Development/Redevelopment

The City of Brotherly Love is having a love affair with retail.    A new report from Philadelphia’s City Center District reveals that 45 national retailers have helped fuel a $1 billion investment in city real estate during the last five years.  

CBRE has acquired Cleveland-based Skye Group, a provider of project management, development, and tenant coordination services.    Skye is led by Bradley Sanders, who founded the firm in 2000. Its client list consists of prominent retail real estate investors including Simon, Howard Hughes, Westfield, LaSalle Investment Management, Vornado Realty Trust, New England Development, Ivanhoe Cambridge and Steiner & Associates, as well as brands such as Barneys New York.  

A mall owner in Springfield, Missouri, has asked the town council to declare the area surrounding his site blighted and charge a tax to go towards improvements to his property.   Curtis Jared told town administrators that sprucing up his Brentwood Shopping Center would create more jobs and tax revenue, according to local radio station KTTS. He wants them to form a community improvement district allowing a one-cent increase in the local sales tax.  

Among the retail strategies employed by Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores to turn around its business, the store-within-a-store concept might rank as the most inventive.   Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores have been cropping up inside existing Ace locations around the country (and in some cases, built from the ground up as a combo store).   The latest example of this is taking place in Santa Paula, California, inside the Heritage Ace Hardware located at 568 Suite C West Main Street.  

Town administrators in Newnan, Georgia, have proposed offering incentives to owners of local shopping centers to re-invigorate them.   Municipal staff this week invited a group of community leaders to brainstorm about what could be done with the number of dilapidated centers in Newnan. Obstacles preventing owners from re-investing, the group said, included lack of cash flow, fear of selling due to capital gains taxes, and a reluctance to invest until neighboring properties improved.   

Casey’s General Stores continues to grow its store portfolio.   The Iowa-based convenience-store operator currently has 39 new stores, 22 replacement stores, and 37 major remodel stores under construction.       Looking ahead, Casey’s has 84 sites under contract for future new store construction and 15 acquisition stores under contract to purchase.     

Dunkin’ Donuts is expanding its footprint in Texas.    The chain signed multi-unit store development agreements with four existing franchise groups to develop approximately 65 new restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth and the surrounding area.     The new restaurants will include several multi-brand locations with sister brand Baskin-Robbins, the world's largest chain of ice cream specialty shops.     

(Ed. note: Neil Saunders, CEO of Conlumino, comments on Sears Holdings’ third-quarter results.)   In the movie Titanic there is a line where, realizing chaos is about to en-sue, one character helpfully notes “it’s starting to fall apart; we don’t have much time”. Such a sentiment could well be applied to Sears. The analogy with Titanic is also apt; not least because while Sears was once a titan of US retail, it now looks set to sink.  

Heidenberg Properties has received planning board approval to build a new 54,000-sq.-ft. Stop & Shop prototype at its Lake Plaza Shopping Center in Mahopac, New York. The store will replace a Key Food supermarket and increase total square footage at the center to 165,000 sq. ft.   “This was a complicated process involving multiple municipal agencies,” said Heidenberg VP of Operations Jason Lazar.” We are excited to deliver the new prototype for Stop & Shop."