Mass Merchant

Pittsburgh – Dick’s Sporting Goods opens five new stores across the U.S. on Nov. 8. The stores will be located in Dover, Del., Palm Desert, Calif., West Des Moines, Iowa, Sioux Falls, S.D., and Findlay, Ohio.

Dick’s will operate a total of 554 stores in the U.S. upon opening the five new stores. The Sioux Falls store will be the chain’s first store in South Dakota. This total will include three in Delaware, 32 in California, five in Iowa, and 38 in Ohio.

Dallas — SRS Real Estate Partners’ southeast investment sales team has closed five retail shopping center sales since August. The transactions total more than $60 million and over 575,000 sq. ft. of retail real estate. Here are the details:

Brentwood, Tenn. — Tractor Supply Co. has announced the opening of its first store in Wyoming. The new store marks Tractor Supply’s continuing expansion in the Western U.S.

The new store in Rawlins opened for business on October 19 and will hold a grand opening event on Oct.26. As of Sept. 28, Tractor Supply operated 1,245 stores in 47 states.
 

Woodland Hills, Calif. — GrowLife has announced the opening of its seventh store in Santa Rosa, Calif., on Oct. 25.

GrowLife Hydroponics operates in the legal cannabis industry with online and brick-and-mortar stores.

Atlanta -- Among the affluent households, the average expenditure for December holiday gifts in 2013 is estimated to be $2,175 down 2.8% from 2012, according to a new survey of the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households by the American Affluence Research Center. However, affluent households spent in 2012 almost 7% more than they had anticipated in the 2012 survey, supporting the premise that people often tend to spend more for gifts than they had planned.
 

Mike Graen has left his position as director of innovations and supplier collaboration at Walmart to assume a new role with leading merchandising and marketing services company Crossmark.

Grain will serve as managing director of the Crossmark Center for Collaboration currently under construction adjacent to Walmart’s headquarters on Southwest 8th Street in Bentonville, Ar.

New York -- Lane Bryant has announced the opening of three new stores and one relocation of an existing store.

The specialty apparel retailer plans to open a new store in the Miracle Mile Shopping Center in Monroeville, Pa., on Oct. 25, with the grand opening running through the weekend.

Lane Bryant also plans to open a new store at Rushmore Crossing in Rapid City, S.D. on Oct. 25, with the grand opening continuing through Sunday.

Phoenix — The metropolitan Phoenix retail market ended the third quarter with a retail vacancy rate at 10.5%, down nearly a full point from 11.3% a year ago, according to CBRE’s Phoenix Retail MarketView report for the third quarter.

The market recorded positive absorption of 385,625 sq. ft. for the quarter and so far this year has absorbed 1.1 million sq. ft.