Editors’ Weekly News Roundup June 2 – June 6
A time-honored maxim of real estate development is that “retail follows rooftops.” Yet the mixed-use project that drew the highest readership on Connect CRE this past week will offer more than places to shop for its residents.
As reported in 500 Acres of Commercial Real Estate Planned for Montgomery County, AIRIA Development Company is making home for medical and commercial space as well as multifamily and retail at Colton, a 5,700-acre master-planned community 45 minutes outside Houston and College Station, TX. Occupying much of the total acreage will be single-family homes from 11 different builders.
Retail figured more directly into the week’s second most-read story, which reported the regional impact of one chain’s expansion plans through taking over leases acquired out of bankruptcy. Five Below Will Take Over Seven Party City Leases in Washington State informed readers that Philadelphia-based Five Below is beginning to make inroads into one region of the U.S. it hasn’t reached yet: the Pacific Northwest.
Four of the seven former Party City locations that Five Below will backfill are in the Seattle metro area, with the other three targeting smaller markets across the state. Another discount retailer expected to open in Puget Sound locations that were left dark by Party City’s closure is Dollar Tree.
Staying with the theme of obsolete real estate, the week’s third-most read story was based on a report by CNBC’s Diana Olick of exclusive data from CBRE. The data, which we reported as Office Space Removal Projected to Outpace Construction in 2025, projected that demolition and conversion will reach their highest levels in at least 25 years. It’s a story with positive implications for both apartment developers and office landlords.
After the CNBC story appeared, CBRE released the data in a report titled Conversions and Demolitions Reducing U.S. Office Supply. We drilled down further into the data with a Weekender story following the Connect CRE daily news report.
Ranking fourth was another story of global as well as national scope. Starwood Capital Closes Private Credit Vehicles at $2.86B reported that the Miami-based private equity firm had completed fundraising for lending activities in the U.S., Europe and Australia.
Since 2010, Starwood Capital has completed more than $100 billion in lending transactions. Founder, chairman and CEO Barry Sternlicht expects to have plenty of opportunities to add to that total “as traditional lenders pull back in the face of regulatory and macroeconomic headwinds.”
The week’s fifth most-read story continued the theme of financing. Walker & Dunlop Capital Markets teams in Arizona and New York arranged the loan for The Caesars Republic Scottsdale, Caesars Entertainment’s first non-gaming hotel in the U.S. The borrower was HCW Development.
As reported in Scottsdale Hotel Owner Obtains $86M Refi, the property is a newly constructed, Hilton-branded, full-service asset located in the center of Scottsdale Fashion Square. A regional bank provided the loan.