These are all really good questions. I would think the following, but this is just my thought process and may be completely different from the landlords':
The SJTC target demographic is less about who and more about reason. SJTC shoppers are looking for brand names they know about. They don't want to walk the mile long strip and not know what the stores and restaurants are. Half the shoppers there arrive with their stores and/or restaurants already in mind. The other half are keeping their eye peeled for stores/restaurants they recognize as they stroll. Also, SJTC targets everyone and their mom, as well as regional visitors and tourists, which means nationals are what will work. Your average suburbanite and your visitors and your tourists will have no clue what Orsay is, but Cheesecake Factory is universal.
Avondale shoppers are a little different. The appeal is totally different. Avondale is catered to and serves a more sophisticated local resident (i.e. intown, went to college, higher income level, probably lived somewhere else at one point), and these residents have more personal relations with the store owners/restaurant managers/chefs, and they know each other a whole lot more so reputation goes much further and stays within the local community/neighborhood.
Of course Avondale also attracts lots of outsiders and tourists who are curious, and they are not here to find their favorite identifiable brands. They are here to explore and try new things and live vicariously through their upper end and/or urban brethren in the surrounding neighbs. Totally different experience.
We've already touched on Wall St, investors and lenders, each of whom take Fitch Ratings very seriously. Gone are the days of securitizing commercial loans and doing whatever you wanted. Of course many landlords have a new problem to juggle - high vacancy and a lack of available and expanding credit tenants. Nobody likes to see vacancy, especially with maturities looming and no options to extend or ability to refinance, but nobody likes a landlord who just crams a bunch of crappy tenants who will undoubtedly fail into their centers. It's a tight rope act, which is the reason rents are still falling and vacancies are still rising and no new retail is in the pipeline (whereas other sectors are seeing almost healthy comebacks).
Lastly I just want to say many restauranteurs are complete divas - like the biggest divas in tenant world. You really have to think long and hard before entering into a deal with a big chef or restauranteur. They can be impossible to deal with. Often times that is why you see these restaurants as the sole tenant or in a building owned by the chef/manager himself. There is a whole strategy that must be employed on larger projects where top chefs are tenants. And sometimes they don't want to be near each other. We have an old meatpacking plant with several uber high end shops and several top top top restaurants - including a restaurant run by arguably the best chef in that particlar region of the US. Across a courtyard is another really good restaurant run by a chef who frequently appears on Food Network, and they don't get along at all. The uber high end chef thinks the Top Chef/Food Network chef is too mainstream, and we have to now contend with bickering and the possibility that one may relocate (to another one of our warehouses we are currently gutting). The only reason we probably have the best restaurant portfolio in the country is that one of the firm's MDs sits on the board of the James Beard Foundation, and we have creative teams in place. It's a private equity firm with not just an acquisitions team and an asset management team, but also a legal division, a property management division, a green consulting division, a leasing division (we have the best leasing team in the country - I'm fairly confident), a tax division, an accounting division, I mean we do so many more things in-house that most PE firms must hire 3rd party for, and we do this with less than 200 people (multibillion dollar portfolio). Our in-house capabilities means we can better handle these diva tenants, and our portfolio has palenty! A chef who gets publicity and becomes somewhat of a celebrity has an attitude like any 15-minutes of fame reality TV star.
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