Media coverage screaming about the "retail apocalypse" has failed to factor in the numbers behind the numbers, he told the audience at RECon's "Leasing Strategies for Difficult Spaces" session.

What or who is the culprit in the industry's current disruption, then? "We did this," said Egelanian. The creation of specialty big-box stores such as Best Buy, Staples and T.J.Maxx refocused consumer attention on specialties that used to be sections in department stores, he said. The overbuilding and oversizing of department stores, some as large as 500,000 or 600,000 square feet when they were created in the 1950s and '60s at every major mall in America, was hardly a help. "Their demise didn't begin with Amazon," Egelanian said. 

The writing has been on the wall for a while, he noted. In 2007 department stores occupied some 85 million square feet, compared with only 26 million square feet just a decade later. Conversely, value retail occupied about 18 million square feet in 2007 and grew fourfold, to 73 million square feet, 10 years later. “That tells a big part of the tale," Egelanian said. Moreover, something the press frequently overlooks is the fact that 85 percent of retail is commodity-driven — including grocery stores, gas purchases and services — while only 15 percent involves the discretionary retail side, where store closures have drawn the biggest headlines. "The basic function of retail really hasn't changed," Egelanian said.

Equally significant are the somewhat deceptive numbers of e-commerce sales reporting. A closer look at the third-quarter 2017 figures that say e-commerce accounted for roughly 9 percent of U.S. retail sales reveals that only 3.7 percent of those occurred with so-called pure-play online retailers, 3.1 percent were mail-order sales, and 1.7 percent involved omni-channel retailers, Egelanian pointed out. Amazon.com accounts for only 1 percent of retail sales when so adjusted, he said.

"So a 1 percent player is not responsible for the carnage," Egelanian asserted. Despite its high stock-market valuation, Amazon is still not making any profit on retail sales, because of shipping costs, he noted. "That's why they bought Whole Foods," he said. "They spent $20 billion on shipping last year." Analysts that Egelanian speaks with say it is all but a certainty that Amazon will expand its brick-and-mortar presence in the coming years.

Yet another problem, said Egelanian, is that most of the industry still lacks a grasp on the concept of emotional bonding. "If you offer people a great place, you can sell a lot of stuff at high prices," he said, pointing to Disney theme parks. Those, he argued, "besides the rides and attractions, are 100 percent retail and food-and-beverage — and people are paying a lot of money to get in." He also speculated that Barnes & Noble will survive but will nonetheless have to downsize by some 50 percent of its current footprint.