HOUSTON — LaSalle Investment Management has acquired Greenway Commons, a Costco-anchored shopping center in Houston, for $84 million. LaSalle acquired the property on behalf of its U.S. core open-end real estate fund, LaSalle Property Fund. A joint venture between DDR and Blackstone sold the asset. Greenway Commons was fully leased at the time of sale to tenants including LA Fitness, Iberia Bank, Buffalo Wild Wings and Panda Express.
LONGVIEW, TEXAS — Dollar General Corp. plans to build a nearly 1 million-square-foot distribution center in Longview, its second in Texas and 17th nationwide. The new property is expected to create 400 full-time jobs and serve roughly 1,000 Dollar General stores in Texas and the Southeast. Goodlettsville, Tenn.-based Dollar General has selected Clayco as the project’s general contractor, Leo A. Daly as the architectural engineering firm and Elan Design as the civil engineering firm. The development team plans to break ground on the new distribution center in the first quarter. Dollar General currently has more than 1,400 stores and over 12,000 employees in Texas alone. The company has 15 distribution centers that are located in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas (San Antonio), Virginia and Wisconsin. The company’s 16th distribution center in Amsterdam, N.Y., is currently under construction.
OKLAHOMA CITY — NewcrestImage has opened a five-story, 142-room AC Hotel in Oklahoma City’s historic Bricktown neighborhood. NewcrestImage used modular construction to build the new AC Hotel, a first for both the Dallas-based company and Oklahoma City’s hotel market. Modular construction is a building technique where a project is constructed in sections off-site and assembled together on-site. The new hotel features 800 square feet of meeting space, a fitness center, business center, fine dining restaurant and a European-style bar and lounge. The hotel is located adjacent to the 13,000-seat Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark — home of the Oklahoma City Dodgers baseball team — and within a few blocks of the Cox Convention Center.
BEAUMONT, TEXAS — Albanese Cormier Holdings (ACH) has sold Stadium Shopping Center, a 76,082-square-foot retail center located at 3210 Ave. A in Beaumont. A private investment firm purchased the asset from ACH for an undisclosed price. Kevin Holland of Edge Realty represented ACH in the sale. Built in 1970, Stadium Shopping Center was 82 percent leased at the time of sale to tenants such as Citi Trends, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Hibbett Sports and Metro PCS.
As 2018 gets underway, retail real estate finds itself at an odd juncture. According to CNN, more than 6,700 stores either closed or announced plans to close in 2017, leading many to consider last year to be the beginning of the end for brick-and-mortar shopping. Yet a new report from Tennessee-based retail advisory firm IHL Consulting Group notes that for every company that closed stores in 2017, there were nearly three companies opening new stores to offset it. Whether you believe retail is dying or evolving, there’s no arguing that the inability of certain tenants — mainly apparel-based department stores — to compete with e-commerce has caused millions of square feet of retail real estate to be returned to the market. Owners of these properties face the challenge of backfilling these spaces with tenants that aren’t likely to share the same fate — restaurants, gyms and entertainment concepts. But when it comes to backfilling a big box or anchor space with an entertainment concept, merging the existing space with the design requirements of the tenant can be a major headache for landlords. With 58 million square feet of project designs under his belt, Randy Stone, associate principal at Dallas-based architecture …
After Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast, the storm’s impacts on commercial real estate were most immediately felt in the single- and multifamily spaces. As the recovery effort got underway, it became clear that some office buildings had been damaged, driving down occupancy in that sector, while demand for industrial materials and space rose. Perhaps because retail occupancy in Houston — which most recently clocked in at 94.6 percent, according to CoStar Group — has been strong throughout the oil downturn, or because most store closures stemmed from employees being unable to get to work, the storm’s impacts on the retail sector have been somewhat trickier to measure. Whatever the case, nearly four months after the storm, retailers in certain industries are seeing their sales figures climb dramatically, and without help from the holiday shopping rush. Grocers Lead the Way The grocery business — a form of brick-and-mortar retail thought to be somewhat insulated from e-commerce — has been at the forefront of retail segments seeing an uptick in sales following Harvey. Residents experiencing power outages and damaged refrigerators generated healthy and immediate demand for groceries. “Grocers were particularly impacted by Harvey, and in the aftermath it …
Retail inventory in Southern New Hampshire totaled 29.8 million square feet in 2017, a modest decline of 59,400 square feet, or 0.2 percent, largely due to retail demolitions and conversions to non-retail space, including auto dealerships, office, and residential. Some former retailer spaces that have been demolished include the 17,800-square-foot Grenon Trading Co. in Bedford, the 10,700-square-foot New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet in Salem, and the 8,400-square-foot Weathervane Restaurant in Salem. The big story in the market is the notable decline in vacancy. Several retailers absorbed large vacancies, reducing unoccupied space by more than 400,000 square feet, and cutting the vacancy rate from 10.5 percent in 2016 to the current level of 9.1 percent. Larger retailers who filled vacant space include Chunky’s Cinema in Manchester, which opened in a portion of the former Lowe’s store; Hobby Lobby in Nashua, filling a vacant Market Basket at Somerset Plaza; and Ocean State Job Lot in Seabrook, which opened in the former Walmart at Southgate Shopping Center. As a result of relatively stable inventory and considerable decline in vacancy, the region finished the year with positive net absorption of 352,400 square feet. There’s been no change in the top 10 largest regional …
The greater metropolitan New Orleans office market contains approximately 15 million square feet of office space segregated into five distinct submarkets. Two major submarkets, the Central Business District (CBD) and Metairie (a suburban market), represent 94 percent of the total square footage. The occupancy rates of Class A properties in these two markets are 87.7 percent and 88.7 percent, respectively. These rates are 1.56 percent lower and 3.01 percent higher than the respective downtown and suburban Class A office averages nationally. The overall vacancy is limited to a select group of buildings resulting in limited options for tenants seeking more than 25,000 square feet of contiguous space. The New Orleans economy typically runs counter cyclically to the rest of the nation. It has enjoyed relative immunity from the lingering effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the relatively stagnant national economy. Over the last several years occupancy rates have trended above national averages and rental rates have experienced modest growth. New Orleans’ office market is performing well, consistently outperforming most national averages and rarely lagging far behind others. This track record of success can be attributed to several different factors. Due to geographic constraints there are limited sites available for …
LAS VEGAS — Calmwater Capital has provided a $15.2 million loan for the development of a new shopping center in Las Vegas, located adjacent to the Palms Casino Resort. Calmwater arranged the two-year, senior loan on behalf of the borrower, an entity controlled by CAI Investments. The developer plans to construct five pad sites for the center, totaling 27,000 square feet. Signed tenants at the center include Walgreens, Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, Denny’s, Del Taco and Dunkin’ Donuts. The project is estimated for completion over the next 12 to 18 months.
NEW YORK — New York REIT has completed the previously announced disposition of 1440 Broadway in New York for a total of $520 million to an unaffiliated third party. The office property was encumbered by a $305 million mortgage loan, which was fully satisfied at closing. Separately, New York REIT has entered into three separate contracts to sell its properties located at 306 E. 61st St., One Jackson Square and 350 W. 42nd St. in New York City to third-party buyers for an aggregate amount of $103.1 million. In the aggregate, the three properties are encumbered by approximately $43.4 million of mortgage debt, which will be satisfied in full at the respective closings. The closings are expected to occur in early 2018.
