Retail

San Jose, Calif. – Chuck E. Cheese’s has signed a long-term lease renewal and expansion of roughly 2,126 sq. ft. for a total of about 16,158 sq. ft. at Kendall Village Center in Kendall, Fla. To accommodate this expansion, Berkowitz Realty Group had to relocate accessory retailer Claire’s within the center.

San Diego  — Representing a real estate investment trust, The Mansour Group has sold a portfolio of five Applebee’s for $13.3 million.

To complete the transaction, The Mansour Group sourced a private high net worth California investor, who sold an apartment complex and acquired the portfolio through a 1031 exchange. The restaurants are located in North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota and Kentucky:

The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) is forecasting a 3.4% sales increase for the traditional November-December holiday period from last year — which spells good news for retailers. 

ICSC also anticipates that the other two measures of U.S. industry holiday sales — shopping-center inclined sales +3.4%, and chain-store sales +2.0 — will both increase over last year.

Grapevine, Texas – GameStop plans to hire approximately 17,000 employees nationwide as the company prepares for the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console launches, as well as the holiday shopping season.

OfficeMax EVP and chief digital officer Jim Barr has been elected to Shop.org’s board of directors for a two-year term.

Shop.org, the digital arm of the National Retail Federation, is the world's leading community for digital retail, offering thought leadership through original research and gold standard events. The community's exclusive networking groups and committees lead the global conversation surrounding innovative e-commerce trends and digital retail.

By Chase Cornett, [email protected]

The holiday shopping season is just around the corner and soon consumers will be bombarded with buying guides, floods of emails, deep discounts and, of course, that Black Friday competitive spirit. With all the chaos brought on by the holidays, retailers are finding it harder and harder to stand out. The result — strategies that focus on discounts, deliver low profit margins and drive transactions instead of engaged brand experiences.

Von Maur plans to open its 29th store at Riverchase Galleria Mall in Hoover, Ala., on Nov. 2. Located just outside of Birmingham, Ala., the three-level, 185,000-sq.-ft. store will be the company's first location in Alabama as well as one of the retailer’s largest stores in the country.

New York -- Tesco Plc’s Fresh & Easy chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a plan to sell most of the U.S. chain’s 167 stores to a private equity firm led by billionaire Ron Burkle.

Fresh & Easy cited debt between $500 million and $1 billion in a court filing on Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. According to the documents, a unit of Tesco will end up with a 22.5% stake in the Yucaipa affiliate that acquires the supermarket chain.