By Billy Gray 5/21 9:00am

ICSC 2013

1CO2400A0521

Minute By Minute: The First Day and a Half at the International Council of Shopping Centers RECon Expo

On Sunday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber made the fans squeal and the paparazzi snap. But just off the strip, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the real action got underway with the start of RECon. Below, The Commercial Observer’s
reconnaissance work at The Global Real Estate Convention, where 35,000 registered attendees are helping to shape the future of retail real estate. Read More

By Al Barbarino 12/04/12 7:30am

ICSC

cover for web

Retail’s Big Renaissance

With more than 50 million tourists running amok each year, consumers feeling recharged, and throngs of foreign retailers streaming in, Manhattan’s prime retail corridors are not only booming—they’re expanding.

High rents and low vacancies in prime corridors are changing the invisible boundary lines that once separated high- and low-end sections of Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Greenwich Village and other retail corridors throughout the city, analysts and real estate brokers claim.

“When these big names and huge chains move into these areas, people just love to follow them,” said Jeffrey Roseman, an executive vice president and principal with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s retail division. “They become anchors and magnets to pull others.”

Just as the earlier success of Urban Outfitters and H&M sparked further expansion below 49th Street on Fifth Avenue, and Alfred Dunhill and watchmaker Panerai boosted retail appeal below 57th Street on Madison when they emerged in 2009, aspirational clothing retailers are now doing the same in Greenwich Village. Read More