HomeGoods claimed the biggest retail lease signed anywhere in
the Portland market during the second quarter of 2026, committing
to 18,300 square feet at Gresham Station Shopping Center at a
moment when the region delivered no new retail space whatsoever
and vacancy remained locked below 5 percent.

The off-price home furnishings chain completed the deal in April
2026, according to the 2Q 2026 Portland Retail Market Report from
Kidder Mathews, which compiled the data through its research
group using CoStar figures. No other retail lease signed in the
metro during the quarter came close in size.

The two next-largest deals trailed by a wide margin. Reliques Marketplace took 14,527 square feet at 1001 Broadway St in the CBD/West Vancouver submarket, also in April 2026, while Gap Factory leased 8,000 square feet at Clackamas Promenade in the Clackamas/Milwaukie submarket in May 2026, the Kidder Mathews report shows. That HomeGoods, Gap Factory and Reliques Marketplace together represent the quarter’s marquee activity says something about the shape of demand in Portland right now: value-oriented and off-price formats are the ones still writing checks for large blocks of space.

The timing matters more than the square footage. Portland delivered just 10,004 square feet of retail space year-to-date through the second quarter, according to Kidder Mathews, down from 336,419 square feet over the same stretch of 2025. That is a decline of roughly 97 percent. Nothing at all was completed during the second quarter itself. A retailer with an 18,300-square-footrequirement in this market has essentially nowhere to go except an existing center, and the centers with that kind of contiguous space and the parking, visibility and co-tenancy to support a big-box format are finite.

Gresham Station won that competition. The center sits in east Multnomah County along the region’s eastern retail spine, a trade area built on daily-needs and value retail rather than the discretionary spending that has punished other categories. Harsch Investment Properties acquired Gresham Station Shopping Centering September 2018 for $64.5 million, as The Registry reported at the time.

The broader fundamentals explain why landlords at centers like this one are holding the pen. Portland retail vacancy stood at 4.7percent in the second quarter, unchanged from the first quarter and up 40 basis points from 4.3 percent a year earlier, per the Kidder Mathews report. That is a market operating close to functional full occupancy. Average asking rents finished the quarter at $2.02 per square foot per year, flat quarter-over-quarter and up 2.66 percent year-over-year, according to the same report. Rents are not spiking, but they are not giving ground either, and with construction effectively halted, tenants have little leverage to argue otherwise.
Absorption turned the corner as well. The market recorded positive net absorption of 45,624 square feet in the second quarter, according to Kidder Mathews, though the year-to-date figure remains negative at 168,050 square feet. That compares with
negative 131,918 square feet over the same period in 2025. In other
words, the year started badly and the second quarter clawed some
of it back. Deals like the HomeGoods commitment are what that
recovery looks like in practice.
There is a pipeline, but it is thin relative to the market’s size:
514,643 square feet was under construction as of the second
quarter, the report states. Against a metro of Portland’s scale, that
volume does little to relieve pressure on tenants hunting for space
in established centers over the near term.
For HomeGoods, the lease fits a national posture of continued
expansion while much of the retail sector retrenches. The banner is
part of TJX Companies, which also operates T.J. Maxx and
Marshalls. Retail TouchPoints reported that TJX plans roughly 146
new stores in the current fiscal year as part of a long-term target of
approximately 7,000 stores globally. Off-price has been one of the
few categories with both the balance sheet and the consumer
tailwind to keep taking down large boxes, and Portland’s
constrained supply gives those retailers first look at the best
remaining space.
The Gresham submarket has drawn other attention this year. The
Registry reported that an 85,000-square-foot Gresham Square
retail center anchored by Wunderland came to market in June 2026
with a break-up option, and that a 109,000-square-foot, fully leased
Walmart-anchored center in Gresham was also listed for sale.
Taken together, the leasing and capital-markets activity points to
an east Multnomah County retail base that owners and investors
are actively repricing rather than writing off.
What the quarter signals is a market where scarcity, not
exuberance, is setting terms. With vacancy under 5 percent,
deliveries near zero and absorption turning positive, well-located
anchored centers in Portland’s suburbs are positioned to capture
whatever large-format demand emerges. Kidder Mathews’ data
suggests that dynamic holds as long as the construction pipeline
stays this constrained. For tenants still shopping 15,000 to 20,000
square feet in the metro, the HomeGoods deal is a warning: the list
of options is short, and it is getting shorter.