Irvine Co.'s The Market Place is too big for one city. It sprawls across two. Split in two by Jamboree Road, the southern half of the 120-store, 165-acre center resides in Irvine, Calif. The northern half is in Tustin.

The huge regional destination center combines open-air lifestyle retail with big-box retail. Nationally known value- and quality-driven store names offer apparel, books, electronics, fitness, groceries, home furnishings and decor, movie theaters, restaurants, various services, sporting goods, toys, and on and on.

In New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Denver — and other major cities across the country — creative young chefs are opening their own restaurants.

"In New York, the trend isn't all that new. Think of Andre Soltner, Jean-Georges, David Chang and others," said Faith Hope Consolo, noted trend-watcher and chairman of Douglas Elliman's Retail Group in New York City.

Indeed, we probably shouldn't call it a trend any more. In a growing number of cities, chef-owned restaurants are a mainstay of rising urban neighborhoods.

Bucksbaum Retail Properties opened for business in April 2012. The Chicago-based company has already opened one project and is working on four more.

The 53,000-sq.-ft. Kingsbury Center near North Chicago has opened with four tenants: Buy Buy Baby, PetSmart, Road Runner Sports and Jimmy Johns. It is a joint venture with Chicago-based Structured Development.

The Glimcher Realty Trust pipeline is filled with open-air centers. "We're seeing a lot of opportunity in the market and even our own portfolio with open-air right now," said Michael P. Glimcher, chairman and CEO, Columbus, Ohio-based Glimcher.

Over the last three years, Glimcher has acquired five properties. Four were open-air. Today, open-air centers account for about 20% of the company's 29 properties.

Recently, Glimcher shared his insights about open-air and enclosed centers with Chain Store Age contributing writer Michael Fickes.

Real estate solution-providers equip retailers to make strategic decisions

Any economic recovery begs a number of questions for a retailer: When can I grow again? Where should I go? What does my customer want and need now? How big can my stores — and my business — be? Even though we are on the other side of the deepest recession in decades, it is still critical that retailers correctly answer these questions. We're long past the days when a chain could rely on gut instinct about a store location.

Chain Store Age asked Paul Carolan, chief development officer for Dallas-based Le Duff America, about the bakery-café company's aggressive growth plan in the United States.

The North American subsidiary of Paris-based Groupe Le Duff SA, Le Duff America now manages four brands in the United States: Bruegger's Bagels, la Madeleine Country French Café, Brioche Dorée and Mimi's Café, which was acquired in March.

For the fourth consecutive year, there still is not enough ground-up shopping center construction to justify the "Fastest-Growing Developers" ranking that was Chain Store Age standard fare for two decades.

But we may be edging closer to resurrecting a ranking based on who is building new (or, more accurately, newly repurposed) space. Closer, but still not there.

In an era where brick-and-mortar retailers face increasing challenges from the Internet and a still slow recovery, they must rely on their real estate staff — particularly those under the age of 40 — more than ever before. These professionals, who bridge the "tried-and-true" methods of their mentors and the technology-driven next generation, are creating the stores, the shopping centers, the streets of today and tomorrow.

Invest in the right experience for a shopping center's customers, and you will earn a return on experience. That is the business model driving Fort Worth, Texas-based Trademark Property Co., which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

"Do customers love being at the center? Do they come back and drive sales? That is return on experience," said Terry Montesi, Trademark chairman, CEO and founder. Experience is indispensable today when most goods and services are available online, often at a lower price.