Real Estate

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.
 

As the retail landscape continues to evolve in response to an explosion of creativity and innovation from both new and existing brands, this is an exciting and inspiring time to be in the business.
 

Chain Store Age’s annual search for 10 retail real estate stars under the age of 40 years resulted in this: Ten youthful, creative, hard-charging industry executives.

Some are retailers, others are brokers or from shopping center companies. Three are women. One is under the age of 30. There’s a single Canadian in the bunch. Two work for CBRE. Each has studied the business, sought out mentors, and researched and taken on the issues of the day.

In Dublin, Ohio, an ambitious new development is taking shape – a project with the potential to literally and figuratively remake the city’s development landscape. The project is Bridge Park, a $350 million mixed-use development that is the central component of a larger 1,100-acre Bridge Street District development plan. The project is the first step in a comprehensive master-planned vision that was formally approved by Dublin’s City Council in 2010.
 

In Orlando, Florida, one of America’s fastest-growing communities is getting ready to take the next step. Lake Nona – an 8,000-acre, 11-square-mile master-planned community that has already completed more than $3 billion in construction encompassing 7.1 million sq. ft. of world-class residential and commercial facilities over the last 8 years – is moving forward with the next phase of what will ultimately be a 3.8 million-sq.-ft. central commercial district: Lake Nona Town Center.  

One of the most successful formats in the history of retailing is about to get a makeover.        Apple Inc. unveiled its vision for the future of its retail empire, opening a two-level flagship in San Francisco with new design flourishes and service elements that will be rolled out to Apple stores worldwide.     

Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Realty Investors’ $650 million Grandview Yard development has consistently been in the news over the past several years, as prominent components of the mixed-use project continue to fall into place and new buildings come online.  

A record 36,000 retail real estate professionals are gathering in Las Vegas this week for the annual RECon conference where for an intense few days they will exchange ideas -- doing deals and showcase hot projects against the backdrop of a challenging retail sales environment and heightened omnichannel activity.