Del Mar CRE update

The past few months we have posted (here and here) on the Del Mar retail and office real estate meltdown, with vacancies piling up like dead racehorses. Today, we revisited the mean streets of Del Mar to see if there had been any improvement.

This is one encouraging sign. The shuttered shoe store featured in last month's update now promises to become a yogurt shop.



Will the rest of Camino del Mar show similar signs of hope?



There's the Three Dog Bakery we ridiculed in October. I knew some guys in college who liked to get their dog baked.

Odd, isn't it, that a new retail shop would be "Coming Soon" for months but not bother to open for the holiday season? But then anyone who pays franchise fees to open a store as stupid as a dog bakery probably doesn't get the whole retail concept. But what's that in the window?



It's a "Notice of Non-Responsibility" posted by the mall owners. Now I'm no lawyer, but I think it means "Notice: the store owners are deadbeats. So any vendors delivering equipment or inventory are crazy, and the mall is not responsible for anything you leave."

And what's this?



Just a couple doors down, the Just Pretend jewelry store is either going out of business or trying a new zero-inventory concept.

And on the dark side of the road:



A new vacancy just a couple doors down from the still-vacant "Dragonfly" store featured in October's post.


And remember the sweet three suites?



Now it's four.




And at 10th Street, a new office vacancy in the former headquarters of the Yes on G campaign. It's a good thing Proposition G won, because as you can see, Del Mar is desperately in need of more strip malls!

That covers our tour for the day. Aside from the shoe-store-turned-yogurt-shop, none of the vacancies from our October and November posts appear to be getting any action.