Smith College Retail Analysis Northampton, MA

Over the past several years, Landwise has worked with Smith College to develop strategies for several of their key non-academic land holdings. For this engagement, Landwise devised a development plan to guide tenanting and investment decisions for the College's commercial properties on Green and West Streets, adjacent to the new and highly anticipated Nielsen Library.

Landwise performed a detailed retail inventory for Downtown Northampton as an input to a retail demand analysis. After gaining a full understanding of the market dynamics, Landwise was able to demonstrate the overall supply and demand conditions in the local real estate market and identify retail and restaurant opportunities for the West / Green Street properties. The team also conducted focus groups with students, faculty and staff to glean qualitative insight on the types of businesses desired by the broader Smith community. From this analysis, Landwise presented Smith College with several tenanting and leasing scenarios, each with different levels of investment for physical improvements. The scenarios provided the College with a re-tenanting and phasing strategy so that it could incrementally upgrade the quality of the retail and food experience over time, to coincide with the opening of the new library.

Landwise partnered with Sasaki Associates to develop cost estimates for the recommended capital improvement projects as well as renderings of future building layouts.