South County Super Mall Plan ‘on Track’ : Convention: Session is deal-makers’ delight for mall, shopping center owners eager to fill empty space.

For Orange County-based retailers, the nation’s largest shopping center convention Tuesday became a deal-maker’s delight.

Mall and shopping center owners, eager to fill empty space, solicited chains, such as Taco Bell, Carl’s Jr. and Clothestime.

“If you’re not here, you’re not in business,” said Ian Brown, a commercial real estate agent in Grubb & Ellis’ Newport Beach office about the importance of the International Council of Shopping Centers gathering, which continues through Thursday.

More than 20,000 participants descended on the Las Vegas Convention Center’s main floor in their first official session of deal-making following two days of seminars. Most real estate and development companies built elaborate offices and displays to lure potential tenants and investors.

And the mood was a little more upbeat than last year, when the reality of the recession cast a pall over the annual event.

“This year seems a lot busier than last year,” said John Ortega, chairman of the Clothestime apparel chain based in Anaheim, as he surveyed the busy activity around his company’s booth.

He said Clothestime was a popular exhibitor because it will need sites for 65 stores this year and 75 it plans to open next year. The chain also puts most of its stores in shopping centers where rents tend to be significantly lower than in malls.

But Ortega said his real estate scouts must carefully comb through the offers from brokers and developers. Many of the locations offered involve centers that never quite reached their potential.

Others exhibitors said that while activity on the convention floor was greater this year than last, it still pales next to the pre-recessionary real estate deals of the late 1980s.

Don Glenn, a vice president for Carl Karcher Enterprises in Anaheim, said development has slowed to the point where “we have to work much harder to put together deals.”

He said Karcher, which operates the Carl’s Jr. hamburger chain, is looking for developers and shopping center owners who are able to work with the chain as it experiments with building smaller restaurants. Glenn said development costs are so high that the fast-food industry is looking to smaller buildings, and an emphasis on take-out orders, as a way to cut costs.

Although the Karcher booth was busy, Glenn said the prevailing attitudes seemed more downbeat than in previous years.

“The mood is a little more somber,” Glenn said. “Most of the developers are negative (about building new centers) in the near term.”

Several veteran convention-goers said there were far fewer retail chains, such as Karcher, looking to expand.