PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

Mills pairs up with Wegmans

After nearly a year of negotiations, Wegmans Food Markets has agreed to open a 120,000-square-foot store in The Mills Corp.’s Potomac Town Center, in Prince William County, Va. The 650,000-square-foot lifestyle center is scheduled to open in 2007. “This is going to be a huge draw for our center, because Wegmans has shown that customers will drive past many other grocery stores to get to their stores,” Mills Chairman and CEO Laurence C. Siegel told SCT. Siegel also says Mills is negotiating to bring another upscale grocery chain to its properties, though he declined to give details. Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegmans, whose sales rose 9 percent last year to $3.3 billion, operates 67 stores in four Northeast and mid-Atlantic states.

 

Real estate help wanted

The real estate job market is booming, says a survey conducted by FPL Advisory Group. More than one-third of the developer, broker and investor respondents said they expect hiring to increase at their companies by about 20 percent this year. Development, property management and capital-raising experience are most in demand, the survey said. Demand for new employees is strongest in the U.S. and Europe, but more than half of respondents with Asian operations said they plan to boost hiring by about 20 percent by year-end.

 

Souped-up rims

These could be the next big thing for Atlanta-based Aaron Rents. The chain, which operates 1,090 lease-to-own stores, plans to convert six of its 21 Rent-2-Own units in Texas to a new concept called Rimco. Rimco will lease rims (which range from $800 to $1,400) to customers with poor credit. Aaron is also testing Rimco at three Atlanta stores and may roll the concept out to franchisees nationwide, CEO Charlie Loudermilk says. Rimco stores are currently bringing in some $45,000 a month — about $550,000 a year, a fraction of the $3.9 billion rim business.

 

Ace Hardware angles for more entrepreneurs

Ace Hardware, an Oakbrook, Ill.-based, dealer-owned cooperative, relies on entrepreneurial talent to fuel its expansion plans. So the company is offering startup investors $195,000 to open new stores in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Houston, Indianapolis, Orange County, Calif., Philadelphia, San Diego and Seattle. The retailer will pay the incentive fee to operators whose stores stay in business for at least six months. Ace says it plans to open 180 new stores this year, with at least 20 in each of these eight key markets. Ace currently counts about 4,700 member-owned stores among its fleet. Locally based operators are Ace’s key to competing with such big-box rivals as Lowe’s and Menard’s, the retailer says.

 

The great screen of China

Toronto-based IMAX plans to open 24 Imax theaters in the country by 2008. The first will open in 2007 at a mall being developed by Liaoning, China-based Thai Tai Enterprises in the northeast city of Shenyang, population 7.3 million. With hundreds of malls and cineplexes being built across the country, says CEO Bradley Wechsler, China is quickly becoming Imax’s second-largest market after North America.

 

Use it or lose it

Gift cards paid off handsomely for The Home Depot. Since the Atlanta-based retailer initiated its gift-card program in 1998, it has realized about $43 million worth of income from cards that are unlikely to ever be redeemed, the company says. Most retailers do not record the value of unredeemed cards as income, though some do report as liabilities the amounts outstanding on cards they expect will be redeemed. Best Buy says it is carrying about $410 million in outstanding gift cards from last year that it expects to be redeemed, while Target says some $214 million worth of gift cards it sold last year have yet to be cashed in. In total, about $55 billion worth of gift cards were sold in the U.S. last year, according to financial services firm TowerGroup.

 

Still loving Lucy

Chico’s FAS is investing $10 million in privately owned women’s active-wear chain Lucy, which operates about 18 stores on the West Coast and an e-commerce Web site. Lucy, a seller of upscale exercise gear that can double as sportswear, will use the money to open more stores. Chico’s President and CEO Scott Edmonds says the brand appealed to his company because of its management team and its emerging product category.

 

Bear chic

To celebrate the grand opening of its first New York City store last month, a 22,000-square-foot flagship on Fifth Avenue, St. Louis-based retailer Build-A-Bear Workshop presented 15 high-profile New Yorkers with teddy bears “built” in their images. Chanel President and COO Maureen Chiquet was an honoree, receiving a bear decked out in a tweed Chanel jacket, tank top and jeans, Chiquet’s signature look. The 15 bears will be displayed at the store before they are auctioned off for charity.

 

Would you like borscht with that?

U.S. fast-food restaurant chains are eyeing Russia. Carpinteria, Calif.-based CKE Restaurants says it plans to open 50 Carl’s Jr. franchise units in the country within the next eight years. And Louisville, Ky.-based Yum! Brands, purveyor of KFC, is investing about $30 million in a five-year joint venture with Russian chicken chain Rostik to open about 300 co-branded restaurants in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Moscow-based Rostik will invest $100 million.

 

St. Paul’s is getting malled, not mauled

Londoners have long complained about the bland post-World War II buildings that have surrounded — and blocked views of — St. Paul’s Cathedral. But Land Securities says One New Change, its proposed mixed-use project, will embrace Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece. The £200 million ($365 million) project will contain 220,000 square feet of retail, 340,000 square feet of offices and a rooftop space that will allow residents, workers and visitors to enjoy a view of the cathedral and the city beyond. The design “is calm and deferential to St. Paul’s Cathedral,” said architect Jean Nouvel in a press release. Nouvel conceived the design after consulting with architecture and heritage groups and Cathedral authorities.

