Archive for April, 2011

Xanadu Meadowlands to Become American Dream

by Elaine Misonzhnik April 28th, 2011

This just in–the Triple Five Group, owners of the Mall of America, the country’s largest regional mall complex, has reached a deal with the New Jersey state government on Xanadu Meadowlands, the flailing, never-finished entertainment/retail project in Northern New Jersey.

According to the New York Times, Triple Five plans to give Xanadu Meadowlands a new name–American Dream @ Meadowlands–and add a few extra features to the already giant development. Among these will be an indoor water park, a skating rink and a second multi-level parking garage. The new owners also plan to redesign Xanadu’s exterior skin, which has become an object of derision.

To help the project succeed, New Jersey state government will provide anywhere from $180 to $200 million in low interest financing to Triple Five. It will also postpone collecting sales tax revenue from the center for an indefinite period of time, to allow the developer to repay the state’s loan with the extra money.

What do you think about the new plan? Will this plan help save Xanadu?

No Comments Related Topics: Development, Finance, Management & Leasing, News, Retail, Retail Real Estate |

Can GGP, Caruso Get Along?

by Elaine Misonzhnik April 28th, 2011

The news that Nordstrom would be leaving Glendale Galleria, a General Growth Properties project, to join the line-up of tenants at Caruso Affiliated’s Americana at Brand might have been overshadowed by bigger stories in recent weeks, but last night The Wall Street Journal began to look into what’s been happening in Glendale.

From the beginning of Caruso’s project, General Growth has fought tooth and nail to stop a competing center from being built across the street from its mall.

Nothing was off limits, not even lawsuits over environmental studies and landmark preservation, though Caruso ended up always getting the upper hand in the fight and even received millions of dollars in compensatory damages from General Growth.

Now, the regional mall REIT has been forced to eat crow once again, as anchor tenant Nordstrom has decided to depart the mall for newer digs at the Americana at Brand, which is about to undergo expansion. In the process, Nordstrom sold its existing building at Glendale Galleria to Caruso, which will now be in charge of re-leasing the box. Executives from both firms promise to cooperate to come up with the best possible solution for the properties and for the city of Glendale. It will be interesting to see, however, how successful the former rivals will be in achieving that feat.

No Comments Related Topics: Development, Management & Leasing, News, REITs, Retail Real Estate |

Quick Takes on the CoStar/Loopnet Deal

by David Bodamer April 28th, 2011

Last night, after the market closed, CoStar announced it had acquired Loopnet in an $860 million deal. Jonathan O’Connell has a good piece at the Washington Post that includes quotes from the main players and some reaction to the deal.

Today, we’ve got more thoughts beginning to roll in. Twitter is abuzz with rapid reactions. And there are a few blog posts to check out.

Duke Long, who is never shy about sharing what he thinks, posted a short video with his reaction to the deal. If you’re familiar at all with Duke, you know that he’s passionate about improving data standards in the commercial real estate space. He lays out some interesting hypothetical scenarios as to what alternatives to what we have now could be.

Coy Davidson, meanwhile, has put up a poll to gauge the industry’s reaction. Early results indicate that people think having one dominant data provider will ultimately be unhealthy for the commercial real estate industry.

Lastly John Reeder weighs in with some speculation as to why he thinks the deal is taking place and what it might mean going forward.

His speculation:

I think what’s a lot more likely is that Costar uses Loopnet’s platform and access to their subscriber base to sell a wider variety of data packages at more price points on the spectrum. They will absolutely try to upsell to their premium packages, but I also think they’ll figure out ways to bundle their packages in different ways to make them more palatable to Loopnet’s subscriber base.

Before the acquisition Loopnet was working on a service that would have been a combination of Constant Contact email campaign and also war room capability. I think it’s probably likely that the Costar/Loopnet combo will put the boot on the neck of any of the third parties out there doing the same thing today. That’s a good example of where their combined scale is going to provide some benefit.

