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To: Tom D who wrote (2519)	3/30/1998 9:31:00 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

What do you think will happen to commercial real estate in the next 5 years? Tom, I live in Atlanta, so I have seen boom, bust and then boom again in commercial R/E. Developers and lenders don't seem capable of learning from the past and, as a result, it looks to me like they are doing their best to get into another seriously overbuilt situation. That's just my observation of Atlanta, but friends in other cities have made the same comments. If the 'net retailing bulls are right about how much business will move to the 'net, I'd agree that we could see some "big boxes" turn into folded cartons<g> and that the strip centers will get hurt. I'm not so sure that everyone wants to give up the "shopping experience" though. There are products and services that lend themselves very well to the 'net, but there are many that don't. OTOH, I've felt for a while that the proliferation of "big box" or "category killer" retailers was driving the strip center development boom and that both would get hit before long. Homeplace has already gone into Chapter 11, as have a few sporting goods chains. In short, 'net retailing will do less harm to commercial R/E than the developers and lenders will do themselves. Regards, Bob