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RECon: Las Vegas

By Billy Gray 8:00am

RECon: Las Vegas

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Dairy Queen Eying Several Locations for First NYC Store

Dairy Queen firmly intends to break into the Manhattan market, and will come one step closer when it opens its first Long Island store early next month, DQ spokeswoman Samantha Krogfus told The Commercial Observer at RECon in Las Vegas.

While DQ did not dispense free ice cream at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and thereby avoided the spectacle of businessmen in suits lining up at the nearby Carvel station for a cup of vanilla with rainbow sprinkles on top, the company did draw curious attendees to its booth in the South Hall. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/24/12 11:06am

RECon: Las Vegas

Early renderings of WTC space.

World Trade Center Retail Operator Westfield Gives Vegas Presentation

Westfield, the mall developer that has entered into a $600-million deal to operate and lease more than 350,000 square feet of retail space being built at the World Trade Center, quietly unveiled plans for the much-awaited retail development to select real estate brokers and potential tenants at the annual ICSC retail conference earlier this week, several sources told The Commercial Observer. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/24/12 10:31am

RECon: Las Vegas

The nations biggest mall developers, like Simon Properties, were nowhere to be found at ICSC convention this year.

Biggest Mall Operators M.I.A. at ICSC

The ICSC conference in Las Vegas is the biggest retail convention of the year, a place where nearly every major retailer, owner and broker
converges at the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Centers for three days of networking and dealmaking.

Everyone, that is, except three of the industry’s biggest mall developers and operators. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/24/12 7:30am

RECon: Las Vegas

The Bellagio.

Swimming with Knakal: A Night in Vegas with The Commercial Observer

The International Council of Shopping Centers began to thin out notably on Tuesday, as vendors packed up their bags and folded up their booths and brokers headed out to McCarren International Airport for what we presume was a long flight home. Still, The Commercial Observer stuck around to breath in the last fumes of Las Vegas and its final call of RECon festivities, including the New York Developers Party at the Bellagio, widely considered the finale of the conference’s flurry of dealmaking and networking. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/23/12 12:00pm

RECon: Las Vegas

Jonathan Roseman

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Jeffrey Roseman on New York and Las Vegas

Jeffrey Roseman is an executive vice president and principal of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s retail business and is a top retail leasing executive in the city. Mr. Roseman, who has handled a number of prominent leases over his long career, spoke to The Commercial Observer about how ICSC remains important for top-tier dealmakers, how retail isn’t going away despite the growth of e-commerce and what recent departures from Newmark means both to him and as part an industrywide shake-up in brokerage. As usual, Mr. Roseman will be heading into ICSC with several interesting space availabilities he is marketing. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 5/23/12 11:00am

RECon: Las Vegas

Karen Bellantoni.

With 20 Years of ICSC Conventions Under Her Belt, RKF Veteran Karen Bellantoni Reigns Supreme in Vegas

Robert K. Futterman & Associates executive vice president Karen Bellantoni has attended the International Council of Shopping Centers’ RECon event in Las Vegas at least 20 times in her 25-year career, and she has seen the event blossom into a gigantic gathering of retailers and retail brokers from across the country. Ms. Bellantoni, who has represented Apple and Kiehl’s, spoke to The Commercial Observer about years past. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 5/23/12 10:30am

RECon: Las Vegas

Susan Kurland.

CBRE’s Susan Kurland on American Girl’s Expansion and KidZania’s Invasion

or a broker who counts top-luxury retailers like Jimmy Choo and REI among her eclectic cache of clients, Susan Kurland, an executive vice president for CBRE’s Retail Brokerage Services, hardly considers representing Mattel’s American Girl brand as child’s play. Her work with the highly popular line of 18-inch dolls has garnered her accolades like REBNY’s Most Creative Deal of the Year Award in 2002 for American Girl’s 45,200-square-foot space at 609 Fifth Avenue. Fresh off of working on a deal that brought fashionably square retailer J.C. Penney to the office and retail portions of 200 Lafayette Street (a building owned by Jared Kushner, the owner of The Commercial Observer), Ms. Kurland spoke about her work with American Girl and the imminent arrival of KidZania, an international chain of family entertainment centers. Read More

By Carl Gaines 5/23/12 10:00am

RECon: Las Vegas

Gene Speigelman.

Las Vegas Homecoming: Cushman & Wakefield’s Gene Spiegelman Returns to the Convention that Launched his Career

With the International Council of Shopping Centers’ RECon event around the corner, The Commercial Observer sat down with Cushman & Wakefield retail services executive vice president Gene Spiegelman to hear what keeps drawing him back to RECon year after year. Mr. Spiegelman, architect of complex and transformational deals that have earned him two REBNY Retail Deal of the Year awards, also tells us why taxing online retailers is an important way to level the cyber playing field and why zoning won’t protect mom-and-pop stores from what may be the inevitable. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 5/23/12 9:30am

RECon: Las Vegas

Times Square.

In Times Square, Nevermind the Knick-Knacks, Here’s the National Retail Brand

When he first took the job of president of the Times Square Alliance in 2002, Tim Tompkins had heard a persistent complaint from those who worked and lived in the neighborhood: The retail options stunk, composed mainly of the remnants of tourist-only shops that sold New York-branded T-shirts and similarly hokey knick-knacks. In short, the retail scene in the The Crossroads of the World was slow to catch up with the rapidly shifting residential and office demographics of the Times Square and Hells Kitchen neighborhoods.

“If you think about it, 15 years ago you didn’t have Ernst & Young, didn’t have Reuters, didn’t have Condé Nast; the Viacom building was filled with government agencies, and you didn’t have the 11 Times Square building across from the Port Authority,” Mr. Tompkins said. Then those businesses arrived, and suddenly the need for an “I (heart) New York” T-shirt was quickly being replaced with a need for everyday goods, like cosmetics and regular apparel.

“Part of what we did is we realized there was this enormous untapped spending potential for all the people who are working in these buildings,” Mr. Tompkins said. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/22/12 3:12pm

RECon: Las Vegas

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Fenerbahçe International Sports Complex Ülker Sports Arena in Istanbul Turkey

The Models of RECon: Las Vegas

Ever since the International Council of Shopping Centers launched its twice annual convention–first in Las Vegas, then Manhattan–the event’s growing contingent of brokers, retailers, developers and investors have increasingly flexed its collective creative muscle in order to build larger-than-life booths and floor models. This year, the organization’s 55th in existence, was certainly no different, with Read More