1 Comment Related Topics: Commentary, Investment, News, Research, Video |

Starbucks Climbs to Third on U.S. Restaurant List

by Elaine Misonzhnik April 27th, 2011

Just in time to coincide with our story on how Starbucks has been regaining it leading position among national coffee chains, USA Today reports that the Seattle-based company has overtaken Burger King and Wendy’s on the list of largest U.S. restaurant chains. Only global powerhouses McDonald’s and Subway rank ahead of it. The list is based on 2010 sales.

As a result, the chain may once again be in expansion mode. The New York Post reports it will be opening several Starbucks stores in the city in the near future.

Bloomberg also recently published a story about how Starbucks has been making strides with middle-income consumers through its Seattle’s Best Coffee brand.

No Comments Related Topics: Management & Leasing, News, Retail, Retail Real Estate |

Malls Across America

by David Bodamer April 19th, 2011

In 1989, Michael Galinsky toured malls across America and snapped pictures. He took those rolls of film and turned them into a slideshow he screened for friends. Now–more than 20 years later–he’s uploaded that online. It provides a snapshot of what the industry–and mall culture–looked like at the time.

Galinsky hopes to turn the project into a book. He’s uploaded this in part to help raise funds for the project.

As he wrote here:

I have always thought that images gain much more meaning with time. Looking at the mall slides it’s clear that their time has come. Last fall, I took them out, borrowed a scanner and loaded in about 160 of the stronger images. I posted a few on facebook and they got a great response. I started to work on putting together a book.

About 12 years ago, I published a book of rock photos called Scraps. I paired the images with short essays that friends wrote about being in bands, touring, and art in general. I wanted to do the same kind of thing with this book.

About a month ago, while waiting for the writers to write, I noticed some amazing Bruce Davidson subway photos on my brother-in-law’s facebook page. They had been linked to a site called How to be a Retronaut. I figured the site would like my mall photos. I figured right. What I didn’t realize was how the images would connect. The site didn’t bother to tell me that they had posted them, but I found out when other sites began to re-post them. In a couple of days, the photos had been shared on facebook and twitter thousands of times. In fact, they were so popular that they crashed the Retronaut site a few times.

With this campaign, I want to fund the printing of a run of books. Funders can get a book, a print, or a book and a print. I need to pre-sell 500 books to pay for this run.

No Comments Related Topics: Architecture & Design, News, Quirky, Retail Real Estate, Video |

Geographic Footprint of America’s Largest Retailers (Monday’s News & Notes)

by David Bodamer April 18th, 2011

chart It’s been a while since we had a good roundup post. A good place to start is this post Friday from Business Insider looking at the geographic footprints of the 15 largest U.S. retailers. The maps are swiped from a Citi analyst report. A key finding of the report was that many of these retailers are growing the fastest in the Southeast.

This region represents 23 percent of store bases and 25 percent of population, so there’s room for growth.

A post from Marcus & Millichap provides more good news on the retailer expansion front. Analysis of recent sales results indicate that retailers will increasingly be in a mode of adding new stores.

The trend offers traditional store-based retailers a positive sign, as consumption appears to have regained much of its vigor lost during the recession. Historically, surges in store-based retail sales have triggered an expansion cycle by retailers. Given the strength of recent retail activity, an accelerated pace of expansion will likely ensue once confidence in the sustainability of the recovery overrides caution.

Another piece that caught my eye is an update on the redevelopment of the Bannister Mall in Kansas City. The latest plan–which we wrote about last summer was endorsed unanimously by the Kansas City Tax Increment Financing Commission, bringing the redevelopment one step closer to reality.

Here are some other notable news and notes from around the retail real estate world.

No Comments Related Topics: Commentary, Development, Investment, News, Research, Retail, Retail Real Estate, Trends |

Quest for Core Assets Compresses Net Lease Cap Rates

by David Bodamer April 14th, 2011

I’m a little late getting to this. But the Boulder Group late last week issued its first quarter net lease overview.

I have always found Boulder’s reports–as well as Marcus & Millichap’s overviews on the sector–essential reads and excellent indicators for what’s going on in the net lease market.

