Home Improvement

A home improvement start-up with a green conscience is expanding out of its Austin, Texas, hometown.    TreeHouse will open the nation’s first-ever net-zero energy store on June 1, at The Hill, a shopping center in Dallas. The store will be the retailer’s second location, but not for long. An additional store, planned for the Plano area, is due to open this fall.   

Macy’s is getting more serious about its off-price format, Macy’s Backstage.   The department store giant plans to add 30 Backstage shops to existing Macy’s stores this year, reported CNBC. The format debuted in 2015, originally as a freestanding store.   

Sand Lake Corners North, a 151,487-sq.-ft. community center in Orlando, Florida, has been put up for sale. Transwestern is serving as broker for the property at 8115 – 8379 S. John Young Parkway.   According to Transwestern, tenants with long-term leases fill more than 90% of the center, which is located in Orlando’s tourist corridor and is surrounded by corporate campuses, including the SouthPark Center that comprises 2.9 million sq. ft. of office space.  

Flying Tiger Copenhagen is expanding its U.S. footprint.   The discounter will open a 2,100-sq.-ft. store at City Point, in downtown Brooklyn, on April 21. The Danish home retailer offers a quirky, ever-changing assortment of  product, ranging from home goods to toys to electronics and more, with many created by the company’s in-house design team in Denmark.  

Inland Real Estate, the Oak Brook, Illinois, acquisition machine headed by Joe Cosenza, has purchased another center to keep the acquisition tote board on its website churning past $44 billion.   Its latest purchase is the 199,335-sq.-ft. Pentucket Shopping Center in Plaistow, New Hampshire, 40 miles north of Boston. The center houses Home Depot, Staples, and Bed Bath & Beyond and is shadow-anchored by a Super Walmart.  

The chief executive of Crate & Barrel is out after less than two years at the top.   Doug Diemoz left the home furnishings retailer last week. Most of his responsibilities will be taken over by Neela Montgomery, board chair of Otto Group, the privately owned German company that owns Crate & Barrel, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.  

A slump in consumer prices helped to keep retail sales in check in March.   Retail sales in March inched up 0.3% over February, according to the National Retail Federation. (The NRF numbers exclude automobiles, gasoline stations and restaurants.)   “Various factors were at play in the first quarter, but we are again seeing a pattern similar to previous years — consumer spending was weak but is expected to pick up as we move through the year,” said NRF chief economist Jack Kleinhenz.

Shelby Crossings, a 76,390-sq.-ft. power center in the Detroit suburb of Utica, has been acquired by Beverly Hills, Michigan-based Grand Management & Development.   Mid-America Real Estate Corp., which represented the seller in the transaction, could not disclose the price.   The property features the Bed Bath & Beyond subsidiaries Christmas Tree Shops and BuyBuy Baby, and is surrounded by a larger regional center anchored by Target and Planet Fitness.

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