 

Health hub

One of the first U.S. shopping centers devoted solely to health-related tenants and services is under construction and scheduled for completion next year. The $15 million Chesapeake Health Park, in Pasadena, Md., will contain 120,000 square feet of doctor’s offices plus a fitness center, a drugstore and a spa. “We want this to be a place where people can have a one-stop shop for all their health and fitness needs,” developer Larry Ray told SCT. “This is a very diverse area in terms of age, so we will need to serve customers from children to senior citizens.” Tenants include Maryland Primary Care Physicians, a Big Vanilla athletic club (Ray founded the chain), CVS and Rumors Day Spa. Ray says response to Chesapeake is so positive that he is already scouting locations in Maryland for an additional health-oriented shopping center.

 

The upside of Hurricane season

Hurricane season helped Lowe’s sales in Florida this year. The retailer says generators, tarps, batteries, flashlights, gas cans and similar items flew off the shelves of its Florida stores in early June. The reason? For the first time ever, the state offered shoppers a 12-day tax-exempt holiday on hurricane-preparedness items. “Following last year’s series of hurricanes,” said Jim Frasso, Lowe’s senior vice president of operations for the Southeast, “it was good to see our customers take hurricane-preparedness seriously.”

 

Cousins makes a residential move

In the past three years, Cousins Properties has “given away” the residential components on six of its mixed-use projects to other developers, the firm’s president, Thomas Bell, told investors at a conference last month. Not anymore. The Atlanta-based REIT acquired The Gellerstadt Group, a multifamily and office developer with which it has done joint ventures several times. “We bought it not because of the in-progress assets, but because of the people,” Bell said. Gellerstadt Chairman Larry Gellerstadt will head Cousins’ newly formed office and multifamily division.

 

All that glitters

De Beers is getting attention for its new flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York City by displaying the priceless Millennium Star, a 777-carat, egg-size, priceless diamond discovered in 1992 by villagers in the Congo. The Diamond cartel is operating the 6,000-square-foot store at the corner of 55th Street as a joint venture with LVMH. De Beers will also open a Beverly Hills, Calif., store this year and 20 new U.S. stores within five years, including units in Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, San Francisco and Palm Beach, Fla.

 

Who dat?

Public REITs complained about nonprofessional investors at the ICSC New England Idea Exchange in Boston last month. “When we’re competing for a property, sometimes we look at some of the bidders and say, ‘Who dat?’” said John M. Ingram, vice chairman of The Mills Corp. Kimco Realty Trust ends up with only 5 percent of the properties it bids on, said Thomas A. Caputo, Kimco executive vice president. You can count on 30 or 40 bidders, up from five a few years ago," he said. “A whole new group of players are buying, and they don’t know the difference between good and bad properties.” But this activity could prove a boon for established players, said David C. Sweetser, vice president of business development at Heritage Property Investment Trust, when stocks stabilize or the “who dat” bidders run into trouble and have to sell.

 

Mickey’s malteds

Though Disney sold the majority of its stores to The Children’s Place last year, the family entertainment giant opened a 4,698-square-foot Disney’s Soda Fountain and Studio Store on Hollywood Boulevard last month, next to the famed El Capitan theater in Los Angeles. The store offers an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor experience and sells Disney DVDs through customized kiosks.

 

Site selection meets crime scene investigation

In Toledo, Ohio, CoStar Group researchers came across a corpse while photographing properties for the firm’s commercial real estate database. Bethesda, Md.-based CoStar, which acquired the National Research Bureau in January, is using trucks equipped with high-resolution cameras to photograph retail sites ranging from gas stations to malls. A CoStar crew inadvertently snapped shots of a crime scene that included a dead body. The crew turned the pictures over to the local police, says President and CEO Andrew C. Florance. CoStar’s goal is to have a 600,000-property shopping center database for its subscribers by the end of next year. “We’re adding one retail building a minute overall,” said Florance. “We already have 85 percent of the centers over 50,000 square feet. But we only have 20 percent of the small stuff.”

 

Money talks in Target deals

Small developers have little chance of landing a Target anchor these days, said Brian Smith, Regency Centers Corp.’s managing director, at an investor conference. “A Target deal is very expensive,” he said, meaning only large, rich developers can shoulder the tenant allowances Target demands. In fact, Smith said, Target execs told one local developer in Silver Spring Township, Pa., that it would back out of a project unless that developer brought Regency in as a partner. To stay on top of this trend, Jacksonville, Fla.-based Regency has hired a former Target leasing rep to work in its Los Angeles office.

 

Lord & Taylor store a crown jewel

Federated could get a king’s ransom for Lord & Taylor’s Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York City should it decide to off-load the real estate, says Citibank Smith Barney analyst Deborah Weinswig in a note to investors. Weinswig pegs the price tag for the 611,000-square-foot building at about $384 million. The store, located on the famed Manhattan shopping thoroughfare at 38th Street, midway between the Macy’s store on 34th Street and Bloomingdale’s outpost at 59th Street, is worth about $1,000 per square foot, Weinswig says, with air rights worth about $150 per square foot.

© 2008 ICSC. All rights reserved. | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Contact ICSC | ICSC Home |