H-E-B plans to construct a 115,000-square-foot traditional H-E-B store and a 50,000-square-foot Joe V’s Smart Shop in Garland. The Garland City Council approved development agreements for both stores. The agreements approved by the City Council include incentive packages for both stores.

The Business Journal reports he company plans to invest roughly $19.6 million into the flagship location and approximately $8.5 million into the shopping center housing Joe V’s for additional facade and infrastructure upgrades.  

Meanwhile, H-E-B is closing its grocery store at Spicewood Springs Road and U.S. Highway 183 in Austin on July 31. The dated store at 12860 Research Blvd. is approaching the end of its lease.

H-E-B operates over 455 stores across the state and Mexico and its annual revenue last year totaled $49.6 billion.

The last quarter of 2025 came with price haircuts across much of the U.S. real estate landscape. Urban offices were hit particularly hard.

Commercial properties took price haircuts across the U.S. at the end of 2025, according to MSCI.

While MSCI’s commercial property price index last month rose 0.2% year-over-year, it fell 0.4% from November to December. And the drop from the third quarter to the fourth implies an annualized pace decrease of 3.5%. 

“Price growth has been softening in recent months,” the analysis says.

The office sector was hit the hardest, with central business district properties falling in the fourth quarter at an annualized pace of 7.9%. That metric for their suburban counterparts showed a 1.2% drop. 

Retail and industrial prices edged down slightly in December, and the only sector to see prices rise was multifamily, with a monthly increase of less than 0.1%.

Still, the value of apartment properties was down 1.3% year-over-year.

“Apartment’s softening prices mark a reversal of earlier momentum, as what had been nearly two years of moderating annual declines has given way to renewed pressure,” MSCI’s report says.  

The report also broke down geographic differences in commercial price changes. 

The markets with the largest price increases over the last year were Orlando, Florida; Houston; Baltimore; Phoenix; and Sacramento, California. 

The sharpest price drops in 2025 were found in Boston’s central business district, New York City’s outer boroughs, Seattle, San Francisco’s East Bay and Nashville. 

Boston’s CBD also had the largest price decline over the five-year period ending in 2025, the report found. The other markets with the biggest five-year slides were D.C.’s central business district, San Francisco, Los Angeles’ central business district and San Jose, California.

The markets with the most price growth over the last five years were South Florida; Orlando and Fort Myers/Sarasota/Naples, Florida; Charlotte; and LA’s Inland Empire. 

MSCI Executive Director Jim Costello said the data center boom masked distress in other parts of the market last year. 

“In the beginning of the year, there was optimism and some price growth, but it’s weakened as of late,” he told Bisnow last month.

The Kroger Co. is pulling back from developing a network of automated e-commerce fulfillment centers and will instead focus on expanding its brick-and-mortar grocery store network.  

The grocery chain announced it would close three of its eight robotics-powered fulfillment centers. The centers marked for closure are in Groveland, Florida, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and Frederick, Maryland. 

The company has also scrapped plans for another fulfillment center in Charlotte but will still build a previously planned fulfillment center in Phoenix.

With the announcement, the Cincinatti-based grocer admitted that its pandemic-era gambit to invest in robotics-focused warehouses to expand its market reach was dragging its e-commerce earnings into the red and creating significant headwinds for its bottom line.

“We haven’t allocated enough capital to growing stores because we have allocated a lot of capital in other areas like fulfillment centers,” Kroger Chairman and interim CEO Ronald Sargent said on an earnings call Thursday. 

The company anticipates taking a write-down of approximately $2.6B in 2026 because of the closures. As part of that, Kroger will make a one-time payment of $350M to UK-based robotics company Ocado, which built the robotic fulfillment systems.

Sargent said Kroger plans to open 14 new grocery stores in the fourth quarter and increase new-store builds by 30% throughout 2026. In June, the chain said it will actualize a net loss of 30 stores over 18 months as it closes 60 underperforming locations but opens 30 new ones, according to Food Business News.

GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders characterized Kroger’s push to focus on automated customer fulfillment centers as a “misadventure” undertaken during the tenure of former CEO Rodney McMullen, who resigned in March after an internal investigation into his conduct.

