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The outlook of participants at the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) spring convention was brighter than last year, according to several West Des Moines-based brokers who attended the three-day event in Las Vegas.

Attendance at RECon 2010, which the ICSC touts as the world’s largest gathering of retail commercial real estate professionals, rose slightly on a year-over-year basis to an estimated 30,000 people. In 2008, 48,000 gathered for the the event.

“Last year, no one was talking about doing deals; everyone was talking about how to survive,” said Colleen Johnson, a vice president with CB Richard Ellis/Hubbell Commercial who specializes in marketing retail properties. “This year, people are doing deals.”

As economic conditions brighten and landlords gain more solid footing, Johnson said, the focus is shifting away from retaining existing tenants to attracting new ones.

“The developers and shopping center owners will tell you that they spent most of last year negotiating concessions with existing tenants,” she said, noting that some retailers needed incentives such as rent holidays and tenant-improvement dollars to endure the recession.

Some tenants are still looking for assistance, Johnson said, such as the right to terminate their leases if sales fall below a certain level. But as leasing activity picks up and national retailers start to expand again, the mood is changing.

“While there are still tenants walking in the door saying, ‘Gee, I need some help here,'” Johnson said, “for the most part, we are done giving concessions.”

“I found the attitude of the participants to be more upbeat than last year,” said Doug Siedenburg, president of The Siedenburg Group, a commercial real estate brokerage and consulting firm.

Siedenburg, who began his real estate career in 1976, said current woes in the commercial real estate industry are being handled differently than they were in the past.

“There was some discussion about how mortgages are being modified to accommodate properties that have some disabled cash flow,” he said. “Rather than writing the mortgages down, they are being modified and problems are being pushed into the future.

“This is in contrast to the way it was handled in the late 1980s,” Siedenburg said, when lenders “took their knocks immediately and the economy recovered.”

But the retail sector may be poised for a rebound.

“This year, people were there with a more positive attitude and more ready to make deals,” he said.

Johnson said declining rents will likely continue to plague landlords, at least in the short term, as consumers remain thrifty.

“Consumer spending continues to bounce around a little bit,” she said. “But the trend line is up.” According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, April marked the first month since September 2009 that consumer spending failed to rise.

“National retailers are back in the mode of talking about the future and what their expansion plans are,” said Richard Hurd, president of Hurd Real Estate Services.

Hurd has attended the ICSC spring conventions for at least 20 years.

“The sentiment was much different from last year,” he said. “We’re starting to see some renewed activity in the retail sector.”

“In general, the retail sector of the real estate market is coming back first,” Johnson said. “It was really evident there.”