Richmond’s retail real estate market continued to soften in the second quarter with the closure of the Martin’s Food Markets grocery chain and the sale of Virginia Center Commons, an older shopping mall in Hanover County that has seen an uptick in vacant spaces.
According to a market report from CBRE | Richmond, the region’s overall retail vacancy rate stood at 7.2 percent.
Much of the vacancy comes from three Martin’s stores that were not picked up by Publix in a sale last year in which the Florida-based grocer bought 10 area stores.
“The fate of the remaining stores will impact the retail market in the future, either continuing to drive up the vacancy rate or having relatively no impact on the total available space,” the report says.
