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Interview Everyone in Search of What You Don't Know.
 
 
For the majority of my real estate career, I have been interested in redeveloping small-town downtowns.
I have taken the lead as the consultant in several.
It's a tricky business, especially if you are close-minded to learning the reasons one is as it is, rather than assuming that you intuitively know.
It's best to look for the opinions that go against the tide. 
For an example, "Well, shopping malls came along with lots of stores, enclosed concourses and free parking," is often the reason given for a downtown's failure.
The problem with that is that it gives the failed downtown only two recourses: tear everything down and build in its place an enclosed shopping mall with free parking.
Or, figure out how to tinker with what is at that downtown, and make it appeal to a place of new ideas.
Properly done, it almost always works. Using what's there, with educated modifications, is the correct approach.
 
Target is a big box store, as you know, that has been seriously  losing its market share.  The same thing is happening at Wal-Mart.
At Target, upper management has decided that spending massive amounts of capital to redecorate their stores will bring the customers back.  Maybe, but I haven't found that to be the ... more

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