The El Paseo shopping center in South Gate is the latest retail outfit to offer experiential services to its patronage by signing a 10-year lease with Hapik, an indoor climbing park.
This is the first U.S. location for Paris, France-based Hapik which was founded in 2016. The lease at 8712 Garfield Ave. is for 5,130-square-feet.
“Landlords are becoming more and more receptive to repositioning retail real estate towards entertainment-related activities instead of soft goods,” Stephan Ktorza, a senior vice president with Kidder Mathews, which brokered the deal, said in a statement.
Retailers are incorporating entertainment, experience, innovative brand awareness in their stores to bring in more customers, Frank Kaufman, national retail analyst for Seattle-based Moss Adams told the Business Journal earlier this month.
“Shopping habits have changed, e-commerce disrupted that and in order to get foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores, you need to be creative,” he said.
Manufacturing, retail and trade reporter Shwanika Narayan can be reached at [email protected] or 323-556-8351. Follow her on Twitter @shwanika.
