Kohl’s Teams With Aldi, Nordstrom Adds Anthropologie Home: Are Retailers Becoming Mini Malls?, by Barbara Thau, Forbes
“Head-turning retail mashups and sleeping-with-the-enemy-style pairings — from Aldi grocery stores on Kohl’s turf to Anthropologie shops at Nordstrom — are rocking the retail sector, as stores scramble to woo finicky, choice-rich consumers in a marketplace upended by the limitless store that is e-commerce. The deals reflect a variety of strategic plays by retailers, be it a bid for product categories outside a merchant’s core competency, like food for Kohl’s, or reaching for that elusive cool factor, such as Walmart’s implicit courtship of younger and hipper shoppers via its collaboration with media platform BuzzFeed on a kitchenware line.”
Cousins Properties ‘Very, Very Close’ To Deal For Land Near Where Amazon Officials Toured For HQ2 Sites In Atlanta, by Jarred Schenke, Bisnow Atlanta
“Cousins Properties is eyeing an undisclosed site for future development in what has been the hottest office market in Metro Atlanta during the past few years and one of the areas that could potentially be home to Amazon’s second headquarters, Cousins Senior Vice President Thad Ellis said during a Bisnow event last week.’We think we’re finally very, very close,’ Ellis said during Thursday’s Bisnow Office of the Future event at Securities Centre in Buckhead. ”
What to Expect From CRE Valuations, by Alexandra Pacurar, Commercial Property Executive
“As commercial property valuation growth continues strong, the Federal Reserve Bank has warned that prices may be inflated. Despite the concern-inducing Fed reports, industry insiders see no reason to worry. Bob Martinek and John Provenzano, directors in BDO USA’s Valuation and Business Analytics practice, believe that current CRE valuations appear to be supported by available market evidence. The two revealed the factors that will influence pricing going forward and how valuations are performing in various markets and property types.”
This supermarket is tops in customer experience across all industries…, by Marianne Wilson, CSA The Business of Retail
Wegmans deliver the best customer experience — and not just in the supermarket sector. That’s according to the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual customer experience benchmark of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers. With a score of 86%, Wegmans not only received the highest score in the supermarket industry, it received the highest score in the entire Ratings – ranking No. 1 out of 318 companies across 20 industries. Overall, supermarkets earned some of the highest scores in the entire Ratings. The supermarket industry averaged a 79% rating, and came in first place out of 20 industries. (TV/Internet service and health plans were the lowest scoring industries.) ‘Supermarkets have been the highest-scoring industry since 2012, and this year was no different,” said Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group. “But the leadership has changed, as Wegmans jumped over H-E-B to earn the top spot.'”
Real estate funds just raised the most cash in a Q1 since 2008, by Konrad Putzier, The Real Deal
New York’s real estate industry has plenty to worry about in early 2018, from rising interest rates to trade wars and a potential cyclical downturn. But strong private fundraising is an indicator that it might not get so bad after all. A staggering $33 billion in new private real estate funds closed globally between January and March, according to research firm Preqin — the largest first-quarter volume in a decade.