Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc.

Seattle -- Nordstrom announced two new locations for Nordstrom Rack, one in Columbus, Ohio, and one in Tulsa, Oak.

Nordstrom Rack will open at Sun Center in Columbus, Ohio. The approximately 37,890-sq.-ft. store is scheduled to open in spring 2014.

Nordstrom currently operates a full-line store in Columbus at Easton Town Center. The company opened the first Nordstrom Rack in the area at Easton Market on September 12, 2013.

Dubuque, Iowa — Mid-America Real Estate Corp.’s Investment Sales team recently brokered the sale of a large portion of the 136,398-sq.-ft. Asbury Plaza in Dubuque, Iowa. The Cafaro organization made the acquisition for $12 million.

The community shopping center is about two miles from Cafaro’s 700,000-sq.-ft. Kennedy Mall.

The community shopping center features national anchor retailers including Michaels, Bed Bath & Beyond and Petco. Shadow anchors include Hy-Vee Grocery Store, Kohl’s and AMC Theater.

Driving sales with an established brand at multiple retail accounts is hard enough for the biggest consumer packaged goods companies. Creating a new brand in a nonexistent category is even more daunting as a pair of entrepreneurial family members discovered a decade ago when they launched the Granite Gold line of stone-care products. This is their story.

Two stone guys with no experience in consumer package goods or retail set out to conquer the world by trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

BitPay, a payment service provider specializing in e-commerce, B2B and enterprise solutions for virtual currencies, is now offering translations into 10 languages plus English for its entire checkout experience.

Merchants servicing international customers can now present bitcoin payment instructions in the buyer’s native language, allowing merchants to more easily conduct business in emerging markets.

Across America, big-box centers are powering back up

Power centers have proven themselves to be a resilient asset class in recent years. First the recession cut into business. Then e-commerce leveled some of their big-box tenants, hurt others and ignited a downsizing trend.

Yet research from Washington, D.C.-based CoStar Group shows that only 2% of power centers have vacancy rates of 40% or higher and probably won’t recover. Another 6% have vacancy rates of 20% to 40% and are in serious condition but may recover.

Beachwood, Ohio — DDR Corp. has announced the closing of its previously announce acquisition activity totaling $591 million. The acquisitions include a portfolio of seven prime power centers in a newly-formed joint venture with an affiliate of Blackstone Real Estate Partners VII L.P. for $332 million in August and two market dominant regional power centers in Orlando, Fla. and Atlanta, Ga., for an aggregate $259 million in July.

Union, N.J. – Bed, Bath & Beyond, Inc. reported year-over-year increases in net income, net sales and same-store sales during the second quarter of fiscal 2013. Net income grew about 18%, to $249.3 million from $224.3 million.

A recovering housing market spells good news for the home and housewares, as seen in Bed Bath & Beyond’s second quarter results for the period ended Aug. 31.

The company reported net earnings of $1.16 per diluted share, or $249.3 million, for the quarter, an increase of 18.4% versus net earnings of $0.98 per diluted share, or $224.3 million, in the same quarter a year ago.