HOUSTON — Walker & Dunlop, a commercial real estate finance and brokerage firm based in Bethesda, Md., has expanded its platform by adding five debt and equity finance professionals in Houston. Mike Melody, Tom Melody, Tom Fish, Paul House and Jonathan Paine, formerly with JLL, will join Walker & Dunlop and comprise the firm’s first office in Houston, where they will be responsible for securing financing for commercial owners and developers across the Southwestern United States.
NEW YORK CITY — Luxury department store retailer Barneys New York has voluntarily filed for bankruptcy protection and has disclosed plans to close 15 of its 22 brick-and-mortar stores. The Chapter 11 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York indicated that Barneys had more than $100 million in assets and more than $100 million in debts, according to The Wall Street Journal. Barneys plans to keep five of its flagship locations open, including its famous Madison Avenue store. The retailer will also continue operating its downtown Manhattan, Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Boston stores. The company will also keep two Barneys Warehouse locations open in Woodbury, N.Y., and Livermore, Calif., as well as the Barneys.com and BarneysWarehouse.com websites. Barneys will close all other locations, including flagship stores in Chicago, Seattle, Las Vegas, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Santa Monica, Calif. This is the second high-end retail concept to file for bankruptcy this week, the other being luxury movie theater company IPIC Entertainment. Veteran retail consultant Jeff Green says that American shoppers are shying away from uber-luxury retailers like Barneys and IPIC, which saw its same-store sales drop 21.7 percent in first-quarter 2019 compared to …
BOCA RATON, FLA. — Luxury movie theater company IPIC Entertainment (Nasdaq: IPIC) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware where it will seek approval of either a sale or financial reorganization plan. In July, the company missed a $10 million interest payment to Retirement System of Alabama (RSA) and notified investors that it might have to file for bankruptcy. IPIC borrowed $204 million from RSA, according to media reports. Hamid Hashemi, founder and CEO of IPIC, says that the company’s movie theaters will remain open and its employees and vendors are being paid. Hashemi notes that issues stemming from IPIC’s expansion plans for building 25 locations in four to five years are the principal culprit behind their missed payment to RSA. “Delays in development cycle combined with the high cost of capital depleted IPIC’s available resources before the company was able to reach critical mass and become self-funded,” says Hashemi. “Importantly, delays related to the Delray Beach location, resulted in unforeseen costs and a significant slowdown in circuit-wide development and new grand openings.” The Boca Raton-based company operates 16 dine-in theaters in nine states with plans to open locations in four more states, including …
PITTSBURGH — The vitamin and health supplement niche of the brick-and-mortar retail market continues to experience intense competitive pressure, observes veteran retail consultant Jeff Green. So it came as no surprise to Green when GNC Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNC) officials revealed in a second-quarter earnings call earlier this week that it will shutter up to 900 stores in North America by the end of 2020. “It used to be that specialty health supplements were only found in specialty stores such as GNC, Vitamin Shoppe and other regional chains,” says Green, a partner at Phoenix-based Hoffman Strategy Group. “Now you can find the same products sold at traditional supermarkets, specialty food stores and discount department stores.” Citing a decrease in mall traffic over time, Tricia Tolivar, CFO of Pittsburgh-based GNC, said during the earnings call Monday that the company could close up to 500 of its 800 stores that are currently located in malls across the United States and Canada. Ken Martindale, CEO of GNC, added that 28 percent of the company’s stores are situated in malls, while 61 percent are in strip centers. “The negative trends in traffic that we’ve seen in mall stores over the past several years have accelerated …
MIAMI — Tower Commercial Real Estate has launched a full-service cannabis real estate brokerage division in Florida. Tower has closed $50 million worth of cannabis-related retail and industrial transactions in the past 18 moths and has another $15 million of cannabis-related sales expected to close by the end of the year in the state. Senior managing director Scott Allen and senior director Rob Foster of Tower will lead the division. As of May 2, Florida had 213,000 people enrolled in its medical marijuana program with more than 10,000 people signing up each month, making it one of the fastest medical marijuana programs in the country, according to Tower.
IRVING, TEXAS — JPI, an Irving-based multifamily developer with more than 5,000 units under construction, has named former chief development officer Brad Taylor as its new CEO, effective as of July 1. In addition, the company has appointed Chris Clayton, formerly of Forest City Realty Trust, as its new CFO. JPI will also establish a board of directors consisting of Bobby Page, Ron Ingram, Mark Bryant and Kirk Motsenbocker, who previously served as the company’s executive committee. JPI’s adjustments to its leadership structure reflect the company’s effort to focus on optimizing current and future market opportunities.
ORLANDO, FLA. — Orlando has topped CBRE’s list of tech talent momentum markets in the firm’s annual Scoring Tech Talent Report, which measures growth and acceleration in 50 cities across the United States and Canada. Over the two-year period from 2017-2018, the tech talent labor force in Orlando grew 14.1 percent compared with the previous two-year period. According to the study, San Diego and Chicago were the second and third fastest growing cities with 10.2 percent and 8 percent increases from 2017-2018, respectively. Cleveland (7.9 percent) and Long Island, N.Y. (7.1 percent) round out the top five growing markets. CBRE also found that the number of students completing tech degrees in Orlando increased 59.1 percent from 2013 to 2017, a year in which 2,744 students completed such degrees in Orlando. The report found that the 10 fastest-growing markets increased their tech labor pools between 33 and 54 percent over the past five years.
FORT WORTH, TEXAS — Former Transwestern principal Sarah LanCarte, who most recently worked at investment firm Fort Capital, has launched LanCarte Commercial, an investment and brokerage firm serving the metroplex. Her team includes vice president David De Carion, industrial brokerage associate David Corley and client and transaction manager Lori Loftis. The firm has already closed its first deal, the acquisition of a 6,000-square-foot office building in downtown Fort Worth, which will serve as its base of operations.
HOUSTON — Charming Charlie, a women’s fashion and beauty chain based in Houston, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday. It is the second time the retailer known for its colorful displays of jewelry, handbags, apparel and beauty products has filed for bankruptcy in less than two years. The company now plans to close all 261 of its remaining stores across 38 states. The retailer’s first filing was in December 2017, and the financial restructuring was completed the following April. However, the company continued to struggle following the reorganization and, according to the new filing, only has $6,000 in cash on hand compared to debt of $82 million. The Charming Charlie website was not accepting e-commerce orders during the first restructuring, but had just relaunched in August 2018. As of this morning, the site was once again not accepting orders. The stores are located almost exclusively in malls, with 125 locations in lifestyle centers, 80 in shopping malls and 50 in power centers. The remaining locations are two street stores and four outlets. Texas, Florida and California host the most brick-and-mortar locations with approximately 75 stores in total. “The large format of the store of about 7,500 feet, especially given …
NEW YORK CITY — Boston-based Colliers International Group has formed Colliers Project Leaders | USA, a division of the global investment firm that combines project management, development management, planning and advisory services into one division. The new unit will focus on projects for a range of property types in the Northeast tri-state area, including healthcare, residential, mixed-use, hospitality and retail. In the United States and Canada, Colliers Project Leaders serves corporate, institutional and public sector clients with more than 780 professionals from 33 offices.