Why these retail players are betting on malls for LA millennials with money

Shop talk with LA retail developers Runyon Group.

By Kari Hamanaka
01.2.25

Why these retail players are betting on malls for LA millennials with money

Men’s lifestyle boutique The Optimist, developed and operated by the Runyon Group (Photos courtesy of Runyon Group)

The Runyon Group retail mix is very if you know, you know. They do deals with brands like Go Get Em Tiger, a coffee place that sells $7 almond macadamia lattes, accessories maker Janessa Leone for $337 wool fedoras and Brooklyn-based Catbird, where you can get “zapped” — code for having a bracelet fitted and then welded on your wrist.

Its development strategy is more straightforward. Co-founders Joseph Miller and David Fishbein ask: Will the latte-buying, fedora-sporting, permanent-bracelet-wearing shopper shop here?

For the company’s first two projects, the answer has been yes, so far. Runyon’s retail development Platform, and its work on the retail leasing for Row DTLA, in Los Angeles’ Arts District, already attract the discerning, sometimes to neighborhoods they never would set foot in if not for the hats and jewelry — a nod both to a global retail recovery and to Miller and Fishbein’s good eye.

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