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CROWN EMBARKING ON BUYING SPREE?

Crown American Realty Trust, Johnstown, Pa., issued 5.8 million shares of common stock in early June priced at $8.75 per share. Crown would not say how it will use the proceeds, but analysts speculate that they could be put toward acquisitions of individual properties. Crown, which has a portfolio of 27 regional malls, comprising a total of more than 16 million square feet of gross leasable area, revealed in an SEC filing that it had been seeking a buyer, but that talks with suitors never went beyond the preliminary stages. In February Crown hired Wachovia Securities to advise it on strategic alternatives.

TAUBMAN CENTERS PLANS TWO MORE MALLS

Continuing an aggressive expansion that began last year, Taubman Centers, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., has unveiled plans for two regional malls. The company will team with developer Faison Associates to develop NorthLake, Charlotte, N.C., a more than 1 million-square-foot center scheduled to open in the fall of 2005. The second project, a 1.1 million-square-foot, so-far unnamed center in Monroe, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati, is slated to open in the fall of 2006. Two other ongoing developments, The Mall at Millenia, Orlando, Fla., and Stony Point Fashion Park, Richmond, Va., will open in October this year and September 2003, respectively.

ROUSE, WYNN TO LINK LAS VEGAS SITES

Rouse’s Fashion Show Mall, Las Vegas, now in the midst of an $800 million renovation and expansion, will be linked to casino magnate Steve Wynn’s latest billion dollar project, the Le Reve casino and hotel, by a pedestrian bridge across the Las Vegas Strip. The $1.6 billion casino resort was scheduled to break ground last month, with an opening slated for November 2004. Fashion Show Mall’s renovation will expand the center by 1 million square feet, to 1.9 million square feet, with eight anchors: Bloomingdale’s Home, Dillard’s, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Robinsons-May and Saks Fifth Avenue.

TRIZEC: OLD HABITS DIE HARD

Trizec Properties, making its first acquisition as a publicly traded U.S. office REIT, has acquired full ownership of a Los Angeles property containing a significant retail component. The property, Ernst & Young Plaza, is a 915,000-square-foot, 41-story office building with 330,000 square feet of retail. Trizec paid $149.8 million to buy the 75 percent share in the property held by a private real estate investment fund managed by Goldman, Sachs & Co. TrizecHahn Corp., Trizec’s former retail development incarnation, had owned a stake in the building since 1997.

FEDERATED UNLOADS FINGERHUT ASSETS

Federated Department Stores has sold major portions of its Fingerhut Cos. catalog subsidiary to FAC Acquisitions, a company headed by former Fingerhut CEO Ted Deikel. The sale included Fingerhut’s distribution center and corporate headquarters as well as a data center, all in Minnesota, plus another distribution center in Piney Flats, Tenn. Federated declined to disclose the sale’s terms. The department store company bought Fingerhut for $1.7 billion three years ago in hopes of jump-starting its online business, but the effort was costly and unsuccessful, Federated said.