the infrastructure to handle multiple openings at once.
“The space is going to be delivered as promised, on time,” he said, describing retailers’ expectations.
DLC is positioning itself as that kind of partner, using its national platform to streamline leasing and development for tenants entering new markets. The approach is especially relevant in California, he said, where regulatory hurdles can stretch timelines and make experienced ownership more valuable.