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From Pizza to Apparel: 5 Retailers Expanding Their Footprints

Despite a scarce supply of new retail space, companies from a pizza purveyor to an eyewear chain are expanding their brick-and-mortar footprints. Here are five that are making space:

• Marco’s Pizza is aiming for a bigger slice of the pizza market. In the first half of 2025, the chain opened 41 stores. Altogether, Marco’s plans to open about 90 locations this year in the U.S. and Mexico, up from 70 last year, a spokesperson told C+CT. More than 1,200 Marco’s stores operate in the U.S., the Bahamas and Mexico.

• Drive-thru chain Dutch Bros Coffee opened 31 stores in 13 states in the first quarter as it shoots for a store count of 2,029 by 2029, according to Yahoo Finance. It now operates more than 1,000 U.S. stores.

• Apparel retailer Burlington is on track to open about 100 net new stores this year, Chain Store Age reported. Its 2026 pipeline includes the conversion of 45 former Joann locations. The current U.S. store count stands at 1,115.

• Stanton Optical is eyeing the addition of 30 to 50 stores this year, Forbes reported. Furthermore, the eyewear chain, which operates more than 300 U.S. locations, recently formed a partnership to launch stores-within-stores in certain Staples.

Retail Real Estate Refinancing Is Heating Up: 7 Deals To Know

In the first half of 2025, shopping center owner and operator Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield refinanced Southern California’s Westfield Century City and Northern California’s Westfield Galleria at Roseville, each at 1.3 million square feet, with commercial mortgage-backed securities loans totaling $1.2 billion. Those two deals are high-profile examples of an acceleration of refinancing activity in retail real estate. “Commercial real estate lenders are now seeing the credit benefits of retail loans: extremely low vacancy, given [little] new supply has been added in 15 years; historically low tenant occupancy costs since rents haven’t kept pace with sales inflation; and significant rent upside given the high rents needed to justify new construction,” JLL Capital Markets senior managing director for the Americas Scott Aiese told C+CT.

Other recent refinancing deals include:

• $462.3 million for Brookfield Properties’ retail condo in The Crown Building at 730 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, according to CoStar News. Traded reports that the condo measures 73,522 square feet.

• $123.6 million for part of Urban Edge’s 752,000-square-foot Shoppers World, an open-air center in Framingham, Massachusetts.

• $38 million for four South Florida retail centers owned by MMG Equity Partners. They total 127,826 square feet, according to JLL Capital Markets, which arranged the financing.

• $25.1 million for Finard Properties’ 350,000-square-foot Poplar Plaza, a grocery-anchored retail center in Memphis, Tennessee

• The $22.8 refinancing of Stanton Road Capital’s 25,429-square-foot Kimball on Main in Park City, Utah

Developers received the go-ahead from city planning commissioners to start permitting and construction for a $1 billion, 295-acre mixed-use development in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert. A lifestyle center called Harvest Village will anchor the first phase, with 51,000 square feet across seven buildings. The first phase also will include pad-ready sites in the Corner Springs section, which eventually will comprise 78,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, office and patio space. First-phase construction is set to begin in the fourth quarter.

IndiCap, Colmena Group and Langley Properties are developing The Ranch. At full buildout, it will offer:

New Jersey Rolls Out C-PACE Financing for Green Building Upgrades

The Garden State is paving the way for owners of commercial real estate, including retail and mixed-use, to go green. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s Garden State Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) Program, created in 2024 and launched recently, provides as much as 100% financing for energy efficiency, water conservation, renewable energy and resilience upgrades. Borrowers repay the money through property tax-like assessments. Funding is available for new projects and for projects completed within a three-year look-back period.

RECENTLY IN C+CT: C-PACE Is Gaining Ground in Retail and Mixed-Use Capital Stacks

How Retail and F&B Sales Fared in July

U.S. retail and food services sales minus motor vehicles and gas rose 4.4% year over year in July, according to advance, seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s the lowest increase this year but still higher than every month in 2024.

“Consumers spent at a healthy pace in July, while sales in June were better than initially reported,” said ICSC research manager Matthew Panfel. “Spending was likely bolstered by back-to-school shopping and summer promotional events. On a year-over-year basis, sales at clothing stores, a popular back-to-school shopping venue, grew at the fastest rate in four months, while nonstore year-over-year growth was the most in three months.

July Year-Over-Year Growth in U.S. Sales

Seasonally adjusted, advance data

Newmark-Mountain West Partnership Covers 5 States

A new alliance with Mountain West Commercial Real Estate will boost Newmark’s presence in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. The partnership will operate as Newmark Mountain West, an independently owned Newmark licensee. Collectively, the two companies have completed more than $9.3 billion in deals since early 2022.