Commercial brokerage giant JLL has formed a new business unit to manage a wave of retail rebranding, offering services that aim to help companies move from concept to design to execution.

JLL’s retail solutions group is designed to provide end-to-end services for an industry that has been evolving to blend its brick-and-mortar stores with e-commerce, technology and customer experiences. The firm announced the group in a press release obtained by Bisnow.

The unit will be led by industry veteran Mark Bateman, who joined JLL after more than 17 years at Ohio-based consulting firm WD Partners. JLL also hired Kevin Songer, who spent more than 21 years in Gensler’s Atlanta office, as managing director of architecture for the new group.

“It's a whole different game right now,” said Bateman, who was named executive managing director of the unit. “This space is really asking a lot of questions as to what the consumer wants, and that's a lot of the expertise that I bring, Kevin brings and our retail solutions team brings to the table.”

Retailers are increasingly turning to their real estate footprints to give customers not only products but also experiences around them, according to a 2026 white paper by retail commerce platform Commerce Tools.

JLL is working with athletic shoe retailer Brooks Sports in its effort to open new stores. It is helping the retailer design stores based on customer demographics and the local running environment, Bateman said.

“Certainly, the runner in Denver is different than the runner in Miami,” Bateman said, adding that Brooks’ store design caters to the “experiences in store based on what they want.”

While JLL has had architectural, site selection, project and construction management services for years, the retail solutions group aims to coordinate and integrate those services under a single operating platform.

“Our clients told us clearly what they needed, which is a partner who could seamlessly guide them from innovation through execution, keeping their physical brand expression relevant and their customer journey compelling,” Louis Molinini, JLL’s project and development services variable lead for the Americas, said in the release.

Bateman said retailers prefer a single point of contact to hire a variety of vendors to cut development costs and delivery time.

“The retailers that we work with have a single point of contact, right? So they’re under a lot of pressure to deliver faster, more consistently and cost-effectively,” Bateman said. “When you’re working with four different vendors doing strategy, design, architecture and project management, the program goes sideways because they can’t control costs. There’s finger-pointing.”

After a year of retailer bankruptcies and contraction, the industry is expected to expand this year, with off-price, discount and beauty retailers leading new store growth, ICSC reports, citing data from Telsey Advisory Group. Along with restaurants, retailers will increase store counts by 1.8% this year, up from 1% last year.

And the time storefronts remain empty on the market is decreasing. The median lease-up time in 2025 dropped below seven months for the first time ever, Retail Brew reported, citing Colliers data.

As part of the new retail unit, JLL named Josh Broehl to lead retail design and branding, Russell Baumann, Keith Heinemann and Amy Sjursen to head up the retail architecture teams, and Ken Demske to lead multisite project management efforts.

“There's a lot that goes into these refresh programs or these reinvestment programs … whether it's something simple, like changing signage or integrating better omnichannel or digital, or something more major, like having to redesign and redo back of house,” Bateman said.

“Place still matters, right? I mean, people still want to socialize and go into a store, either a coffee shop or even go in and talk to somebody to get help on a plumbing project,” he added. “So, despite all this digital growth, physical locations remain one of the more powerful touchpoints between brands and their customers.”