Development/Redevelopment

Amazon’s expansion into brick-and-mortar taking it to NYC
New Yorkers will have a new way to browse Amazon’s best-selling book titles — in a physical store. Later this year, the retail giant will open a book store in Manhattan’s Shops at Columbus Circle, in the Time Warner Center, according to ReCode.
Utah mall has replacement lined up for closing Macy’s
CBL announced that it has a replacement anchor lined up for the Macy’s store closing at its Layton Hills Mall in Utah, one of 63 Macy’s locations slated to be shuttered this spring. One other Utah Macy’s is scheduled to close at Cottonwood Mall in Salt Lake City.

Mortgage expert: Look to unsexy cities for retail growth

Retailers and developers looking for potential expansion spots in the coming year should bypass Gotham and head to Grand Rapids.
PREIT gets proactive in replacing Sears stores

PREIT CEO Joseph Coradino is pursuing a take-charge course in dealing with department store attrition, announcing that his company is actively pursuing replacements for three Sears anchors he expects to close in 2017.
Sears sells top brand, closing more stores

Sears Holdings Corp. is seeking to stop its bleeding and raise more cash by closing another 104 stores and selling its iconic Craftsman tools brand. The struggling retailer said it has reached an agreement to sell Craftsman to Stanley Black & Decker for a net present value of about $900 million, including future royalty payments. Sears, which will continue to sell Craftsman products, had put the brand, along with its Kenmore and DieHard brands, up for sale several months ago.
Finding a New Outlet

New retailers and new consumers (read: millennials) are discovering value retail, and that means more outlet centers in more locales in more different configurations.
Expanding North

DLC Management Corp.’s grocery-anchored shopping centers can be found in places such as Dallas; Milwaukee; Columbus, Ohio; and Birmingham, Ala.; but the company has a special stake in the Northeast. In October, DLC closed the biggest deal in its history, acquiring a passel of 16 centers, all but one of them in New York state. Chain Store Age Real Estate Editor Al Urbanski talked with DLC CEO Adam Ifshin and asked him what retailers need to know about the Northeast market.
ON THE LEVEL with Al Urbanski

Oculus Populi: The mall at the center of the World Trade Center
Project Profiles

Seaport District

Location: Lower Manhattan, New York, N.Y.

Size: The transformed Seaport District will encompass seven buildings on several blocks totaling more than 400,000 sq. ft.

Developer: The Howard Hughes Corporation

Key tenants: iPic Theaters, 10 Corso Como, Scotch & Soda

Status: Pier 17, the property at the center of the Seaport’s development plan, is set to open next year.
Northeastern Exposure

Packed and bursting with opportunities
Ground-up projects are hard to come by here, but shopping center innovation and new retailers are not
Density and diversity. The two D’s. That, in short, is what sums up the Northeast market for retailers. It’s the place where chains with national expansion plans or new formats to test need to be.
Shop Talk

TRENDING STORES: Two Canadian brands are dropping anchor in the United States. Health and beauty retailer Saje Natural Wellness, which operates 45 locations up north, will open two stores in the Los Angeles area by year end. Another 25 stores are on tap for 2017. Featuring natural wellness, personal and home care products and accessories, Saje stores are open, light and airy, with a high level of design. The Saje store at Toronto’s Sherway Gardens features a 30-foot Italian tile façade.
Target Exercises Flexibility

Target Corp. is thinking out of the box in urban and other select areas.
The retailer’s flexible format store is designed to allow it to open in locations — ranging from downtown areas to college neighborhoods — that can’t accommodate a big-box footprint. The stores, which also serve as convenient pick-up destinations for online orders, run the gamut in size depending on their location. But most seem to average from about 20,000 to 40,000 sq. ft. The smallest, at 12,000 sq. ft., is in Berkely, Calif.