Development/Redevelopment

Amazon’s fifth bookstore is open for business.   The online giant’s newest Amazon Books location, a 6,000-sq.-ft. space, opened its doors in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood on Tuesday, March 23 — its first location in the Midwest, according to CBS Chicago.   

Five Below Inc. reported its 11th consecutive quarter of positive same-store sales results amid bullish growth plans for the current year.   The value retailer, which targets tweens and teens with a wide array of goods all priced at $5 or below, said it will open 100 stores in 2017, including its first ever locations in the state of California. The chain opened 85 net new stores in 2016.  

Next week, Casto and local officials will stick shovels in the ground in the East Franklinton section of Columbus and signal a major event in the rebuilding of what was the original settlement of Franklin County, Ohio.   Columbus five years ago razed the crime-ridden Riverside-Bradley public housing complex in the area on the city’s west side, and it is there that Casto will build River & Rich, a mixed-use project with 230 garden and townhouse apartments and 25,000 sq. ft. of retail.  

Despite dire statements made on a recent SEC filing, Sears and Kmart stores will remain as fixtures on the retail landscape for some time to come, according to retail real estate experts contacted by Chain Store Age.   “The news was not news,” said REIT analyst Alexander Goldfarb of Sandler O’Neill + Partners about a Sears filing that questioned its own future as a “going concern.”  

Whole Foods Market has opened its second largest location in Chicagoland.     The supermarket retailer has opened a 76,000-sq.-ft. store in the city’s Lakeview area. It replaces an older Whole Foods across the street. The older store, which opened in 1996, closed the day the new store opened.   

Sears Holdings Corp.’s acknowledgement in a filing on Tuesday that the retailer had “serious doubt” about its future came as no big surprise to the retail industry, including Joseph Coradino, chairman and CEO of PREIT, a publicly traded real estate investment trust that owns and manages 23 million square feet of retail and lifestyle space.   

Pacific Place, a 20-year-old luxury retail center in downtown Seattle, will be undergoing an extensive re-do beginning the fourth quarter of this year.   The 330,000-sq.-ft. home to Nordstrom’s flagship store, Barneys New York, and Tiffany & Co. will get a new South Lake-facing grand entrance to make way for added space that will accommodate upgraded restaurant tenants.  

Developers of a 350,000-sq.-ft. outlet mall in Staten Island’s burgeoning St. George district have looked across the New York Narrows to enlist the help of one of Manhattan’s most noted real estate brokers.