Review
A recently published book by Dr. Richard M. Fenker, The Site Book: A Field Guide to Commercial Real Estate Evaluation, is an easy-to-read, practical primer on site selection for restaurant and retail operations. This 165-page book quickly, and often humorously, drills down to site selection basics. "The Site Evaluation: provides several step-by-step examples for performing a site evaluation. In addition, it provides a workbook form that allows you to run the numbers in Fenker's model to yield a site evaluation score for a given site. It also includes practical pointers for specific site selection problems, such as backfilling in a saturated market, adding a second store in a market and entering a market with heavy competition. --
Business Geographics, May 1997Here's an extremely valuable book for anyone who has to scout out locations for restaurants, service stations, or retail stores of any kind. Author Richard Fenker, a preeminent site consultant, details his methods for picking that perfect location. The site evaluation model he includes (also available on disk), quantifies and weights the positive and negative attributes of a site. This helps you come to a reasoned go or no-go decision. The book is as valuable for its common sense - much of it counterintuitive - as for the model. Fenker peppers the book with wisdom and stories of mistakes. That makes your modest investment in this book cheap insurance against buying and developing a "dog" site. --
Soundview Executive Book Summary, 1997In The Site Book, author Richard Fenker examines the dynamic relationship among demographics, site features, and other factors and describes a simple mathematical model he developed to assess the quality and suitability of a specific retail business or restaurant. Fenker advises and guides readers through the site evaluation process, identifying opportunities, traps, pitfalls, and red flags along the way. --
Urban Land, September 1997
From the Back Cover
You need this book if ...
Your eyes glaze over whenever you get near a demographic report because you never know which numbers, rings, or measures really matter.
Your partner and best friend is still angry about that restaurant location you opened in Tulsa three years ago that is now a Wash-O-Matic.
You've been wondering why great visibility, access, and lots of your kind of people in the neighborhood didn't make for a successful site in Baltimore despite the fact that there are 23 direct competitors within one mile.
You've given up on finding a great "A" location near Atlanta, but want to know how risky some of the available "B" and "C" locations are.
You sometimes wonder what factors are "really" driving sales for your retail concept. (Your partner thinks it's the strip center next door.)
In the privacy of your home you admit to yourself that you don't really know why that site you picked on 2nd Street worked so well, when two miles away, the McArthur location, which your partner selected, is sucking gas.
You get a queasy feeling in your stomach when your clients ask about the impact of competition because you really don't know if competition is a plus or minus and how much competition is too much.
This quiz pokes fun at many of the dilemmas that confront any person making commercial real estate decisions today, but it also illustrates the need for an objective site evaluation process such as the one outlined in this book. This book is written for entrepreneurs, business owners, developers, agents, brokers, real estate executives, and any other individual responsible for making decisions about the potential of commercial real estate. If you have a site to evaluate or a new location to open, this book is for you!
