The trouble at Sears Canada and Target could make one think everybody is sitting home not buying things. (That would make for some stale bagels.) Avison Young CEO Mark Rose says its analysis of 35 industrial markets in the US and Canada says otherwise. "Retail is not on life support,” he tells us. What we are seeing is a shifting of the industry’s tectonic plates—consumers are shifting to mobile purchasing and same-day or next-day delivery, causing a change in distribution. Real estate is shifting from retail to industrial product. Snapped with Mark is AY’s Texas team at the HP Byron Nelson Championship in Dallas last week—Art Green, Greg Langston, and Rand Stephens.

Avison Young VP Ryan Kerr says the relatively recent emergence of demand for order fulfillment centres in Metro Vancouver “will continue to play a significant role." According to AY's spring industrial research, vacancy in the region’s active 187M SF industrial market rose slightly to 3.7% at the end of Q1 2014 from 3.5% a year earlier (but down from 3.9% in fall 2013) due primarily to the addition of almost 2.7M SF to the region’s industrial inventory in that 12-month period.