Cushman & Wakefield Research unearthed spooktacular stats showing consumers are snapping up more pet costumes and Hershey’s Kisses than ever for 2016’s Halloween celebration.
And spending for the scariest day of the year has nearly doubled since 2009 to $8.4 billion.
Click here or the graphic to the right to access our infographic and learn more!
Almost 3,000 real estate professionals attended the annual Chicago Deal Making session last week, and many of them from Cushman & Wakefield’s offices in Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New York, Milwaukee, and even Glen Allen, Virginia. Our booth was buzzing with many meetings and conversations as we met with current and prospective clients.
Cushman & Wakefield NorthMarq was well represented, along with our United Properties colleagues. Tom Martin, Minneapolis broker, said “I always find this conference worth my time, making good connections that come back to me throughout the year.” Skip Melin, a Minneapolis Capital Markets broker, echoed this, stating “the conversations I have in Chicago help me expand my network, and my business.” Deb Carlson, another Minneapolis transaction broker, found this year’s conference to be particularly helpful in meeting with retailers on moving current deals forward. “It was great”, she said, “to be able to put my Philadephia based client together with potential national retailers from around the country together to work through issues to get deals done.”
And of course the best part of the day was the Cushman & Wakefield client party, held this year at Bar Siena in downtown Chicago. By all accounts, everyone had a great time, with lovely food and drinks, conversation, and a great Cub’s ball game on the tv! Wins all around!
Giordano’s opened their second MN store yesterday, this one in Richfield at Southdale Square. It is 5,000 square feet, includes 180 seats with patio, and offers a full bar with local beers. Their first location opened in Uptown last summer.
MarketWatch is reporting this morning that Supervalu is selling its Save-A-Lot business to the Canadian private equity group Onex Corporation for $1.365 billion. Supervalu will continue to supply Save-A-Lot with product as part of a five-year professional services agreement. This will include more than 1,300 stores around the country, the majority of locations being owned by licensees.
With Eagan now open, that brings the current count to five stores, including New Hope, Oakdale, Lakeville, and Brooklyn Park. Six sites that are either in construction or in planning include Cottage Grove, Robbinsdale, Maple Grove – two sites including 101 & 10, and Maple Grove Parkway, Savage and now Farmington. Whew!
CNN Money today is quoting the Sears CEO Eddie Lampert who wrote on their corporate blog this Monday that frequent reports about KMarts demise are “false and exaggerated”, and there are “no plans and there have never been any plans to close the Kmart format”. Of course, he then went on to concede that some unprofitable KMarts stores will be closed, with 78 locations announced for closure last April. This blog post was on the heels of Moodys reporting last month that it was particularly concerned about “the viability of the Kmart franchise”. And piling on last week was ratings agency Fitch naming Sears as one of several retailers that could soon default on its debt.
Sears IS predicting continued sales deline (as has been happening annually since 2005) , and analysts expect sales to keep declining at both Sears and Kmart stores in the foreseeable future. Lampert did say last spring that it may sell three of its most well-known brands – Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard, and looking for “strategic alternatives” for its Home Services installation and repair businesses. And some of that strategy appears to be in play, with Bloomberg announcing yesterday that Stanley Black & Decker was among the bidders for Craftsman.
Store counts today stand at approximately 900 KMarts and 700 Sears stores.
The Best Buy store at the Shoppes at Wilmar will be closing soon. Tricia Pitchford and Jesseka Doherty with MidAmerica are the listing brokers for this location. The other six stores include Council Bluffs, IA; two stores in Baltimore MD; Topsham, ME; Beaufort, SC and Long Island NY, and they will add to the already 3 stores that have already closed, for a projected count of 10 by year-end. These stores had 2016 lease expirations and Best Buy will simply not renew those leases. The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal states Best Buy’s current store count will be down to 1,390, so the 10 stores are less than 1% of their US footprint.