CoStar makes big push at ICSC

Data firm's attendance increased sharply at convention, while owners, brokers, retailers were mostly flat

CoStar at ICSC (Credit: Adam Pincus for <em>The Real Deal</em>)
CoStar at ICSC (Credit: Adam Pincus for The Real Deal)

CoStar Group is blanketing ICSC, more than doubling its attendance from last year, making it one of the top 30 firms at the show.

The dominant player in commercial real estate data arena, CoStar sent 69 registered attendees to the retail event, the largest head count from a company that is not a brokerage, tenant or owner.

The firm — which is spending up to $20 million this year to prevent upstart Xceligent from breaking into its market strongholds — did not respond to a request for comment.

CoStar’s competitors have registered far fewer attendees. As of Tuesday, Xceligent had four reps, CompStak (with whom they announced a partnership this month) had also had four, and Yardi counted eight.

The analysis based on ICSC attendance information available on its website, and may not have the final figures for each firm. Total registered attendance as of Tuesday morning was just under 33,000, but ICSC expects the total to hit 37,000.

Other firms that pushed up their numbers were sandwich restaurant Subway, which jumped from 50 to 97 attendees this year, and Internet giant Amazon, which registered 15 Seattle-based individuals this year, up from 10 last year.

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The landlord with the most significant attendance increase was shopping center landlord DDR, which jumped from 17 professionals last year to 44 attendees as of Tuesday. Mexican shopping center owner Grupo Acosta Verde grew from 7 pros in 2016 to 17 this year.

The six largest companies at the show were all brokerages, and for the most part those firms sent roughly the same number of professionals as they had last year. CBRE had by far the most attendees registered, with 763 as of Tuesday (up from 746 as of last year’s registration count). They were followed by Cushman & Wakefield, which also increased its presence despite losing high-profile agents like Bradley Mendelson and David Green, and top brokers like Bob Knakal did not attend. This year they had 375 professionals registered, compared with 348 last year.

JLL had 331 attendees registered as of Tuesday morning, Colliers International had 289, Marcus & Millichap had 272 and Newmark Grubb Knight Frank came in with 209.

Some large landlords also cut back sharply. Kimco Realty reduced its headcount from 92 last year to 58 this year. The firm cut back on non-leasing professionals this year.

“Kimco decided this should strictly be a leasing event. This was due in part to space and cost management in order to accommodate the high meeting volume the leasing teams have,” the firm said in a statement to The Real Deal.

Overall, the number of owners or developers registered as of Tuesday morning — 10,876 — was about 4 percent below last year’s final figures. The next most active group was real estate services (mostly brokers), which tallied 8,653 as of Tuesday morning, down about 3 percent from last year’s total. Retailers saw a slightly larger decline of just over 5 percent, with 3,560 registered this morning. Those three categories represent more than half of all attendees.