COVID brought us into the remote and hybrid work age. The structural implications for retail site selection are significant — and still underappreciated by many expansion programs.
Hybrid and remote work fundamentally reduced weekday, daytime demand in CBDs and office-anchored retail centers. Downtown retail traffic remains materially below 2019 levels on weekdays. The weekend picture has been less impacted, but neighborhood retail has largely recovered or exceeded prior norms.
The implication for site selection is clear but not yet fully reflected in how many brands screen markets: the demand map has shifted.
Site Selection Implications
The weighting adjustments that follow from this shift are straightforward once you accept the structural reality:
Office density and commuter counts to CBDs and office centers. These were reliable demand proxies in 2019. They are significantly less reliable today for most retail categories.
Residential concentration, daytime population stability, and proximity to home-based routines — healthcare, grocery, optical, fitness, QSR. These demand drivers have strengthened as people spend more time in their home trade areas.
The practical outcome: suburban and close-in neighborhood nodes now screen as core opportunities, not secondary markets. CBD locations require proof of non-office demand — tourism, high residential density, or genuine destination-retail status — before they clear the same threshold they once cleared automatically.
Suburban Does Not Mean Low-Density
A persistent misread of this shift is treating suburban as a concession — a fallback when urban locations aren't available. That framing is outdated.
Population migration and the urbanization of the suburbs accelerated meaningfully during and after COVID. New retail development and mixed-use projects are active in suburban core markets across the country. Mixed-use suburban nodes are increasingly replacing former urban retail functions — dining, services, lifestyle — not supplementing them.
The strongest suburban nodes today offer residential density, walkability, and a daytime population that is present consistently throughout the week. That is a more reliable demand profile for most retail categories than a CBD location dependent on office occupancy that may never fully recover to 2019 levels.
Where people live now takes precedence over where people work more than ever before. Retail demand and development have followed. Site selection models and screening frameworks that haven't updated their weighting assumptions are working from a map that no longer reflects the territory.