As part of its bankruptcy court-supervised restructuring, retailer Tuesday Morning put around 250 of its 490 leases up for auction. The stores ranged from 6,000 to 28,000 square feet and include freestanding and strip center sites. Many of the locations offered five years or more of remaining lease term, along with renewal options. Approximately 30 have received successful bids, according to Retail Specialists executive vice president Bill Read. The leases for locations not receiving bids will be rejected and thus the spaces likely will be returned to the landlords.

Five Below acquired 17 of the leases, Michaels three and Books-A-Million one. Dollar General will acquire four to turn into its Popshelf concept, which targets suburban shoppers with higher incomes than Dollar General’s more typical rural demographic.

Several landlords also bid on their own spaces to keep control of the spaces. Most of the bids were fairly small, but some reached as high as $225,000, according to Read.

Meanwhile, 25 more Party City leases will be auctioned on April 14.

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It’s One of the World’s Largest Malls, and Half of It Is Being Torn Down to Make Way for a Universal Studios Theme Park

Malls are making themselves into major tourist attractions by adding such experiential anchors as water parks, casinos and competitive socializing concepts. The latest example is one of the world’s biggest malls, the 5.3-million-square-foot West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta. The center is making itself over to accommodate Canada’s first Universal Studios theme park. Owner Triple Five will spend $5.2 billion to demolish half of the 62-acre mall to make way for the theme park.

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Stable U.S. Shopping Center Rents and Vacancies in Q1

It was a decidedly undramatic first quarter in the Marketplaces Industry, thanks in large part to resilient consumer spending, according to Moody’s Analytics. The vacancy rate at U.S. neighborhood and community shopping centers held steady at 10.3%, and rental rates rose by a meager 0.2% from the previous quarter to $21.52 per square foot. They’ve hovered between $18 and $21 since 2018.

Retail is at an equilibrium, but transformation and revitalization will continue, according to Moody’s senior economist Lu Chen. “Metros which have enjoyed exceptional growth during the past three years may see bigger slowdowns or even correction, but that should give other parts of the country time to catch up as long as we avoid any major systematic downside risk,” she wrote in the agency’s first-quarter commercial real estate report.

Among the 79 primary metros that it tracks, Moody’s looked at where the retail vacancy rate changed by between 10 and 50 basis points year over year in the first quarter. It decreased by that much in 29 of the markets and increased by that much in 26. Notably, vacancy declined by 50 basis points in Detroit and 40 in Dayton, Ohio. It decreased by 30 basis points in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Oakland-East Bay, California.

Looking at where annual retail rent changed by more than 1%: It grew in 19 of the 79 markets and declined in only two. The top five: 2.2% in each Dayton, Ohio, and Seattle; 1.9% in Denver; and 1.7% in each Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Columbus, Ohio.

Retail Effective Rent Change and Vacancy Rate from Q1 2018 to Q1 2023