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- A growing divide exists between new, successful shopping centers and older, stagnating properties from the 1970s.
- Newer centers with national tenants are commanding record-high rents, while older centers struggle with vacancies.
- Experts suggest that older retail centers must be torn down or significantly reimagined to remain competitive.
Contrary to popular belief, the internet did not kill retail and Oklahoma City is seeing an influx of new construction.
But a new retail survey shows a growing divide emerging between the success of newer shopping destinations and fading fortunes of those built in the age of disco balls and leisure suits.
Jim Parrack, who leads the retail division at Price Edwards, said the Oklahoma City metro at first glance is doing well compared to the national market in which rental rates are going up and new development is slowing amidst higher construction costs and rising economic uncertainty.
Large new retail properties in Oklahoma City include OAK, the mixed-use upscale development at Northwest Expressway and Pennsylvania Avenue, Grove Marketplace at NW 178 and Portland Avenue, and Rose Creek Plaza at NW 164 and May Avenue.
And a next-generation prototype Walmart Supercenter, meanwhile, is being built as part of Deercrest Marketplace at the corner of John Kilpatrick Turnpike and Rockwell Avenue. More announced retailers are moving forward in northwest Oklahoma City, including a Scheels store and a Crest Foods.
Legacy at Covell in Edmond is set to include some of the biggest names in retail and dining, including Whole Foods and a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. And multiple new developments continue in Norman, including construction of a large development anchored by a Target store.
More: This luxury grocer is the first Oklahoma-based business to open in OAK
“Retail in general is doing better than people tend to think,” Parrack told The Oklahoman. “There is a lot of negative news nationally. But even nationally, retail is doing better than people often give credit for mainly because people are still spending money.”
Nationally, he said, not a lot of retail construction is being seen, which has helped occupancy rates and landlords are able to raise rents and are “doing pretty well.”
“There has developed, over the past couple of years, what I would call good centers and then there are centers that have fallen off pace. The good centers are those that are newer and have mostly national tenants.”
Older locations seeing rent stagnating
Parrack identified Oklahoma City’s two power retail corridors where much of the growth is happening as those at Northwest Expressway and Pennsylvania Avenue, and along the Memorial Road corridor between Portland and Western avenues, which Parrack said has the highest concentration of retail in the city.
“The other locations are those that are older, maybe aren’t configured right and have more mom-and-pop tenants,” Parrack said. “The surprising part to me is the gap between the two has widened significantly. We’re seeing certain centers, like Classen Curve, get $50 to $60 a foot in rent. There are some small strip shopping centers in that same range. And we haven’t seen those kinds of rents here ever.”
Older centers, meanwhile, are seeing rents stagnating between $12 and $14 a foot.
“The discrepancy is very noticeable,” Parrack said. “A lot of the older centers in the ‘70s are in that older tier. Sometimes the markets have grown away from them. But sometimes the centers just get old; the ceilings are low and maybe their spaces are too deep. Something is wrong with them.”
The tenant mix also weighs in, Parrack said, with centers with mostly local retailers unable to compete with the newer, national-tenant anchored properties.
“The rents haven’t moved, so the landlords have a hard time paying for tenant improvements and the local tenants don’t have as much quality credit. It’s a cumulation of events that are holding those centers down.”
One example of a struggling retail center is French Market Mall, which the report shows was over 50% vacant at the end of 2025 even though it is on a high-traffic intersection of NW 63 and May Avenue.
The property started out in the 1970s as an enclosed mall adjoining a Woolco, Furr’s Cafeteria, Trust House Jewelers, an IGA grocery, a Hallmark shop and a drugstore.
The mall portion was later shut down and replaced with a Burlington store.
“At some point, a number of these older centers just need to be repurposed, whether that means torn down for a new center, or re-imagined, an example being Mayfair,” Parrack said. “Half of that center has been torn down and part was remodeled.”
Mayfair Village, built in 1948, was one of the city’s earliest suburban shopping centers. The retail hub was built along both sides of May Avenue between NW 47 and NW 48. Some pieces of the shopping center were torn down and replaced with new buildings, notably Mayfair Market, which made way for a CVS, and a nearby shopping strip that was torn down to make way for an Aldi grocery store.
An extensive rebuilding of the shopping center followed its 2020 purchase by Caleb Hill, Nick Preftakes and Mark Ruffin. They renovated some of the buildings and then cleared other sections that were then redeveloped as fast food restaurants and a gas station.
“More centers are going to have to be redone like that,” Parrack said.
Jason Little and Charles Lewis with SHOP Companies recently brokered a $17 million sale of four buildings that make up the heart of the reimagined Mayfair to a real estate investment arm of Humphreys Companies. He said the shopping center has just one vacancy — a Starbucks that closed as part of a national shutdown of some of its locations — and that lease continues.
When that lease transitions to a new tenant, Little said he expects the former Starbucks will lease for close to $50 a foot. He credits that price expectation to the efforts undertaken by Hill and Preftakes.
“You’re talking about an asset that when they acquired it had single digit rents,” Little said. “By bringing new construction and historic architecture together, they’ve been able to create something marketable.”
In other areas of town, Parrack said west Oklahoma City, more recently, has had the lowest vacancy rate, which he sees as a reflection of new housing in the area especially near Yukon and Mustang. He said Moore and Norman continue to thrive with little old retail and ongoing construction of new retail.
Parrack said the metro’s three malls are performing at different levels.
“Penn Square continues to do the best sales of any of the local malls. Simon owns it and Simons knows what they’re doing. But even at Penn Square there are some temporary tenants that Simon controls. And I think they realize that in competition with OAK they are needing to invest some money in the mall.”
Quail Springs Mall, meanwhile, is a step down in sales, Parrack said.
Sooner Fashion Mall in Norman is the smallest of the three, and like other smaller malls, is struggling.
“It shows with them in that they have more vacancy than the other two,” Parrack said. “It doesn’t help that they have a Sears that has been closed for all these years.”
Parrack does not expect the city to see another dying mall like Crossroads or Heritage Park anytime soon.
“The thing with malls is even when they die, they take forever to die,” Parrack said. “It’s kind of a gradual thing. Their business slacks off. They lose a couple of tenants. But all bigger retail centers have these tenants with co-tenancy clauses that if certain tenants leave or the occupancy goes below a certain level, then tenants can pay half rent or a percentage rent.”
Newer mixed-use developments like OAK, Chisholm Creek and The Half are being well received by the market, though Parrack notes The Half, leaning more toward entertainment than retail with a mix of offices and apartments, is less cohesive than the other two destinations.
“It’s hard to walk from one deal to another at The Half,” Parrack said. “It’s more of a destination with each of the tenants there. But it is in a great location. The people that are there do well. OAK is something we’ve never had before, and it’s the closest thing we have to Utica Square in Tulsa.”
The demise of brick-and-mortar retail prompted by Amazon is greatly exaggerated, Parrack said.
“The last holiday sales period saw 75% of sales being at brick-and-mortar stores,” Parrack said. “That percentage for holiday sales has held steady for a while and I think most of these retailers have figured out the optimal way for them to continue.”
