Tenant Update

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.  

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.   

Four years of losses are catching up with Bebe Stores Inc.    The fashion retailer is hoping to turn its brand around by closing its stores and putting all its focus on e-commerce, according to Bloomberg. Bebe currently operates about 170 stores.   

The ax has fallen: J.C. Penney has released the list of 138 stores it plans to close.   

Jones Lang LaSalle has announced the hiring of two new vice presidents to handle leasing of third-party-managed retail properties in West Coast markets.  

The 800,000-sq.-ft. Northwest Mall in Houston, a fixture in the northwest section of town since 1968, will close all interior stores on March 31. Tenants include Champs Sports, Factory Show Warehouse, Royal Tea Café, and the Flame & Sizzle Grill.   Only stores with outdoor entrances will remain in business. These include Thompson Antique Center, Palais Royal, and The College of Healthcare Professionals.  

Malls and shopping centers are not endangered, but evolving species, International Council of Shopping Centers CEO Thomas McGee told the Miami Herald this week.   “There is stress in the department store segment and closures. When you look at those stores as a percentage of retail square footage, it’s small,” McGee said in a wide-ranging interview with the paper. “But those spaces are big and prominent and they need to be handled in a systematic way.”  

Nordstrom Rack will open a store at Cascade Station in Portland, Oregon.    The approximately 28,000-sq.-ft. store is scheduled to open in fall 2017.   This will be the fifth Nordstrom Rack store in the Portland area. Portland is also home to the first stand-alone Nordstrom Rack store, which opened in 1983. The company also operates a full line stores at downtown Portland and Clackamas Town Center.