In the most recent edition, Boulder finds that cap rates on net lease assets are continuing to compress, primarily because of the intense competition taking place in acquiring core properties. In addition, improving conditions on the lending side of the equation are also fueling the fall in cap rates. In fact, Boulder recorded falls in cap rates on every property type it looks at. Also of interest is the fact that the supply of properties put on the market rose as well.

The entire report is embedded below. You can also download it here.

Q1RR

No Comments Related Topics: Commentary, Finance, Investment, News, Research, Scribd, Trends |

Lessons from the Latest Mall Shooting

by David Bodamer April 11th, 2011

There has been another mass shooting at a mall–this time in the Netherlands. The attacker killed six and left 15 injured before killing himself.

The rampage was one of those incidents in which it is clear that the shooter meant to wreak havoc from the start. The attacker wore camouflage gear. He shot someone first in the shopping center’s parking lot and then fired a machine gun indiscriminately before running out of ammo. He fired more than 100 rounds. The shooter left a suicide note, but he didn’t get into any motives for the mass shooting.

Mall security has been a subject we at Retail Traffic have written about many times. In fact, I just posted our latest feature last week. It explores how some mall owners run coordinated security drills with first responders in order to be as ready as possible in case something terrible does occur.

Incidents like the one in the Netherlands are ones that no mall–no matter how well prepared–can do much about. Individuals intent on killing large numbers of people are always going to be drawn to malls simply because they are mass gathering places.

But that’s not to say that the industry shouldn’t be prepared. Many of the stories we’ve written have pointed out shortfalls or places where corners have been cut when it comes to security. One of the biggest issues of all is the fact that mall security guards are poorly paid and the position has an extremely high rate of turnover–close to 100 percent annual.

That means that even when training does take place it has to to be constant to make sure the new faces know what to do. What the mall owners and managers in our latest feature are doing is commendable because it leaves them as prepared as possible for the worst case scenarios. Still, there’s always room for improvement.

These incidents cannot be avoided altogether. But we just have to keep doing whatever possible to make sure that when they do take place that mall personnel know what to do. It can make a big difference and save lives.

No Comments Related Topics: Commentary, International, Management & Leasing, News, Retail Real Estate, Security |

March Same-Store Sales Exceed Expectations

by David Bodamer April 7th, 2011

March same-store sales came in stronger than expected, helping the industry avoid its first year-over-year decline in comparable sales since 2009. Estimates varied, but same-store sales for the roughly 30 retailers that report the figure came in between 2.0 percent and 2.5 percent higher than March 2010.

The figure exceeded analysts’ expectations.

Many thought that the Easter shift was going to take a bigger bite out of the month’s figures. Analysts were expecting a 0.7 percent decline. Last March was extremely strong because of an early Easter. In contrast, the holiday this year is 20 days later, pushing more Easter-related sales into April rather than March.

Despite the numbers, as I’ve written in other monthly roundups of late, it’s important that we remember that the pool of retailers that still report same-store sales numbers is considerably smaller than it once was. Less than 30 retailers that use the metric (down from more than 70 a few years ago). Wal-Mart stores, which singlehandedly accounts for something like 5 percent to 6 percent of the overall retail pie, only reports quarterly figures today. And it has reported comparable store sales declines for seven straight quarters. Were they still in the monthly matrix, the figures would look quite a bit different.

My look inside the monthly reports is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

No Comments Related Topics: Commentary, News, Research, Retail, Trends |

J.P. Morgan Aims to Increase CRE Lending (Monday’s News & Notes)

by Elaine Misonzhnik April 4th, 2011

Want more proof that the commercial real estate sector is on the way to recovery? Nasdaq.com reports that Todd Maclin, head of commercial banking with J.P. Morgan Chase, wants to increase the bank’s lending on CRE assets. Maclin’s conservative stance on CRE lending in the mid-2000s helped protect J.P. Morgan Chase from the fallout when the sector crashed in 2008 and 2009.

For more news on retail and retail real estate, follow the links below:

No Comments Related Topics: News |

  • Page 1 of 2
  • 1
  • 2
  • >