By Catherine Saillant, Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2012

Panorama City’s New Wal-Mart is a viewed by as vast improvement over the now vacant shopping center store fronts the mega-retailers new super-store will replace.

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By Fox Business, courtesy of Dow Jones Newswires, April 27. 2012

Yum Brands Inc (owners of  KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) announce plans to sell the physical real estate for hundreds of corporate owned properties to franchisees.

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By Nation’s Restaurant News, April 27, 2012

Starbucks is aiming to open 1,000 store in the next year, 200 more locations than original goal of 800 new stores, and they are considering all suite real estate “fair game” for potential new locations.

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By Western Business Real Estate, May 2, 2012

NMS BREAKS GROUND ON $50M MIXED-USE PROJECT IN LA

LOS ANGELES — Construction has commenced on NMS @ La Cienega, a $50 million, 125-unit multifamily complex at La Cienega Boulevard and Westmount Drive in Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills-West Hollywood region. The 200,000-square-foot community will also feature 7,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space. It is being developed by NMS Properties and designed by Killefer Flammang Architects.

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By Jayne O’Donnell, USA Today Money, April 19, 2012

Tesco, Britain’s largest grocery store chain, the world’s third largest retailer,  issued their first profit warning in 20 years amid continuing financial losses with their struggling US based Fresh & Easy grocery chain.

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By SCTWeek, April 13, 2012

Landlords get creative to fill empty Borders stores
When Borders filed for bankruptcy protection in February 2011, it left 400 stores on the chopping block. At the liquidation last summer, 200 additional stores went dark. Things do not look so dark for landlords, though, as it turns out. Many of the prime stores have leased out fairly quickly to opportunistic retailers like T.J.Maxx, which has managed to thrive in this difficult economy.

Healthier booksellers, too, have proved eager to occupy these vacant Borders sites. Books-A-Million leased out 41 of them, and Barnes & Noble also grabbed several. Even institutions of higher learning have gotten into the act: Vanderbilt University, in Tennessee, and Fairfield University, Connecticut, each took over a former Borders to remake as a campus bookstore. Among the other types of acquirers, Whole Foods has taken a few, and Walgreens plans to open a drugstore inside a vacant Borders in Boston.

None of this is to suggest that all the vacant stores are easy to lease. “Borders had good real estate, but it was challenged,” said Spence Mehl, general counsel of New York City–based RCS Real Estate Advisors. “A lot of it was on two floors, which doesn’t work for the majority of retailers.” Houston is an example. Since the onset of the recession, that market has seen less development than at any other time in the past 30 years, according to Jason Baker, a partner at Houston-based brokerage firm Baker Katz. And yet, five Borders stores sit empty. Baker says he believes the Dallas market is in a similar state. “This has been a real head-scratcher,” said Baker. “The biggest challenge, without a doubt, is that these spaces sit on two levels. Landlords are having to get really creative on how they backfill these spaces.”

Douglas Green, a principal at Philadelphia-based brokerage Michael Salove Co., is trying to lease two of the eight bookstore sites in his market, which has similar issues. And the spaces are too big for the suburban areas on Philadelphia’s Main Line (the string of towns built along the old Pennsylvania Railroad line). “Every single broker will tell you in this market that the process is going a lot slower than expected,” Green said. Indeed, no one could have anticipated this, he says, given how swiftly the market’s Linens ’n Things and Circuit City spaces went.

Up to now, landlords have held out for better options. But co-tenancy clauses may be forcing landlords to act now. Many Borders stores have been closed for six months or longer. “Landlords were getting nice, big, fat rents from Borders,” Mehl said. “It’s starting to set in, and what you’re going to see is creativity.”

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If British Grocery conglomerate Tesco’s financial position at home and the US, They may be forced to sell off their US grocery chain Fresh and Easy.

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