Looking for all the big news from the weekend when it comes to all things commercial real estate?

Check out Deal Junkie’s Weekend Roundup, which includes links to more than a dozen stories.

Marketwatch takes a look at how big-box retailers are weathering the current economic conditions relatively well.

Companies like Target Corp., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Best Buy Co. are carrying on with expansion plans at virtually the same pace as in years past.

“We continue to look at a standard of 100 net new stores a year,” Target spokeswoman Anna Goeppinger said. In fact, Target’s rate of expansion has quickened, as it built 118 new stores last year and is on pace for 116 this year. In 2005 and 2006, the company added 86 and 88 new stores, respectively.

For the most part, today’s retail giants don’t suffer in the same way that most retailers do when gasoline prices climb and pocketbooks get pinched. While they may make adjustments, they’re big enough to absorb the shock, according to industry experts.

“They really are looking through the economic time because their stores will open after the bad economic times have passed,” said Jim McComb, president of retail consultancy McComb Group based in Minneapolis, home to Best Buy and Target headquarters.

Inland Real Estate Corp.’s chairman Daniel Goodwin and CEO Robert Parks have both stepped aside. Other executives that have been with the firm for years have stepped in to assume those posts.

Retail real estate investment trust Inland Real Estate Corp. said Monday it promoted Mark E. Zalatoris to the position of president and chief executive effective immediately.

Zalatoris most recently served as the company’s executive vice president, chief operating officer and treasurer, Inland said.

Zalatoris succeeds Robert D. Parks, who will remain on Inland’s board until the company’s annual shareholders meeting. Parks has chosen not to stand for re-election to the board, the company said.

The company also said Monday it named Thomas P. D’Arcy as its non-executive chairman effective immediately.

D’Arcy has served as an independent director and member of the audit committee since 2005. He replaces Daniel L. Goodwin, the company’s chairman since 2001, who will remain a director, Inland said.

Link.

Both Goodwin and Parks will remain more

We’ve been deep in the process of finishing up our May issue. I haven’t had a lot of time to update the blog. Here’s a roundup of some recent headlines.

• Feldman Mall Properties has been told by the New York Stock Exchange that it is not meeting listing standards on director independence. Also, a major shareholder is challenging the company’s board of directors. Lastly, the firm has also been criticized for hiring an accounting firm with ties to the company.
• NREI reports on a Moody’s study of commercial real estate performance.
• The New York Times had a major write-up on Meadowland Xanadu’s progress.
• Because of food shortages Costco and other retailers are now rationing shoppers.
• Sharper Image is officially up for sale.

Standard & Poor’s announced the January results of its S&P/GRA Commercial Real Estate Indices. Retail was flat from November to December, but was still up from one year ago.

The latest readings:

Previous posts on the S&P/GRA Indices can be found from March 18, January 22, January 2, November 28, September 18 and August 21.

U.S. CMBS delinquencies rose during March by a measly three basis points bringing the delinquency rate to a still microscopic 0.33 percent. So far, commercial real estate has been weathering the credit crunch quite well. There’s belief in the market that delinquencies will rise more than this. But the predictions of massive delinquencies and defaults don’t seem to be coming true. At least not yet.

According to Fitch Ratings’ CMBS delinquency index, the delinquency rate rose by three basis points, to 0.33%, in March, the second monthly increase in a row.

“At this point, there is not cause for alarm,” Susan Merrick, managing director and CMBS group head, said in an interview. Although the delinquency rate is expected to rise to about 1% over the course of this year, Ms. Merrick said it will still be “just a bit above the historic average.”

There was some bad news for the CMBS market. Fitch noted an uptick in loans underlying the CMBS that are not refinancing precisely at their maturity date, thus putting them in non-performing status. The number of non-performing matured loans—that is, loans at least a year old—increased to 11.6% of the Fitch delinquency index in March, compared with 2.9% a year ago.

But Ms. Merrick said the 11.6% of non-performing matured loans at the end of March “is not substantial, given the very low base it has risen from.”

Link. (Spotted at Deal Junkie.)

This is great news for Related. It’s much more positive than its other recent news when it announced it was postponing construction of the second phase of its CityNorth project in Arizona by a year.

Still, overall Related has some really interesting projects in the works when you consider this deal with CityNorth and its massive Grand project in Los Angeles. Add to that TimeWarner Center in New York and you’re talking about an impressive collection of urban mixed-use projects.

The Kingsbridge Armory, once the world’s largest military drill hall, will be turned over to a private corporation for a $310 million makeover into a massive retail center intended to jumpstart the North Bronx economy, city officials are announcing today.

Manhattan-based Related Companies won the project, ending a frustrating 12-year effort to find a new use for the historic armory, which was turned over to the city by the National Guard amid military cost-cutting and the escalating expense of repairing and maintaining the huge structure.

Under Related’s plan, the 575,000-square-foot site will become home to an “anchor” department store, up to 35 smaller shops, a number of restaurants and a movie multiplex.

This is the third or fourth big fund I can recall being launched in the past month. The newest entrant is a Dutch firm, United Investment Company and SNS REAA. Canyon-Johnson also closed a $1 billion fund. Blackstone has its mammoth $10 billion fund. And TIAA-CREF also recently put a fund together. What they all seem to have in common is that they are opportunistic funds looking to take advantage of the current malaise.

Will be interesting to see how these funds fare. Given how the low investment sales volume was the past few months, these could really liven things up.

With a handshake, Mr. Kimmel and his friend Milton Cooper started the Kimco Realty Corporation in 1960. Until the corporation went public 30 years later, the partners never saw a need to formalize their business relationship, Mr. Cooper said Wednesday.

Starting with a “mundane pedestrian strip” on Coral Way in Miami with a Zayre discount store and two other stores, Mr. Cooper said, the company has built a portfolio that now includes about 1,900 properties in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Brazil — approximately 1,100 of them strip shopping centers. The value of the common stock of Kimco, based in New Hyde Park, N.Y., was $286 million in 1991; today it is about $10.2 billion.

With that first shopping strip under construction, “Cooper and Kimmel quickly learned the tricks of the local real estate game,” a 1998 article in Institutional Investor magazine said. “Kimmel would follow utility trucks to find out where new power lines were being laid,” an early sign of new residential development.

Link.

Jordan Crouch has an amusing post with step-by-step instructions for getting a construction loan in today’s harrowing lending market.

Here’s a taste. (Click to enlarge.)

On a more serious note, Jordan posts some interesting findings from Paul Angle at Column Financial from a survey of clients asking when they might return to borrowing from CMBS lenders.