Winning Big in Retail with GrowerCrowd

Interview Recap: Dr. Adam Gower in Conversation with Jeffrey Rosenberg
LISTEN TODAY!

In a wide-ranging conversation with Dr. Adam Gower, Jeffrey Rosenberg traced Big V Property Group’s open-air retail strategy back to its origins. Rosenberg didn’t enter the sector as a cycle-timer—his family began building and operating supermarkets and the shopping centers that housed them in the 1940s. After selling the operating company in the late 1980s, that foundation evolved into Big V’s national platform focused exclusively on open-air shopping centers.

That history continues to shape the firm’s philosophy today: long-standing retailer relationships, deep insight into store-level performance, and a willingness to hold assets through full cycles when the risk-adjusted returns justify it.

Why “Dying” Retail Didn’t Die
Rosenberg challenged the long-standing narrative that retail was structurally broken. While e-commerce growth and Covid shutdowns pushed many investors to write off physical retail, Big V took a different view. The core mistake, Rosenberg explained, was assuming online and in-store shopping were substitutes. In practice, stores have become omnichannel infrastructure—serving as showrooms, fulfillment centers, and last-mile distribution hubs. He noted that opening a store can boost online traffic in a market by roughly 30%, while closures often have the opposite effect.

Anchors, Discounts, and Ecosystems
Big V’s portfolio is centered on discount-driven power centers anchored by national credit tenants such as Target, Ross, TJ Maxx, and HomeGoods. Rosenberg emphasized Target’s outsized role in shaping site selection, demographic analysis, and infrastructure investment—benefits that extend across the entire center. The result is an anchor-led ecosystem where tenant demand, retailer credit quality, and long-term trade area strength reinforce one another.

Supply Discipline and Location Quality
Retail’s resilience, Rosenberg noted, is also a function of supply. With minimal new development over the past two decades and occupancy hovering around 96–97%, today’s closures largely reflect retailers pruning weaker locations rather than a sector in retreat. This dynamic has sharpened Big V’s focus on “main and main” locations and durable growth markets, combining traditional fieldwork with advanced analytics to track how retail nodes evolve over time—even if that means selling assets that no longer fit the long-term thesis.

Capital, Scale, and Institutional Momentum
The discussion also covered Big V’s evolving capital stack. While the firm historically used higher leverage and layered capital, today leverage typically sits closer to 60–65%. As institutional confidence in retail has returned, access to large-scale balance-sheet capital has expanded. Rosenberg highlighted a recent $1.1 billion recapitalization of eight iconic properties, financed with a $765 million loan led by Truist—the largest retail loan and retail debt recapitalization in the country in 2025.

Returns, Risk, and the Road Ahead
Rosenberg described current investor sentiment as cautious but constructive. Core open-air retail assets are generating 6–7% cash-on-cash returns, with total returns driven by NOI growth rather than financial engineering. Tax advantages, diversification across markets, and consistent income have made the sector increasingly attractive relative to multifamily or office.

Looking ahead to 2026, Rosenberg expects more liquidity and more competition, particularly for high-quality assets. As a result, Big V no longer underwrites deals assuming cap-rate compression. Instead, returns must come from rent growth, leasing execution, and long-term fundamentals. Each investment is evaluated with an eye toward the 2030s, not just a short hold period—a conservatism Rosenberg summed up succinctly: Big V has never lost investor capital.