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ICSC RECON in Las Vegas is the retail event of the year in America, but before that, ICSC’s Mid-Atlantic chapter is hosting its own conference at National Harbor next week. On March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, Peterson Cos will host its annual conference party, and, for the first time ever, it's open to the public and co-hosted by Bisnow. Sign up here!
Peterson president of retail Paul Weinschenk tells us this year’s party will be bigger than ever. When it started five or six years ago, it was just a couple of hundred people at Grace’s Mandarin. This year, expect more than 600 of the 2,000 or so ICSC attendees to be there. And this year, the party won’t just be in the Sunset Room and on the restaurant’s private terrace, it will expand onto the harbor’s main plaza, and attendees can even ride the famous Capital Wheel.
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“It’s going to be a nice, fluid event,” Paul says. Plus, he added, it’s the NCAA Tournament’s first day, and there will be March Madness games on the Jumbotron TV. Sponsors for the event include JBG, H&R, Rappaport, Regency, Greenberg Gibbons.
The party is right in the middle of the two-day ICSC Mid-Atlantic Conference and Dealmaking being held at Peterson's National Harbor. The date is in the middle of ICSC New York and RECON—where Bisnow is hosting its annual Beltway Bash party in May—“so it fills a nice spot in the deal-making cycle,” Paul says.
“If things started in New York, you can push them along and set them up to bring it to a head in Las Vegas potentially,” Paul says. “You can start something at Mid-Atlantic and push it even farther.”
You can expect to meet people from Philly, Richmond, the populous Tidewater area of Virginia and the Carolinas, all the way from New York.
Paul, snapped here with his sons, and his team will be there touting developments like the 270k SF Avonlea Center, which already will have the first Cinépolis movie theater on the East Coast and is “in discussions with an upscale grocery store,” Paul says, for 20k to 40k SF. Site work will begin there this month.
Peterson also retained Cabela's at its Virginia Gateway property in Gainesville, opening in 2017. And, next to its ridiculously awesome Top Golf in Ashburn, near the Washington football team’s HQ, Peterson is getting ready to open iFly, the indoor skydiving center that will likely draw from all over the region.
The Ultimate Retail Extravaganza is set for 8 to 11:30pm, March 17, at The Sunset Room, 137 National Plaza, No. 200, National Harbor, MD. It is sure to be a great time—to give you an idea of how good, Paul declined to name a particular fun anecdote from years past—so you’ll have to buy tickets to find out how great.
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