Real Estate

The cranes have arrived at the 92-acre lot along Clovis Avenue in Fresno, California, to erect the parking garage at what will be Fancher Creek Town Center, and the locals couldn’t be happier.   “I think it’s super. We need something. You have to catch the freeway and go up north to get to anything,” resident Diana Williams told KFSN news in Fresno this week.  

With few new grocery centers being built, developers are upping the ante on existing ones

Pat Donahue, together with his late brother Dan and business partner Tom Schriber, has been in grocery-anchored shopping centers since the ’90s. That’s when Schriber calculated that the company’s long-term fortunes, which had rested on mall development up until then, would be better wagered on high-traffic “necessity-based” retail.

“At malls you get ’em three times a month.

More and more these days, shopping center developers find themselves in the role of town planner. Once dedicated to creating pleasant spaces for people to shop in, they now are challenged to create places for people to live, play, eat and be entertained in. Build that, they’re told, and shoppers will come. But droves of millennials fleeing suburbs in search of more fulfilling urban lifestyles are giving developers an assist. In some cases, they’re hewing their own downtowns out of rough old sections of town. In others, old downtowns are remaking themselves to welcome this new city stock.

West Elm doesn’t believe in cookie-cutter stores.   The home furnishings retailer will open its location in the state of Rhode Island, in Providence’s Wayland Square neighborhood on Sept. 1. The 11,473-sq.-ft. store will incorporate unique design elements that pay homage to Rhode Island’s history and coastal proximity.  

TRENDING STORES: Hello Kitty‘s pop-up café, at Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine, Calif., has been drawing crowds since it opened in July. It’s housed in a shipping container that’s been painted pink and refurbished with a counter and dining patio area, complete with bistro tables and pink-and-white striped awnings. Character graphics adorn the exterior and interior container panels. The café will remain open for a year.

My face and name may be unfamiliar to you, but hopefully that will soon change. I have covered retail for decades, never retail real estate. But, I am happy to have landed in this spot. For, just as retailers need new traffic to thrive and grow, so do writers need new material, and this beat is rife with material.

Here’s what excites me about this space. It’s something I trust also excites — and perhaps scares — you retailers and developers out there. You are America’s new town planners.

Five Below continues its rapid expansion.   The extreme-value retailer will open its 500th store in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 9.  

The Summit at Fritz Farm has signed CRU Food & Wine bar to a growing roster of gourmet dining establishments at the $156 million project under construction in Lexington, Kentucky.   The Summit, scheduled to open next spring, will feature 1 million-sq.-ft. of retail, 306 apartments, a boutique hotel, and 48,000 sq. ft. of Class A office space, according to developer Bayer Properties.