REAL ESTATE NEWS

ICSC@western has kicked off in Palm Springs, and after less than a full day on the ground, it’s already clear there’s a lot brewing beneath the desert sunshine. Even before the main sessions got underway, leadership themes began to emerge—from breakfast conversations to hallway exchanges with industry veterans. Arcie Propster, founding partner of Partner Engineering, put it bluntly: “Learn the love language of those around you to manage your team. Everyone needs to be led a different way so just be observant and you will be a good leader.” The power of observation is obvious here, and it’s matched by another core tenant heard that morning: treating people properly and living by the golden rule is not just the right thing—it is still a proven formula for success.

Kindness, it turns out, was a recurring thread. The women’s morning session hammered home that “kindness costs nothing and your personal brand is the most powerful thing you can build.” Hearing those words as the sun rises over Palm Springs reminds me that amid the tech and strategy talk that tends to define major retail events, human connection and authenticity are what can set people apart.

These softer skills—emotional intelligence, attentiveness, and generosity—are in lively dialogue with the sharp edge of technological evolution. Maxx Killman of JLL, for example, told me that emerging Agentic AI tools are quickly becoming indispensable. As Killman explained, “By outsourcing important but routine tasks like market research, gap analysis, and site selection, brokers will have more bandwidth to focus on the client-facing aspects of the business and deliver quality insights that matter in real-time.”

The implications for tenants and landlords are huge. Tenants may be able to collapse weeks of work into seconds as these systems pair retailers with properties tailored to their sales goals and target customers. Landlords stand to gain new agility in rent optimization and in mixing tenants for better performance—thanks to intelligent analysis of countless variables.

But the narrative here isn’t just one of data and algorithms. The real point, as Killman emphasized, is that the future of retail real estate means combining machine-driven precision with a broker’s judgment and creativity. “In a business built on relationships and deep local market knowledge, the edge comes from blending machine-driven precision with judgment, emotional intelligence, and human creativity.”

That synthesis—technology meeting humanity—is what I’ve been picking up in the conversations and sidebars at ICSC@western so far. The community seems keenly aware that what’s coming isn’t just radical change, but an opportunity to deepen the traits that have always mattered most in retail real estate.

Come back for more coverage of this event. 

Source: GlobeSt/ALM