Steve Avoyer was an accomplished tennis player in high school, with court skills that earned him regional and national youth league championships and a scholarship to the University of Southern California. Those accomplishments on the court would later help him in commercial real estate.

While tennis does not consume the San Diego native’s life as it once did, his 50-year career in commercial property benefited from his skills learned early in staying competitive — especially at a time of immense industry changes, particularly in retail property.

As co-founder and president of Flocke & Avoyer Commercial Real Estate, Avoyer knows that retail property clients are now bombarded with issues including big-box retailers taking less space in favor of e-commerce — and finding tenants for those vacated spaces.

Flocke & Avoyer handles leasing at about 125 Southern California retail centers. While many of his company’s current retail property clients are smaller family-run operations that have been using his San Diego-based firm’s services since its start in 1985, Avoyer knows any of those could quickly drop him and turn to one of his competitors if they don’t get sufficient answers to their concerns.

That means he and his brokers must constantly do their homework on specific locations, retail categories and corporate space requirements, and sometimes be ready to brush aside clients’ assumptions about the marketplace.

“You might encounter a potential client who says, ‘I’m hearing fast food is not doing so well these days,' and you have to tell them, that’s not the case with your property in this location,” Avoyer told CoStar News. “You have to make the case that this location can bring in X amount of foot traffic and provide an annual return of X percent if you can make accommodations for this tenant.”

His USC studies steadily shifted his primary focus from tennis to business, as he eventually looked to break into commercial real estate, though he had not yet identified a specific niche.

His first job, which he started shortly after he graduated from USC in 1971, also helped shape his career. Avoyer worked in the property management office of Barney & Barney, at that time a regional insurance and financial services firm based in San Diego.

Barney & Barney CEO Pete Peckham, whom Avoyer shadowed almost daily as Peckham made his management rounds, became a key mentor to Avoyer. “I followed him around like a puppy. We went around every day to all kinds of properties — offices, apartments, retail, you name it,” Avoyer said.

That gave Avoyer a new education in several property types, and he parlayed the management insights into his next job. In 1973, he became a broker for the San Diego regional office of Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate, which subsequently became what is now CBRE.

Over his 12 years at Coldwell Banker, Avoyer’s work took him increasingly into the world of retail leasing as he made contacts with regional and national corporate real estate executives who represented major chains keen on expanding in San Diego and other Southern California growth hot spots.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Avoyer worked to land major retail tenants such as Home Depot, Costco and Kroger-owned supermarket chain Ralphs, which helped to boost his reputation among local retail center owners. It also deepened his list of retail connections and contacts across the country.

Avoyer set out on his own in 1985. He founded his current company with longtime San Diego friend and high school classmate Jim Flocke, who has since retired from the business. Avoyer’s San Diego ties remain crucial to his company’s operations, including steady support of community-serving charities. He played a pivotal role in 2021 in preserving Warwick’s, an iconic century-old La Jolla bookstore that nearly shut down after the building that housed it changed owners.

Avoyer said people from outside the industry often approach him with something resembling pity, thinking he’s struggling from his involvement with brick-and-mortar retail. His experiences in Southern California retail, which is relatively supply-constrained especially on the coast, have provided him with a much different outlook.

“I tell people that in a place like San Diego, it’s great to be handling retail properties,” Avoyer said. “There are only so many shopping centers being built and only so much land to build them new these days.”

That doesn’t mean his company’s coverage territories are immune to the tectonic shifts in retail. Avoyer is increasingly getting queries from clients asking how to proceed with the rising nationwide trend of retail centers being acquired and converted to mixed-use complexes, especially as California and other states look to build more affordable housing that helps cut down on polluting car trips.

“I think that will be the big trend going forward,” Avoyer said. “I am already running into retail developers who tell me they are increasingly competing with mixed-use and multifamily developers for the same pieces of property.”