Phillips Edison, one of the nation’s largest owners and operators of grocery-anchored shopping centers, has formed a new $4 billion REIT focused on this still-growing sector of physical retail.
Malls are not going away entirely, but the word “mall” may be an endangered concept.
CBL Properties, one of the nation’s biggest mall operators, with 121 of them in 27 states, has announced a rebranding campaign that that reflects a new strategic direction focused on operating community gathering places, not mere shopping centers.
Commercial real estate developers and investors surveyed this summer by the DLA Piper law firm concurred that reports of the demise of brick-and-mortar are greatly exaggerated.
Only 8% of the 222 respondents to the survey, most of them C-level executives, agreed with the statement that brick-and-mortar is “doomed.” That said, just 3% were of the opinion that traditional retail was here to say.
It was an urban retail real estate broker’s dream: five blocks of Main Street storefront — almost 250,000 sq. ft. of it — sandwiched between beachfront and commercial business district. That’s what the owners of most of five contiguous blocks on Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Boulevard plopped on the plate of Michael Comras.
Thanks to Wernher von Braun, who developed the Saturn V rocket in the Alabama town, Huntsville is known as the Rocket City. Now the appellation is being applied to its population.
