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Tax Bill, Amazon and King James All Bandied About at ICSC NYDM 2017

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The challenging headwinds facing the brick-and-mortar retail sector have been all the talk this year, but that hasn’t stopped the International Council of Shopping Centers from scaling up its annual New York Dealmaking conference to bigger than ever before.

This year’s event was stretched to three days from the usual two, with proceedings kicking off on Tuesday and wrapping up today. ICSC also took an additional level at the Jacob K. Javits Center on Manhattan’s Far West Side, expanding to the venue’s third-floor exhibition hall—bringing the trade show’s total amount of exhibition space to around 220,000 square feet, roughly 35,000 more than last year, according to an ICSC spokeswoman.

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The conference’s more than 500 exhibitors and over 10,000 expected attendees were also slightly above last year, ICSC said, despite a no-show from major mall landlord Simon Property Group. The keynote lunch presentation today, meanwhile, featured Dan Gilbert, the Quicken Loans magnate and Cleveland Cavaliers owner (who would not be drawn on the future of LeBron James, the Cavs superstar whose contract is up after this season).

“While the show may have lacked the usual reckless abandon energy, I found everyone I met with was laser-focused on what they wanted,” according to Newmark Knight Frank‘s Jeffrey Roseman, who said the atmosphere at this year’s show “actually made for much more efficient meetings.”

See below for some of our tweets from the conference and related parties:

With additional reporting provided by Lauren Elkies Schram.