PRINCETON, N.J. — The Container Store has opened a 15,000-square-foot shop at The Square at West Windsor in Princeton. The store is the retailer’s 100th nationally and sixth in New Jersey. Anchored by Lowe’s and Trader Joe’s, the 220,000-square-foot shopping center is also home to tenants such as Ethan Allen, Mattress Firm, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Starbucks and Fidelity Investments. Blake Shanaphy of JLL represented the tenant in the lease negotiations. Michael Gartenberg represented the landlord, New Jersey-based Garden Commercial, on an internal basis.
NEW YORK CITY — Accounting firm Marcum Asia has signed an 8,851-square-foot office lease expansion at 7 Penn Plaza in Midtown Manhattan. The tenant now occupies a total of 14,870 square feet on the eighth floor at the 18-story, 357,000-square-foot building. Steve Kaplan of Norman Bobrow & Co. represented Marcum Asia in the lease negotiations. Andrew Wiener and David Turino represented the landlord, The Feil Organization, on an internal basis.
SAVANNAH, GA. — CBRE has provided a $27.7 million acquisition loan for Canvas at Savannah, a 300-unit, garden-style affordable housing community located at 5110 Garrard Ave. in Savannah. Blake Cohen of CBRE’s Atlanta office originated the Freddie Mac loan on behalf of the borrower, Miami-based One Real Estate Investment. The seller was not disclosed. Built in 2003 and recently renovated, Canvas at Savannah features one-, two- and three-bedroom units averaging a little more than 1,000 square feet in size. Amenities include a fitness center, coffee bar, package lockers and a resort-style swimming pool.
MIAMI — CP Group has executed 38,731 square feet of leasing activity at Citigroup Center, a 34-story office tower in downtown Miami spanning 810,000 square feet. The deals include six new tenants and two lease renewals, one with an expansion. New tenants coming to the tower include Trion Properties, Lithium Capital Management, Kili Topco Ltd., Marex Solutions, Pisec Group and the Miami Downtown Development Authority. Steven Hurwitz, Doug Okun and Madeline Fine of JLL represented CP Group in the lease transactions. Last month, CP Group leased retail space on the ground level to Cactus Club Café, a restaurant chain based in Canada. Recent capital improvements at Citigroup Center include a new lobby, café, valet service program, new speculative office suites and health and wellness programs for tenants. Four of the new tenants will occupy the tower’s new spec suites.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — CBRE|Triad has arranged four retail leases at Irving Park Shops, a retail and dining property spanning three buildings in the Piedmont Triad market of Greensboro. The deals include a 3,100-square-foot lease for Dave’s Hot Chicken, which will repurpose the former A Cleaner World building. The restaurant will be the fifth North Carolina location for the fast-casual chain. A Cleaner World, a dry-cleaning operator, will move into a new 1,333-square-foot space within Irving Park Shops at 2105 W. Cornwallis Drive. CycleBar and Armine’s Blow Outs and Bubbles will also occupy the single-story building with 2,030- and 1,362-square-foot locations, respectively. Matt King and Christy Smith of CBRE|Triad represented the landlord, an entity doing business as Irving Park Shops LLC, in the transactions. The duo also handles the marketing responsibilities for the property.
DAVENPORT, FLA. — SRS Real Estate Partners has brokered the $3.1 million sale of a newly built retail property located at 1217 Finley Ave. in Davenport, a suburb of Orlando. The 2,500-square-foot, freestanding building was delivered in October and has a 10-year lease in place with Starbucks Coffee. Patrick Nutt, William Wamble and Robert Dillard of SRS represented the seller, an unnamed development firm based in Florida, in the transaction. The buyer is also based in Florida and purchased the property in a 1031 exchange at a 5.25 percent cap rate.
ALPHARETTA, GA. — North American Properties (NAP) has announced plans for the addition of new entertainment elements at Avalon, a 2.4 million-square-foot mixed-use development located in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta. Construction is scheduled to begin in January 2024 and will include the addition of a raised, covered performance stage and an LED screen. The features will comprise 576 and 180 square feet, respectively. Avalon comprises 500,000 square feet of retail space, in addition to a hotel and office and residential space. NAP developed the project in 2012 and manages the property on behalf of PGIM, which acquired the development in 2016 for $500 million.
Dai Nippon Printing to Develop $233M Battery Pouch Manufacturing Facility in Linwood, North Carolina
LINWOOD, N.C. — Tokyo-based Dai Nippon Printing Co. (DNP) has announced plans to develop a $233 million manufacturing facility in Linwood, approximately midway between Charlotte and Greensboro. The development will produce battery pouches that encase and protect lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. While further details on the building itself were not disclosed, DNP plans to complete the project by 2026. The factory will be the company’s first advanced manufacturing facility in the U.S. DNP hopes to expand the facility in the coming years to also manufacture jumbo rolls, which are another type of casing for lithium-ion batteries. The project is facilitated in part by a recently approved Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) from North Carolina’s Economic Investment Committee, the state’s department of commerce leads. The department estimates the project will grow North Carolina’s economy by $691 million over the course of the grant’s 12-year term. Through the agreement, DNP can potentially be reimbursed $2.7 million by the state over the grant’s term, dependent upon tax revenues generated by new jobs created by the development. “From the east to the west, North Carolina’s electric vehicle industry is growing exponentially,” said North Carolina Commerce Secretary Machelle Baker Sanders. “Our natural resources and …
By Taylor Williams Retail owners are facing critical questions about whether to sell or hold their properties in the current environment, which is still defined by uncertainty about whether interest rate hikes have truly peaked and investment sales prices have actually bottomed out. Investment sales decisions frequently hinge on analysis of cap rates, defined as a property’s net operating income divided by its sales price. Generally speaking, higher cap rates indicate lower sales prices and are therefore sought by buyers, whereas lower cap rates reflect higher prices and are preferred by sellers. Cap rates are fluid and tend to move linearly with interest rates. Thus, the Federal Reserve’s campaign of 11 interest rate hikes totaling 500 basis points over the last 20 months has caused cap rates in all asset classes to rise, or as industry folks say, to decompress. The extent to which this cap rate movement influences an investor’s sell-or-hold dilemma varies from deal to deal, but the common denominator is that it complicates all such decisions. At the inaugural InterFace Houston Retail conference, a panel of capital markets professionals delved into the numerical analysis and anecdotal evidence that investment sales brokers are relying on to guide clients …
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Is a Rebound in the Cards for Investment Sales Anytime Soon?
Would-be commercial real estate investors and sellers for the last several months have been waiting for a sign that the Federal Reserve has tamed inflation, therefore giving the central bank reason to officially end its tightening program. October’s better-than-expected consumer price index increase of 3.2 percent — versus the 3.3 percent consensus — may have delivered that signal. The futures markets immediately reduced the probability of a Fed interest rate hike in December to zero, with many capital markets analysts suggesting that it would begin to cut rates midway through 2024. But just an end to rate hikes could fuel investment sales activity, says Jeff Rinkov, CEO of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services. “Once investors see some positive sentiment from the Fed, I think they’ll start to get interested in deploying what we believe is an enormous amount of capital that has been waiting on the sidelines,” he explains. “I also think that’s when investors will be met by more accommodating sellers. At the moment, price discovery continues to be very challenging and is driving a sluggish transaction environment.” Crashing Sales Indeed, investment sales volume through three quarters of 2023 totaled $276.3 billion, a year-over-year decline of 55 …