Blu Dot: The Minneapolis furniture brand is growing. It leased a three-level, 12,346-square-foot store and a 2,700-square-foot rooftop showroom at Vornado Realty Trust’s 715 Lexington Ave. between East 57th and East 58th streets in New York City. That store will open before the second quarter of 2023, as will a Boston location. Units in Dallas, Miami and Palo Alto, California, are set to open this year. Blu Dot also hopes to find a location near its headquarters in Minneapolis.

G/Fore: The luxury golf lifestyle brand opened its first physical store, on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida. The company, owned by luxury retailer Peter Millar, launched in in 2011 and tested a pop-up on the tony shopping street before committing to a permanent store.

Lovepop: The 3D-greeting card brand plans to open three stores in 2022, including at New York City’s Grand Central Station. “We’ve seen a lot of success in locations where there’s a combination of transit, shopping, commercial activity and tourism,” said co-founder and CEO Wombi Rose. “We tried to find places where we actually have a broad exposure to a number of different customer types.”

Mutts Canine Cantina: The members-only off-leash dog park and grill concept signed a lease on the first of six planned units in the Phoenix metro. The first will open at SanTan Village in Gilbert, Arizona, in 2023. Mexico-based franchisee CF Group Investments helped execute the lease. CF also has Dunkin Donuts and Little Caesars franchises in the area. It plans to open additional Mutts Canine Cantina locations in Phoenix and the city’s Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Desert Ridge suburbs.

Neiman Marcus: The luxury retailer is touting its green goals and corporate social equity strategies in a new report. The Dallas company aims to cut carbon emissions 50% from a 2019 baseline by 2025 and to become 100% carbon neutral by 2030. It also intends to add more sustainable and ethical product lines and resale goods to its stores, to contribute more to local communities, to source more products from minority vendors and to increase racial diversity in leadership roles at the vice president level and above to 21% by 2025 and 28% by 2030 and.

Peak Design: The upscale camera gear and bag brand is opening its first East Coast store, in New York City’s Nolita. The store will double as a community gathering spot where the brand will host photography workshops, guided photography walks, product training and focus groups. Katz & Associates represented Peak Design. The brand has two existing locations, in San Francisco and in Tokyo. The New York store will open in the third quarter of 2022 with 2,050 square feet on the ground level and an additional 1,500 square feet in the basement. The lease is for seven years with a five-year option.

Saks Inc.: Americans are buying luxury goods again at Saks Inc.’s full-price stores and at its discount outlets, the company said. In the fourth quarter, sales at U.S. Saks Fifth Avenue stores that have been open for at least a year increased 22% over the fourth quarter of 2020. The company’s off-price Saks Off 5th stores that have been open for at least one year grew by 10.6%.

Starbucks: The retailer reiterated its commitment to opening more stores in underserved urban and rural areas. It operates 150 such “community stores,” which provide space for community events, forge partnerships with diverse artists and hire locally. Those locations that are near military bases also support military families. The company wants to grow its portfolio of community stores to 1,000 by 2030.

Sweetgreen: The salad chain is meeting customers where they are are with “outpost”  locations at offices, hospitals, residential buildings and public spaces. Sweetgreen couriers deliver pre-ordered salads to these spots for customer pickup. The fast-casual chain opened 200 outposts in the past six months and now has 550 outposts in 13 markets and 200 full-size locations. The success of the outposts indicates that more workers are returning to offices for at least part of the week, Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman said on an earnings call. Traditional stores are performing well, too, as customers seek healthy fast food. Sales at Sweetgreen stores that have been open for at least one year grew by 36% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter in 2020.

Target: The retailer is now operating what it calls its most sustainable store yet. The retrofitted store in Vista, California, will generate more renewable energy than it needs annually to operate and will test multiple innovations to reduce the building’s emissions. The unit will inform future Target stores and the retailer’s remodeling program. Among the store’s innovations: powering its HVAC heating through rooftop solar panels instead of natural gas. Its roof and newly installed carport canopies will feature 3,420 solar panels.

Von Maur: The department store operator will move this weekend into a new, 122,000-square-foot, two-level store in The Village of Rochester Hills near Detroit. Carson’s occupied the space before it closed in 2018. The store will be Von Maur’s fourth in the Detroit metro and its 36th overall.