Where We Buy: Retail Real Estate with James Cook

Michael Rubenstein is CEO of Wally's, a rapidly growing travel center brand known as the "Home of the Great American Road Trip." Michael takes us on a tour of the company's third and largest location, a 53,000-square-foot facility in Whitestown, Indiana, and explains how Wally's is redefining the travel stop experience. He covers the company's origins, its retro Americana branding, an expansive fo...

Raj Singh is Managing Partner at JLL Spark Global Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of JLL that has invested more than $445 million in early-stage tech startups focused on the built world. Raj explains how they evaluate and support PropTech investments, from 3D space visualization tools to AI-powered leasing assistants. He also discusses the role of proprietary data in AI, the rise of ag...

Jennifer Hanlon is Vice President of Real Estate and Development at VEG ER for Pets, an emergency and urgent care hospital network for animals with 131 locations across 34 states and Canada. She discusses the company's rapid growth, opening roughly 30 locations per year, and its unique open-concept ER model that allows pet owners to stay with their animals throughout treatment. She also talks abou...

Choon Lee is CEO and founder of Abstra Company and Abstra Point, and has been working in artificial intelligence for fifteen years. Lee explains why generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are not always the right solution, particularly for derivative tasks like lease abstraction and LOI summarization in commercial real estate. He breaks down the difference between generative, derivative, and...

Amanda Metcalf is Editor-in-Chief at Commerce + Communities Today at ICSC. Her job is to stay on top of everything new and noteworthy in the world of retail real estate. Amanda shares the top five trends she is tracking, including stadium districts, medical uses at malls, nostalgia-driven retail, the evolution of specialty leasing and ancillary income, and why Chicago has become a go-to testing gr...

L3 Capital has a simple thesis: location, location, location. They find the streets where people want to be and invest in them. James spoke with Whitney Robinette of L3 Capital about how her firm is building prime urban retail portfolios in neighborhoods like SoHo, Williamsburg, Gold Coast, and Fulton Market. They dig into what makes a great urban retail location, why luxury brands are heading to...

Zack Teachout and Austin Mayer are with Hovercraft, a creative design practice that builds brand experiences for clients like Nike, Coinbase, Taco Bell, and BetMGM. They explain what it takes to get people away from their screens and into the real world. They share how Hovercraft designs retail spaces, temporary activations, and immersive installations that blend physical environments with technol...

Recording live from the JLL booth in the final hours of ICSC Las Vegas 2026, Naveen Jaggi,  President, Retail Advisory Services for the Americas at JLL joins James Cook and Keisha Virtue to sum up the trends and themes from the largest commercial real estate conference in the world. Naveen shares his take on the state of retail leasing and the surprising resurgence of Class B and C malls. He also...

Naked Farmer is a fast casual restaurant chain that launched in Florida about six years ago with a plan to offer good meals with ingredients sourced from local farms. CEO and founder Jordan Johnson explains how the company builds direct relationships with Southeast farmers, plans seasonal menus nine to 12 months in advance, and applies fine dining culinary techniques in a fast casual setting. John...

Mike Bennett was an unemployed artist in Portland, Oregon when he created a public art project that captured the imagination of the city during the pandemic. He then created art popups in increasingly large retail spaces, then Wonderwood Indoor Mini Golf & Cafe, and then The Portland Aquarium, an indoor cartoon aquarium. Bennett and his business partner Teddy Albertson discuss these spaces, their...

Sam Wang is Co-Founder and CEO of Mirra Immersive LLC, the creator of Mirra Arena, a competitive social VR arena that combines multiplayer active gameplay with large-format LED spectator displays. Wang explains how he and his partner conceived the concept during the pandemic and built a proprietary system where up to eight players compete in VR while friends watch the action on a massive screen in...

Carrie Charleston is Vice President-Head of Leasing at Mall of America, the 5.6-million-square-foot shopping, entertainment, and dining destination in Bloomington, Minnesota, owned by Triple Five Group. Carrie discusses the wave of new brands debuting at Mall of America—from SKIMS and Alo Yoga to Pop Mart and Miniso—and the growing influence of Asian retail and K-pop culture on the tenant mix. She...

Emily Crutcher, Senior Vice President of JLL's Government and Education Division, and Elsa Wilson, Senior Analyst in Research at JLL, join the show to discuss their analysis of 18 university anchored innovation districts across the United States. They explain how these districts — from Stanford Research Park to Kendall Square — foster innovation through concentrations of research institutions, sta...

