Metro Detroit retail openings and closings balance out

Metro Detroit has broken even the first half of the year in terms of large retail openings.

According to data from Coresight Research Inc., a New York City-based advisory and research firm focusing on retail and technology, there were 25 major retail store openings in the Detroit-Warren-Livonia Metropolitan Statistical Area between Jan. 1 and June 30.

However, there were also 25 store closings during that same time.

But hey: It’s better than the same period last year, during which there were 13 openings but 17 closures.

To be clear, this data is not all-encompassing. Coresight tracks things like publicly traded retailers but also some that are private equity-owned. But it does give a snapshot of where things stand.

In the first half of the year, locations like discount stores (six), clothing stores (six) and drugstores (five) had the most openings in the region, Coresight says. Those categories were also the most likely to close, however. There were 14 drugstore and pharmacy closures, plus three discount store closures and three clothing store closures.

In Detroit specifically, there has been a fair share of shakeup in the retail landscape, with stores like Under Armour, Le Labo, John Varvatos, Madewell, Détroit is the New Black and others closing; but downtown also has a Gucci store and a Savage X Fenty store coming in, as well.

Nationwide, there were 1,766 announced store closures resulting in about 29.1 million square feet of vacating retail space and 4,283 announced store openings totaling about 73.2 million square feet, according to Coresight.

That compares with 4,554 closures during a comparable period last year and 4,130 openings.

CVS Pharmacy Inc. saw by far the most closures, with 300 of its 9,939 locations shuttering; however, that represents only about 3 percent of its store base. Companies like Sears (closing 101 of its 325 stores, or 31 percent) and Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon 4-star and Amazon Books (closing 57 of 107 stores, or 53 percent) suffered far more on a proportional basis.

According to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service, the metro Detroit retail market has about 259.6 million square feeet and a vacancy rate of 5.1 percent with rents at $17.82 per square foot per year.