Hundreds of shopping centers across the U.S. are poised to lose their anchor tenant in the coming months after Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to eventually close its remaining stores, the Wall Street Journal reported. While property owners will have to absorb additional costs to lure replacement tenants, and some might still struggle to fill large vacated spaces, many landlords say they aren’t worried. Demand for big-box space in open-air shopping centers remains strong despite rising interest rates, and plenty of other retailers are waiting in the wings to fill the spaces vacated by Bed Bath & Beyond, several real-estate executives said. New tenants will in most cases pay higher rents, too, these property owners say. “There is strong interest across the board in these locations,” said John Kite, chief executive of Kite Realty Group Trust, one of Bed Bath & Beyond’s biggest landlords, with 22 locations across its portfolio. “If this was going to happen, this is probably a pretty good time for this to happen.” Retail real estate struggled for years because of oversupply and the rise of online shopping. But the sector rebounded strongly over the past two years after pandemic lockdowns eased, shoppers returned to stores and retailers fine-tuned their mix of e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar locations. Nationwide, the retail availability rate fell to 4.8% in the first quarter, the lowest level since at least 2005, when real-estate firm CBRE began tracking the market.
