Weekly Retail Real Estate News
Third Street Promenade in Southern California Works to Get Its Mojo Back
In the world of retail, the mantra for success is location, location, location. But that formula hasn’t been working too well for the Third Street Promenade, the breezy seaside pedestrian shopping mall in affluent Santa Monica, California, where a modest home sells for $1.6 million and the average annual household income is $158,000.
Trader Joe's, Food 4 Less See Visits Increase YoY in California
With nearly 40 million residents, Placer.ai describes the Golden State as a “a high-value grocery market due to its robust visitation.” Since January 2023, year-over-year (YoY) grocery visits have consistently outperformed the national average. From January to June of this year, grocery visits in California have increased 3.1%, 4.5%, 4.2%, 2.3%, 0.1% and 3.8% YoY each month while the grocery sector nationwide has its ups-and-downs in terms of traffic.
PacWest Bancorp Bought By Banc Of California, A CRE-Heavy Local Rival
Banc of California is swooping in to buy Beverly Hills-based PacWest Bancorp. Post-merger, the combined bank will have about $36B of assets — less than what PacWest alone had at the end of March, Bloomberg reported. It will also have $25.3B in total loans and $30.5B in total deposits, the companies said. Although the Banc of California was the smaller of the two institutions, the new entity will operate under the Banc of California name.
Study: Sales of secondhand goods will hit $325 billion
New research indicates the market for secondhand merchandise is growing rapidly. According to the 2023 Reuse Report from online secondhand marketplace Mercari, the resale market is expected to grow by an estimated 87% to $325 billion by 2031 from $174.1 billion in 2022. Nearly nine in 10 surveyed U.S. consumers planning to shop secondhand in the coming year; and one in three surveyed Gen Z consumers expect to buy more secondhand items and spend more time on online resale platforms.
New pop-up pickleball court coming to the Promenade
Only a blank canvas can be transformed into a work of art and that’s what’s happening on the Third Street Promenade, albeit quite slowly. The latest empty lot to be turned into something really rather interesting is the former site of the Adidas store, 1231 3rd Street (Adidas is now at 1337 3rd St). The 10,000 sq ft space is set to be reworked into an indoor pickleball club, complete with a bar and chill out areas.
Ashley to ‘refresh’ all stores with new design
Ashley HomeStore has a new name. But that’s not all. The furniture and mattress retailer said it will refresh its stores nationwide to reflect its modernized look and feel. The refresh rollout comes after the company initiated a rebrand last year with a new logo and name change from Ashley HomeStore to Ashley.
Firehouse Subs Believes Brand Will Resonate ‘Across the World’
If Mike Hancock was going to take an opportunity outside of Tim Hortons, it was going to have to be a rare one. The 6-foot-7 former defensive end, who played in the Canadian Football League with the Toronto Argonauts, had a first-row seat to the near-mythical nature of the coffee chain. There’s one for every 10,000 Canadians, and some 80 percent of residents reportedly visit Tim Hortons every month. That frequency is even higher than McDonald’s in the U.S., where CEO Chris Kempczinski previously suggested roughly 80 percent of the population shows up at least once each year.
Where are online grocery shoppers going?
A new survey has some troubling data for digital grocery retailers. According to first quarter 2023 analysis of more than 58 million shopper baskets of actual purchase data across the U.S. and Europe from SymphonyAI, more than half (52%) of e-commerce grocery shoppers left the online channel over the last year. Further analysis of those lapsed customers reveals that while 60% are reverting to the retailer’s brick-and-mortar location, 40% have left that grocery retailer altogether.
Retail sales inch up in June — but not in all categories
Retail sales edged up in June as consumers continued to shop. Retail sales in June inched up 0.4% from May and were up 3.3% year-over-year, according to the National Retail Federation, whose calculation excludes automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants to focus on core retail. In May, sales were also up 0.4% month-over-month and were up 4.4% year-over- year.
Giant Company names president
Ahold Delhaize USA said that John Ruane has been named brand president of The Giant Company. He has served as interim president of the chain since the departure of Nick Bertram in September 2022.
Prior to being appointed interim president, Ruane served as senior VP and chief commercial officer for The Giant Company, leading the merchandising and marketing teams to develop and implement customer-centric strategies that support the continued growth of the brand, while also improving customers’ experience and the overall value proposition, the company said.
Babies R Us makes a comeback — at American Dream
Just as BuyBuy Baby bid bye-bye to its stores, its longstanding and ardent competitor has itself been reborn.
Babies R Us — which was acquired by brand management firm WHP Global in 2021 —is back in brick-and-mortar, opening a location at American Dream, the massive three million sq.-ft.-plus entertainment and retail center in the New Jersey Meadowlands. At 10,000 sq.ft., the new Babies R Us store has a much smaller footprint than the brand inhabited in its previous life.
