For someone who rarely manages to leave his own store., I sure talk an awful lot about commercial real estate.

Yesterday, after picking up my car from Les Schwab (I had nails in both back tires, a real accomplishment), I decided to take a little driving tour.

First, I noticed that the space that I was going to rent on November 1, didn't look even close to ready. I'm going to be watching to see how long it takes for someone to fill the spot I was looking at.

Then I drove south on 3rd. Fred Meyer always seems busy, and the satellite stores are amazingly steady. There seems to be a fair number of vacant lots for sale on 3rd, both north and south, and signs mentioning retail. But none of them seem to be actually being built.

I came in from behind Cascade Village, and noticed that almost all the back and middle retail slots were empty. I took a look at the 'available' slots on the sign, and counted 13 spots open out of 43, with 3 more not yet open. Out of the 43, 10 were massive big stores like Best Buy which are a different case, so by my count 13 out of 33 spots where a small business could come in were empty.

What begins to sink in is that are plenty of retail spaces available, all over town, even in the downtown area. When you look out the windows of Pegasus and you see tenants who are actually being evicted even though they're willing to pay the rent, when you see cranes on every corner, and cars and passersby, and so on, you begin to think that everyone is just jostling for space. But there are plenty of spots open to rent.

But almost none of them are appropriate for walk-by traffic, which is kind of sad. Really, the big box centers are destination stores. The strip malls are destination stores. Both malls, which were once pedestrian friendly, have turned into big box centers.

I drove over to the west side, drove through N.W. Crossing, was again unimpressed by the traffic.

The car traffic is really bad on the west side, folks. And I saw 2 pedestrians in the entire west side; actually saw way more pedestrians on 3rd (though half of them looked homeless.) I actually saw more pedestrians on the east side. So I call B.S. to the pedestrian thing.

The trees on the west side are nice, though.

Still, there is a sort of unattractive hodgepodge to it all. As if grafting completely different styles to each other. Grafting in the word that came to mind. Old next to new, in a chaotic way. Sorry, not that great looking. And all the unfinished lots need to be filled in and cleaned up to reach any kind of potential attractiveness.

I poked my head into an office, and started talking to a long-time commercial real estate manager. About half way through the conversation, when I realized she was being amazingly candid, I informed her I had a blog where I talked about these things, but I could tell she didn't really get what I was saying, so I feel compelled to stay vague about her identity.

Suffice to say, that just about everything I had been assuming from the outside, she pretty much confirmed. And she had nearly identical views on many of the subjects -- so even though she had different experiences, she had reached many of the same conclusions.

One thing that surprised me was when she mentioned the 'lord of the manor' syndrome. She was talking about owners who felt they could hire managers and employees, and be an absentee owners.

I came up with the same phrase years ago, used to describe my own behavior. I thought, when I had 4 stores, that I could plug a manager in each one, and then float from store to store as needed. I would poke my head in the door and say, "How much money we make today, guys?"

Needless to say, it didn't work that way.

There were a lot of other parallels in our thinking. Not sure if that is just a reflection of long experience, or just a similar way of thinking about things. Always helps to know that I'm not very far off base. In fact, I was making conclusions about some of her businesses which were right on, even though I had very little information. I was just looking at common factors.

Very validating.

There is still plenty of unfinished business to Bend. Still plenty of locations that need to be upgraded. Still plenty of unfilled spots. Still vacant lots.

In a way, I find that comforting.