While the automated warehouses drove down the cost of picking and packing groceries for online orders, Kroger wasn’t able to deliver the groceries at the scale needed to offset the additional shipping costs of servicing a farther-flung network, McMullen said, according to CoStar. 

Kroger said it will now deepen its relationship with the third-party grocery delivery services Instacart, DoorDash and Uber Eats instead.

Since the announcement and earnings call, Kroger’s stock price has lost some 6% of its value, hovering near a six-month low of $63.31 in midday trading Friday.

The ride is nearly over for the Six Flags America and Hurricane Harbor amusement park in Prince George’s County, Maryland. 

An aerial view of Six Flags America in Prince George’s County, Maryland

The park is planning to close after this year’s operating season on Nov. 2, Six Flags Entertainment Corp. announced Thursday. 

Six Flags CEO Richard Zimmerman said it determined the park is “not a strategic fit” in its long-term growth plan. The company said it retained CBRE to market the 500-acre property for sale as a redevelopment play.

“After reviewing a number of options, we believe that marketing the property for redevelopment will generate the highest value and return on investment,” Zimmerman said in a statement. “We anticipate strong interest in the property and will continue to strategically pursue portfolio optimization opportunities as we work to unlock the full value of our portfolio.” 

The park sits just off MD-193 in Bowie, about 14 miles east of D.C. It opened as a Six Flags park in 1999, but the property had previously operated as a wildlife preserve since 1974, The Washington Post reported. 

The park has 70 full-time employees who will be laid off when it closes, with severance and benefits, Six Flags said. Zimmerman called it a “difficult decision” and said the company will work to support its employees. 

The Charlotte-based company said in November it would consider selling some parks after its $8B merger with Cedar Fair Entertainment. Six Flags operates 27 amusement parks, 15 water parks and nine resort properties across North America. 

Prince George’s acting County Executive Tara Jackson and the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corp. didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The closure is the latest in a series of blows to the economy of one of America’s richest majority-Black counties. 

Earlier this week, the NFL’s Washington Commanders announced the team plans to leave the county’s Northwest Stadium, which is located about 7 miles west of Six Flags, in 2030 to play in a new stadium at D.C.’s RFK Stadium site. Jackson said the county will work on a “bold vision” to redevelop the Northwest Stadium site. 

In March, President Donald Trump said he would halt the planned move of the FBI headquarters to Greenbelt. 

The county also lost a major private employer in tech company 2U, which had occupied more than 300K SF in New Carrollton before going into bankruptcy and then moving to a smaller space in Northern Virginia. And it has more than 30,000 federal jobs and additional contracting jobs that could be at risk from Trump’s cuts to federal agencies. 

A mystery buyer has apparently agreed to buy $725 million in debt on two of San Francisco’s largest hotels, reported the San Francisco Business Times. The 1,921-key Hilton San Francisco Union Square and 1,024-key Parc 55 San Francisco have been under court-appointed receivership since the fall of 2023, after owner Park Hotels & Resorts handed back the keys.

Eastdil Secured began marketing the debt on the two connected properties this past July. At that time, the two properties were appraised at roughly $554 million by Kroll Bond Rating Agency, a drop of more than $1 billion from their appraised value when the debt was originated.

The Business Times reported that the terms of the sale were still under discussion and the deal has not been finalized. The receiver is under a March 31 deadline to complete the deal or the debt will go back to lender JPMorgan for foreclosure.

Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. and Silverstein Properties, Inc. said Monday they had closed on Cantor Silverstein Opportunity Zone Trust II, Inc. with more than $470 million of equity raised. CSOZ Trust II includes four planned multifamily and mixed-use developments totaling 1,932 multifamily units and 1.5 million square feet and located in Tempe, AZ, Richmond, VA, Summerville, SC and Huntsville, AL.

