Convenience Stores

For retail tenants and landlords alike, use and exclusive use clauses, which refer to the terms written into a lease that dictates what is and is not permitted by both parties, are a critically important part of the tenant-landlord relationship and lease negotiation process. It is also a potentially contentious subject that will not only affect a retailer’s operational specifics, but can have a profound impact on the bottom line.   

Rubinstein Real Estate Company has sold the Blackhawk Village shopping center in Cedar Falls, Iowa, for $3.4 million to a private investor. Mid-America Real Estate brokered the sale.   The 65,548-sq.-ft. center includes Chuck E. Cheese’s, Famous Footwear, Key West Fitness, and Dollar Tree.   Cedar Falls, a city of about 40,000 people, is the home of the University of Northern Iowa and is situated in Black Hawk County.

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First the good news: Retail sales rose 0.6% in September, after falling a revised 0.2% in August, according to figures by the Commerce Department.     The increase, the most in three months, was helped by a rebound of automobile and restaurant sales.    On the less positive front, excluding autos and gasoline, sales were up only 0.1%, less than economics predicted.    

Save-A-Lot may be facing a possible spin-off from parent company Supervalu, but the chain is still bullish about its future.    Supervalu is expected to announce the fate of its discount grocery banner next week, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported, with Toronto private equity firm Onex Corp. the leading bidder if Supervalu does pursue a sale. 

By the holidays, customers of J Sainsbury Plc will be able to take advantage of more mobile capabilities.   Leveraging its acquisition of the Home Retail Group, which closed last month, Sainsbury will begin adding Argos branches or click-and-collect distribution points inside almost all of its stores, according to a recent Bloomberg article.  

JLL Income Property Trust has purchased the Kierland Village Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, for $34.5 million. Kierland Village is an upscale development in the Phoenix suburb, which has seen a near 10% rise in population since 2000.   The 118,000-sq.-ft. neighborhood center is anchored by Safeway and houses Walgreens, Einstein Brothers, Pizza Hut, Panda Express, and a UPS Store.   The acquisition is in line with JLL’s current appetite for active, necessity-based centers.  

With its recent acquisition of Jet.com, a commitment to growing its online grocery business with a convenient grocery pick-up option and an extensive investment against delivering a seamless digital shopping experience, Walmart is once again flipping the script on what it means to compete for America's shopping dollar.   The company's investment in grocery pick-up services represents the cover of that new script - and Walmart is expanding that service to 600 stores this year and 500 stores next year.  

Nearly half of holiday shoppers will hit the stores before Nov. 1 — and many will be looking for deals.   That’s according to a report by RetailMeNot, a digital savings destination connecting consumers with retailers, restaurants and brands, both online and in-store. Seventy-three percent of shoppers said they plan to shop in brick-and-mortar stores this season, and 50% said that the deals they find will help them determine which days to shop in-store.