Content about California

Irvine Co.'s The Market Place is too big for one city. It sprawls across two. Split in two by Jamboree Road, the southern half of the 120-store, 165-acre center resides in Irvine, Calif. The northern half is in Tustin.

The huge regional destination center combines open-air lifestyle retail with big-box retail. Nationally known value- and quality-driven store names offer apparel, books, electronics, fitness, groceries, home furnishings and decor, movie theaters, restaurants, various services, sporting goods, toys, and on and on.

Robotics and smartphone app power Amazon vet's retail start-up

A Seattle-based retail start-up with an in-store backend robotic system and a smartphone app that rivals the convenience of an online shopping cart is generating big buzz these days. Founded and headed up by Nadia Shouraboura, former head of supply chain and fulfillment technologies for Amazon.com, Hointer combines the best of online and brick-and-mortar retailing to take the hassle out of shopping.

For the fourth consecutive year, there still is not enough ground-up shopping center construction to justify the "Fastest-Growing Developers" ranking that was Chain Store Age standard fare for two decades.

But we may be edging closer to resurrecting a ranking based on who is building new (or, more accurately, newly repurposed) space. Closer, but still not there.

A guest approaches the concierge desk and asks for help finding a gift. The concierge knows the retail selection and can help. If the product is unavailable here, the concierge will, if necessary, send her to another store across town.

That sounds like Nordstrom service.

But this isn't Nordstrom. It is the concierge desk at The Americana at Brand in Glendale, Calif., a mixed-use development from Los Angeles-based Caruso Affiliated. It's what happens at every center in the Caruso Affiliated portfolio of 2.1 million sq. ft. of retail and residential properties.

Brisbane, Calif. -- Bebe stores announced that it has promoted Liyuan Woo to the position of CFO.
   
Woo will succeed Walter J. Parks, COO and CFO, who is departing the company effective May 3. The COO position will be eliminated and CEO Steve Birkhold will assume the COO responsibilities.
 

Ontario, Calif. -- Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services announced it has named Kevin Boeve as regional manager of its Ontario office, Calif., office.

Boeve joined Marcus & Millichap in June 1999 and most recently served as VP investments.

Beachwood, Ohio -- DDR Corp. announced Monday that, during the first quarter, it acquired two prime assets in Dallas and in Oakland, Calif., for $81 million.

Also during the quarter, DDR disposed of $46 million of non-prime assets, including $8 million of non-income producing assets.

In the second installment of a case study series, CSA online continued to offer an insider’s look at the conception and initial rollout of the southern Calif.-based fast-casual concept PizzaRev. Likened to “the Chipotle of pizza,” this innovative chain lets customers choose from an artisanal array of toppings to craft their own pizzas. A test kitchen in Northridge, Calif., was launched in April 2012 and three additional locations soon followed.

Imagine a store with a back staff of robots, where items appear, almost magically, in the fitting room. A store where customers can pay for merchandise without interacting with a single salesperson. You can stop imagining …check out Hointer, an apparel (mostly men’s jeans) shop in Seattle. A second location is set to open by the end of April, at Stanford Mall, in Palo Alto, Calif.

Colton, Calif. -- The Hodgdon Group announced that it has completed construction of the conversion of a former Babies "R" Us building at Eastland Center in West Covina, Calif., for the opening of an Ashley Furniture HomeStore on March 15.

Hodgdon Group's HMC Construction handled all entitlements and served as the design-build contractor for the major renovation of the 42,000-sq.-ft. freestanding building. The West Covina location, in Eastland Center, represents the 15th Ashley Furniture HomeStore to be completed by the Hodgdon Group.

Consumer use of smartphones and tablets is helping to drive the growth of mobile transactions in retail. Chain Store Age spoke about the growing trend with Don Kingsborough, VP retail services, PayPal, which recorded $14 billion in mobile payments in 2012 and expects to exceed $20 billion this year. According to Kingsborough, PayPal is well-positioned to tap into mobile payment growth as it already has three key elements in place: a large consumer base (55 million-plus in the United States), a network of merchant partners and "ecosystem" partners.