| Client | Pookie & Sebastian — women’s apparel retailer |
| Portfolio | Six stores |
| Mandate | High-traffic lifestyle-center retail across South Florida |
| Placed | 1,500 SF at Plaza at Delray, Delray Beach |
| Representation | Tenant side only, working directly with ownership |
| Status | Ongoing — continuing to curate additional locations |
How it started
Pookie & Sebastian’s ownership saw our signage, called, and asked to meet. We sat down and built the expansion plan from their side of the table: what the concept needs from a space, which markets could support it, and what a location has to do before it earns a lease.
They were not new to Florida. They were growing their presence here, and they had already spent time looking on their own — which is how most retailers arrive at a tenant rep. You can see what is listed. What you cannot see from the outside is what is quietly available, what a landlord will actually concede, and which centers look right in photographs and fail in person.
I work directly with ownership on this account. No layers, no account manager. When a site comes up I call the people who decide.
The mandate, and why it was hard
The brief was specific: high-traffic retail in lifestyle centers across the South Florida market. Not any retail. Not a strip on a secondary road with cheap rent.
That is a narrow filter in a tight market. The premier properties in this region do not have vacancy sitting around waiting, and when something opens in one, it is spoken for before most brokers hear about it. The hard part of this assignment was never finding available space. It was finding space that hit every box — frontage, signage, co-tenancy, size, the right centre — inside properties where availability is scarce and moves fast.
A retailer working alone in that market is structurally late. By the time a space appears on a listing platform, the landlord has already had three conversations.
What I ruled out
The most useful work on this assignment was subtraction. Sites I took off the table before they ever reached ownership:
Anything without signage rights. For an apparel concept in a lifestyle center, signage is not decoration — it is the difference between being discovered and being found only by people already looking for you. A space with restricted or shared signage is a discount to sales every month for the length of the lease.
Anything without street frontage. Interior and rear positions price lower for a reason. On a concept that depends on foot traffic and visibility, that saving is illusory.
Lower-tier plazas. A centre either draws the customer this brand needs or it does not, and no amount of rent concession fixes the wrong shopper. I would rather bring ownership three real candidates than fifteen tours that waste a week and end in a compromise.
Saying no to a site you could have earned a commission on is the job. It is also the fastest way to find out whether your broker is representing you or representing the transaction.
Finding it before it went to market
The Delray space did not come from a listing platform. It came from the rolodex — landlords and brokers in this market I have worked with, who call when something is coming available rather than when it is already posted.
That is the whole advantage, and it is unglamorous: knowing first, and moving before a queue forms. In a premier property in a tight market, speed to deal is leverage. We were in conversation on that space while other prospects were still waiting for it to appear somewhere they could see it.
Ownership toured a curated set rather than a long list, and made a decision on a property that fit the brief instead of the best of what happened to be available.
The negotiation
Finding the right space is half the assignment. The other half is what the lease says.
On this deal I negotiated size and use, the rent, the tenant improvement allowance, free rent, exclusivity, percentage rent structure, the guaranty, and renewal options. Every one of those is a lever, and every one of them is drafted in the landlord’s favour in the form document you get handed first.
On percentage rent we held the breakpoint natural rather than artificial. The distinction is worth understanding because it is where a lot of retail money quietly moves. A natural breakpoint is arithmetic: base rent divided by the percentage rate. Below that sales figure you pay base rent and nothing else; above it, the landlord shares in the overage. An artificial breakpoint is a number the landlord writes into the lease instead — almost always lower — which means percentage rent starts before the base rent has actually been earned out. Landlord forms ask for artificial. Tenants who do not know the difference sign it.
Exclusivity and co-tenancy matter more for a growing apparel brand than most tenants realise — they determine who can open next to you and what happens if the centre’s draw changes. Renewal options determine whether success in year three becomes leverage for the landlord or for you. Those clauses cost nothing to ask for at LOI stage and are close to impossible to add later.
The result was a 1,500 square foot space at Plaza at Delray on terms built around what this concept needs to operate, not around what was easiest to paper.
Where it stands
Delray is open and the assignment is ongoing. We are continuing to curate additional South Florida locations against the same brief.
That is the part I would point to if you are running a multi-unit concept and weighing whether a local tenant rep is worth having. The first deal is a transaction. What you actually want is somebody who knows the brief well enough to call you about the second and third before anyone else does, and who will tell you when a site is wrong even though saying so costs him.
If you are opening multiple locations in Broward, Miami-Dade or Palm Beach, tell me what the concept needs and where you are headed.
Want the number on your building?
Search the property for an instant public-record snapshot and the closest recorded sales, or send me the address and I will come back inside one business day with a comp-driven range, what I think it would actually trade at, and what I would fix first.
Related resources.
Frequently asked questions about multi-site retail.
Do you work with multi-location retailers and growing brands?
Yes. Pookie & Sebastian is an ongoing multi-location assignment — a placed store at Plaza at Delray and continuing work to curate additional South Florida locations against the same brief. Multi-unit work is different from a single search: the focus moves to sequencing, consistency across leases, and knowing a concept well enough to screen sites before they reach the client.
How do you find space before it is listed?
Relationships with landlords and brokers in this market who call when something is coming available rather than when it has been posted. In premier properties with low vacancy, the good spaces are frequently spoken for before they ever reach a listing platform. That is the practical reason a local tenant rep beats a national database for this kind of assignment.
What does tenant representation cost a retailer?
Nothing directly. Tenant representation is paid by the landlord out of the transaction, which means a growing brand can have someone whose only obligation is their side of the table at no cost to their own budget.
Do you represent landlords too?
No. I represent tenants, buyers and sellers — never the landlord on a space I am placing a tenant into. There is no version of a deal where I am on both sides of it.
Which South Florida markets do you cover?
Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. That is the ground I know well enough to be useful on — the corridors, the centres, the landlords, and what deals are actually getting done rather than what is being asked.