Tenant Update

Saks Fifth Avenue plans to shutter its 107,000-sq.-ft. store at The Mall at Short Hills, in Short Hills, New Jersey, amid plans to open a flagship in a huge retail and entertainment center in the state.
     
As previously announced, the upscale retailer plans to open a store at the under-construction, three-million-sq.-ft. American Dream Meadowlands mega-center, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Over the last 12 annual trips I’ve made to Las Vegas for ICSC’s RECon real estate convention (which officially makes me a rookie in this industry of 20-, 30- and 40+-year veterans), I have always been able to detect some distinct trends.  

That doesn’t as much make me a trend-watcher as it does a good listener.  The retailers and shopping center operators and brokers who attend RECon each year tend to talk avidly in the aisles about the current events shaping the retail real estate industry.

For anyone looking at the current state of retail in the Midwest, one of the most fascinating things to track is how some of the macro trends we see in the marketplace today are the end result of years (sometimes decades) of evolutionary change.
 

 

There are so many cross-currents affecting the retail real estate industry right now that making sense off it all is a daunting challenge. Thankfully, Melina Cordero, head of retail research for the Americas at CBRE, was on hand at RECon to touch some of the mega-trends in this video.

Photo: Andrea Olshan, CEO of Olshan Properties

The formerly online only retailer The Wine Cellar Group isn’t afraid of competition. The company is pursuing its brick and mortar ambitions with a new store in the backyard of Amazon.com and Costco, the nation’s largest seller of wine.
 
Born online in 1990, The Wine Cellar Group opened its first store in 2012 and has since grown to nine locations. Its newest store will be a Wine Cellar Outlet and is set to open later this year in the Heritage Square shopping center in the Seattle suburb of Issaquah, Costco’s hometown.
 

The tenant mix is neighborhood shopping centers is western states is transforming as centers looking to remain relevant to shoppers and more effectively compete with other types of centers.

When the 300,000-sq.-ft. Shoppes at Mid Rivers opens in late 2017 the project will be the largest retail development the St. Louis area has seen in nearly a decade.   GBT Realty Corporation, a national commercial development company headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee, said the $54 million project located in St. Peters, Missouri, will have three anchor tenants, five to seven junior anchors, small shop space and four, approximately one-acre outparcels.