Development/Redevelopment

New York -- Women’s fashions and home décor retailer Soft Surroundings is planning to open six new stores, giving it a total of 18 locations, the St. Louis Business Journal reported.

New locations will include Richmond, Virginia; Lynnfield, Massachusetts; Alpharetta, Georgia; Madison, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; and Paramus, New Jersey.

Soft Surroundings launched in 1999 as a catalog.

Store closings are hardly an infrequent topic in this space. As a barometer for both the performance of individual brands and the market at large, they are an important part of the equation for any retail analyst. Store closings are part of healthy portfolio management for any brand, and, on a larger scale, bankruptcies and reorganizations are a reflection of the market at work.

Five Below plans to open eight locations in and around Houston Friday, June 6, marking the specialty value retailer’s first foray into that city. The company already has 15 stores in the Dallas and Austin markets.

The store openings are part of the company’s aggressive growth strategy. Last year, the Philadelphia-based retailer opened 60 new stores, and it plans to match that number this year. With the Houston openings, there will be 338 Five Below stores in 20 states throughout the country.

Sydney, Neb. -- Cabela’s Inc. on Wednesday announced plans for three new stores in three new markets: Huntsville, Alabama; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Woodbury, New York.

Senior editor Katherine Boccaccio and editor-in-chief Marianne Wilson sat down with retail real estate leaders and analysts in Las Vegas at RECon 2014.  See what each industry expert had to say about the retail landscape, trends in the industry, and projects to keep an eye on.

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Colton, Calif. — Ashley Furniture HomeStore has opened a new store in Los Angeles. The two-story freestanding building encompasses 49,374 sq. ft.

Middleton, Wis. -- American Girl, a division of Mattel, announced plans to open its newest store at Scottsdale Quarter, an open-air lifestyle center owned by Glimcher Realty Trust and located in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The 12,000-sq.-ft. store is slated to open in late summer of 2015 and will be located within a new 180,000-sq.-ft. expansion of the property.

Cabela’s is heading to Alabama and Oklahoma for the first time. The company plans to open store locations in Huntsville, Ala., and Oklahoma City, Okla., as well as its second location in New York.