Tucker Trotter is CEO of Dimensional Innovations, and Spencer Farley is Practice Director of Entertainment and Hospitality. They discuss Atlas9, an immersive experience in Kansas City themed around a 1990s movie theater where films have come to life. They explain how the concept was born during COVID, the role of live performers, and the gamification and narrative elements that drive repeat visits...

Kevin Vuong is SVP of Global Store and Workplace Experience at Capri Holdings, the parent company of Michael Kors. Kevin talks about how the brand is redefining its signature "jet set" lifestyle for a new generation of customers, including the rollout of Jet Set Lounges with food and beverage in flagship stores in New York, London, and Beijing. He also covers the brand's award-winning popup activa...

Phil Colicchio is co-founder of Central Perk Coffee Company and head of Colicchio Consulting. Phil shares the origin story of how a pitch meeting at Warner Bros. about a sandwich concept unexpectedly led to a license for the globally iconic Central Perk brand from the hit TV show Friends. He discusses the challenges of raising capital without owning the intellectual property, the decision to test...

Paul Sill uses data and predictive analytics to help retailers, restaurants, and other brick-and-mortar businesses make site selection decisions. Paul explains the critical difference between correlation and causation in retail data, explaining that misreading data can lead to costly mistakes. He also discusses how new data sources like social media behavior and mobile foot traffic are shaping mod...

Walter Wahlfeldt is Midwest Retail Lead at JLL. He discusses the state of retail real estate in Chicago, from the recovery of the central business district to the evolving Magnificent Mile. He covers return-to-office trends, shifting retail rents, the grocery wars heating up in the market, and what makes Chicago a top-five destination for expanding retailers. Wahlfeldt also shares lessons from his...

Uli Stosch is Chief Officer of Strategic Development at Planet Aid, Inc., a nonprofit organization that collects and resells used clothing and textiles through nearly 10,000 donation bins across 15 states. Uli explains Planet Aid's mission to divert textiles from landfills, support reuse over recycling, and fund sustainable development projects worldwide. She discusses the logistics of placing don...

Taeyun Kim is Chief Development Officer at CJ Foodville US, the parent company of Tous les Jours, a French-Asian bakery cafe chain with over 180 locations across 31 states. Taeyun discusses the company's ambitious expansion plans to reach 1,000 stores by 2030, explaining the brand's unique positioning as a neighborhood bakery offering fresh-baked pastries and bread with European and Asian influenc...

Ian Scott leads retail safaris around the world. He takes listeners on a virtual tour of six distinctive stores—from Fanatics Collectibles' interactive sports collectibles space in London to Buck Mason's immersive lifestyle store in New York, Larfeuille's artisanal leather workshop in Paris, Ffern's sensory fragrance boutique in London, Singapore's DORS at Design Orchard retail incubator, and Pata...

Josh Rainey is Senior Director of Real Estate + Growth at [solidcore], a boutique fitness operator specializing in intense strength training workouts on custom-built reformers. [solidcore] expanded from 85 locations in 2022 to 165 today, with plans to reach 205 by the end of the year. He discusses [solidcore]'s target demographic of primarily women aged 25-35, the importance of community-driven fi...

Sean McNamara leads The Mixx at JLL, a specialized platform for managing complex mixed-use developments across North America. McNamara explains the unique challenges of managing properties that combine office, retail, residential, hotel, and entertainment uses on a single site. He discusses the importance of creating a sense of place through strategic merchandising, placemaking, and activation, hi...

Julia Yook is General Manager of Arte Museum New York, a 52,000-square-foot immersive media art space at Chelsea Piers. Yook explains the museum's origins in South Korea in 2020, its expansion to locations worldwide including Las Vegas and upcoming sites in Los Angeles and Orlando, and the logistics of creating multisensory experiences that combine light, sound, scent, and spatial design. She cove...

Clare Walsh is Managing Director of Leasing Strategy at Asana Partners, a retail-focused investment firm with over $7 billion in assets under management. Walsh discusses the company's focus on neighborhood retail across the top 25 U.S. metropolitan areas, highlighting key properties in neighborhoods including Dallas Design District, Charlotte's South End, and Salt Lake City's East Bench. She cover...