Posted Dec 9, 2016, 7:36 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Philadelphia
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Why big retailers like Under Armour are gaga about Center City Philadelphia
Quote:
"We love the city," Plank said later. "The City of Brotherly Love absolutely fits the mantra of Under Armour."
The Baltimore-based company is one of 45 national retailers since 2013 that have opened shops in Center City and helped fuel a $1 billion surge in retail investment in the city over the last five years, according to a Center City District report released last week.
In August, Under Armour opened its fourth store in the Philly area, a 10,000-square-foot Under Armour Brand House at 1529 Walnut St. in the old Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. building.
The retailer's newest neighbors on Walnut Street are also national brands: The fashion icon Rag & Bone debuted Thursday; the eyewear company Warby Parker opens a retail store early next year; and the men's clothier Bonobos, which like Warby Parker began as an online-only firm, is growing its physical footprint nationally and opened a store Aug. 28. All three brands have flagships in New York City.
It's no wonder Philly-based commercial real estate firms sent their largest contingents ever to the New York confab this year. About 10,000 attendees, the largest in 25 years, converged at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for two days of deal-making. ICSC New York - like its bigger version in Las Vegas each spring - is where retail deals foment or progress to the next level.
"When we first began attending ICSC in 2009, our goal was to change outdated perceptions about Philadelphia as a city where cheesesteaks were our main cuisine," she said. "Now, when we meet with prospective retailers or developers, they know Philly is a world-class city with a hot residential and retail market, and our job is more to provide the data."
CBRE Inc., which has an office at Two Liberty Place, sent 50 brokers from the Philly region. They shared Booth No. 1102 with brokers from CBRE offices from all over the country.
Among her meetings Monday, Paige Jaffe, CBRE Philly's first vice president of advisory and transaction services, spent time with Joel Chace, vice president of real estate for Balducci's, a gourmet market based in New York.
Balducci's has seven stores, with two more to open in Westchester County, N.Y., and Reston, Va., by 2018. It wants to open multiple stores in Philadelphia as part of its East Coast expansion.
In Booth No. 1A28, Joe Coradino, the CEO of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, was pitching one of his babies - Fashion Outlets of Philadelphia at Market East, formerly the Gallery Mall - to prospective tenants.
"The Gallery turned its back to Market Street and faced inwardly," Coradino told Kristina Bonesteel, an associate at Newmark, Grugg, Knight & Frank, who was looking at spaces for a candy-store concept.
As Coradino spoke, a video on a large LED screen streamed images of the old Gallery morphing into the new mall.
"The goal of the redevelopment plan is a four-sided project that will have the mall facing Market, Ninth, 10th, as well as Filbert Streets," Coradino said, narrating the video.
"Did you say it will have over 700,000 square feet of retail and three towers?" Bonesteel asked.
"That's right," said Coradino. "Up to now, it's all been interior work. But people will soon start to see the skin come off."
Bonesteel said she'd be in touch.
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Read more here:
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/re...ut_Center_City_Philadelphia.html?photo_5
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