HyVee opened in Lakeville this month, 
their third store in the Twin Cities. This supermarket includes all of their high quality grocery, meat & produce, and deli & bakery offerings in a large 95,000+ square foot store. But it also includes a 3,300 sf F&F clothing store, with value items all under $50 and a line-up that changes every eight weeks. HyVee plans to include the F&F clothing stores in their Brooklyn Park and Rochester locations.
The Canadian based company of Tim Horton is coming back to the Twin Cities with their fast food restaurant chain. (You may recall there was one in Hopkins that has long since closed.) Tim Hortons has 869 restaurants in the United States, and another 3,700 restaurants around the world. They have hired Restaurant Development Partners to own and operate their shops here, and find franchisees for some locations. Their niche is coffee, doughnuts, breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches and soups, and Cold Stone ice cream. Reach out to Tony Strauss of Colliers for sites.
CNN Money is talking about more store closings. Walmart is closing 269 stores this year, with Sears closing 10 Sears and 68 KMart stores. Kohls is closing 18, with Target and Macy’s also announcing shuttered stores. Gap announced last year that they plan to close 175 locations. That’s all on top of those closing due to bankruptcies, including Sports Authority, American Apparel, Hancock Fabrics, RadioShack and others.
Ernie Herman, TJX Companies’ CEO told investors on Tuesday that they plan to grow their number of stores by 50% from their current count of 3,700 locations to 5,600. Herman stated, “We are confident that we can continue to open stores around the world. And these estimates do not contemplate the potential to expand into additional countries or open new chains in existing markets.” TJX opened 219 stores in 2015, and adding another 47 stores in 1st quarter in 2016 with another 150 planned for the rest of the year. Their sales growth trend is up 5 to 7%. In Minnesota, Stephanie Meyer and her team at Mid-America represent TJX.
Kaskaid Hospitality has signed a lease to open a Crave restaurant at the Eden Prairie Center in the space previously occupied by Biaggi’s. This will be their 12th Crave restaurant, and sixth Crave in the Twin Cities. Kaskaid also owns five other restaurants here with varying concepts – Union, Blvd, Avenida Cocina, Burger Burger and Zio Italian. Tricia Pitchford of Mid-America represented the Landlord. With this lease, Mid-America reports the center is 99% occupied, with only 15,850 sf vacant.