“We have seen strong investor interest in this business, enabling us to build a diversified portfolio of institutional-quality multifamily real estate,” said Bill Ferri, global head of Cantor Fitzgerald Asset Management. “This growth underscores our commitment to creating lasting economic impact and revitalizing neighborhoods across the United States. We are optimistic about a potential extension to the overall Qualified Opportunity Zone Program to further drive meaningful growth.”

Cantor and Silverstein launched their Opportunity Zone business in early 2019 to invest in, develop, redevelop and manage a diversified portfolio of institutional quality commercial real estate assets. The firms are focused on multifamily properties located in Qualified Opportunity Zones in the U.S.

Pictured: Shorehaven, part of Cantor and Silverstein’s South Pier mixed-use development in Tempe, AZ.

Joann Fabrics announced it would be closing more than 800 of its locations, weeks after announcing the closure of 500 stores. That includes the 36 remaining stores in Illinois.

Prior to the announcement, the fabrics and crafts company had planned to keep a fraction of its stores open, including 26 of its 36 remaining stores in Illinois. Now, Joann has been sold as the result of its second bankruptcy filing in less than a year to the GA Group along with its prepetition term lender.

The winning bidders plan to wind down Joann’s operations at all store locations, including the 36 locations in the state. “In connection with this agreement, subject to Bankruptcy Court approval of the transaction, the winning bidders plan to begin winding down the Company’s operations and conduct going-out-of-business sales at all store locations,” said Joann in a statement.

The Hudson, Ohio-based retailer filed for bankruptcy a year ago, aiming to restructure its ballooning debt. The company filed for bankruptcy again in January, reporting $615.7 million in debt.

Fabrics and crafts retailer Joann will close 500 of its 800 stores in the coming months as it goes through its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to published reports. CNN reported that the closings cover all 50 states, with California, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington among those most heavily affected.

In its second bankruptcy filing last month, Joann cited inventory issues that were “acute and unexpected,” according to CNN. The company had previously revealed in court documents that it faced an “unexpected ramp-down, and, in some cases, the entire cessation of production” of some critical products.

The company also said it at the time it was looking for a buyer. Newly filed court documents reveal that as the “sale process progressed, and prospective bidders continued to conduct diligence and refine their potential bids, the debtors and their advisors were able to identify a subset of underperforming stores that are unlikely to be considered or included in any going concern bid.”

In all, more than 15,000 stores are projected to close across the U.S. this year, CNN reported, citing data from Coresight Research.

Hanley Investment Group Real Estate Advisors arranged the sale of two new construction, single-tenant properties occupied by a Quick Quack Car Wash to two private buyers within 30 days. The two properties in Grand Terrace and Lodi sold for a combined $5.38 million, each with a new absolute triple-net ground lease with an initial term of 20 years.

In the first transaction, Hanley EVPs Bill Asher and Jeff Lefko represented the seller and developer, 5th Street Development in Del Mar, in the sale of a new Quick Quack Car Wash ground lease at 22181 Barton Rd. in Grand Terrace for $2.7 million. The buyer, a Pasadena-based private investor, was represented by Patrick Toomey, executive director with Institutional Property Advisors. 

In the second transaction, Asher and Lefko represented the seller of a new ground lease at 515 S. Lower Sacramento Rd. in Lodi for $2.68 million. The property was developed by MEE Capital Investments and AdVal Properties, Inc. The buyer, a central California-based private investor, was represented by John Kourafas at Visintainer Group.

BRP Companies and The Prusik Group have updated their plans for the Mall West End property after it shuts down. With the mall set to officially close at the end of January, the development team has been working with legacy tenants to ensure that the uniqueness of the West End is preserved and upheld throughout the transformation.

During construction, several long-standing mall tenants will be relocated to a temporary on-site space at 850 Oak Street.

Once complete, One West End will feature 125,000 square feet of retail, including a grocery store, fitness center, diverse dining options, and local boutiques. The residential component will feature approximately 900 mixed-income residences, a mix of studio to three-bedroom units, with affordable units available to those earning between 50% and 80% of the area median income (AMI). Additionally, the development includes student housing, a planned 150-key hotel, and 12,000 square feet of medical office space.

Phase One of the redevelopment is expected to be completed in 2028.