Real Estate

Walmart CFO Charles Holley participated in the Citi Global Consumer Conference this past Tuesday, and he had the challenge of appearing just one week after Walmart released first-quarter results. Given the timing, it would have been reasonable to expect that he wouldn’t have a lot of new information to share, and while he certainly covered a lot of familiar ground, there was one area that stood out.

New York City — Robert K. Futterman & Associates said it has secured a 1,500-sq.-ft. retail space for women’s apparel brand WINK at 129 Prince St., located between Wooster and Prince Streets in SoHo.  

WINK, which currently has a store at 155 Spring St., is scheduled to open its new Manhattan location this summer.  

 The new store will join co-tenants Apple, Lucky Brand, Cole Haan, Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren.

Philadelphia — Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT) announced that it has hired two new directors of retail leasing— Peter Elliott and Amy MacLaren.

Both will be responsible for the leasing of regional malls and retail relationships with key national tenants. 

New York —The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which is working its way through Chapter 11, will close 13 Suprefresh stores in the Baltimore area in  July because it can't find anyone to buy the properties, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Final attendance numbers aren’t available yet, and while RECon 2011 may not have been the really, really big show it was in 2007, the International Council of Shopping Centers’ annual Las Vegas convention was clearly a big event.

Pre-recession, the show attracted in excess of 50,000 retailers, retail service providers and shopping center executives to view the latest and greatest projects coming out of the ground. This year’s May 23 to 25 iteration didn’t pull 50k, but best guesses put attendance at over 30,000. 

New York — Nordstrom Inc. is scouting out sites to expand into Canada, Dow Jones reported.

"We already know we have a lot of Canadian customers," Nordstrom spokesman Colin Johnson said in the report. Also, Canadians make up the biggest share of Nordstrom's international online customers.

Johnson did not give a timeframe when Nordstrom might make a formal announcement, but did say the company would start with its full-priced stores before opening any Nordstrom Rack outlets in the country, according to the report.

New York — Gap Inc. plans to Athleta stores at the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles and at Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach, Calif., this fall, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Gap bought Athleta, which sells sells women’s clothing for such sports as yoga, running and swimming, along with shoes and other fitness accessories, in 2008. At the time, Athleta just an online and catalog business. The brand opened its first two retail stores in the last year, both in Northern California.

New York — Walmart and The Home Depot have each pledged $1 million to help rebuilding efforts in tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo.

Each of the retailers had a store in Joplin that was leveled in the storm. Both stores had fatalities inside them.

In a statement, Walmart said it has accounted for all of its associates working at the store at that time, but still is reaching out to all of its employees in the area. It also is working to direct truckloads of water, food and other basic items to Joplin.