Hospitality

New York -- The Seattle City Council on Monday unanimously voted to raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 an hour, making it the highest municipal minimum wage in the country. The measure, which takes effect on April 1, 2015, will be phased in over the next three to seven years depending on the size of the business, with a slower process for small businesses.

Dublin, Ohio - The final installment of Wendy's first-ever digital short film, "L'Estrella de la Toscana" – The Star of Tuscany, featuring the new Tuscan Chicken on Ciabatta sandwich, premiered this week on Wendy's Facebook Page and YouTube channel. To promote the sandwich, Wendy's created a three-part video series that gives homage to dramatic Italian cinema of the 1960s.

Throughout April and May, Wendy's asked consumers to be its screenwriters by submitting captions on social media to subtitle the Italian-dialogue video.  

Dallas — SRS Real Estate Partners earned a silver U.S. MAXI Award at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas during the ICSC RECon Convention. The awards are open to shopping centers, shopping center companies, specialty retailers, specialty leasing managers, marketing directors and general managers.

SRS received a silver Award in the B2B division of the Traditional Marketing category for its effective brand enhancement campaign.

Playa Vista, Calif. — Marcus & Millichap has arranged the sale of The Shops at Concert Park, a portfolio of two 100% triple-net leased retail condominium shopping centers in Playa Vista, California, a master planned community in the Westside region of Los Angeles.

The buyer paid $16.9 million for the properties. That equates to $743 per sq. ft. The Marcus & Millichap Capital Corp. arranged $10,815 000 in CMBS financing to facilitate the sale.

Washington, D.C. — The Fairfax, Virginia, City Council has approved a rezoning application for Combined Properties’ Fairfax Circle Plaza. The project aims to redevelop the current strip retail center and replace it with a mixed-use development with up to 400 new apartments and 88,000 sq. ft. of retail including a grocery store.

The project is located at the intersection of two major routes just over a half mile from the Vienna, Virginia, Metro station.

Charlottesville, Va. — Firehouse Subs has signed a 2,264-sq.-ft. lease for its first location in Charlottesville, Virginia — at 100 Shoppers World Court.

Divaris Real Estate’s Richmond, Virginia, office represented Firehouse Subs in the transaction. Divaris (www.divaris.com) has represented Firehouse in the site selection and lease negotiations for the majority of its Hampton Roads sites and for several locations in the greater Richmond area.

Cincinnati -- Macy’s announced an agreement for Macy’s to anchor the new Ka Makana Ali‘i in Kapolei in West O‘ahu, Hawaii. Current plans call for the 103,000-sq.-ft., one-level store to open in mid-2016.

New York – Verizon Enterprise Solutions has recently introduced a location-based service that will allow retail organizations to offer real-time benefits to their customers, such as proximity-based specials and fraud detection. Verizon Location Data Services, powered by Locaid, is available now to enterprise retail clients in the U.S.