Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is going local with its latest investment in U.S. real estate.

Norges Bank Investment Management invested $500M with Asana Partners to buy high-quality neighborhood retail assets, the Charlotte-based retail investment firm announced Tuesday. It is at least the second — and a relatively small — bet on U.S. retail real estate from Norges this year.

Asana Partners, which has more than $9B in assets under management, and Norges are creating a fund called Asana Partners Strategic Partners I to hold the investments. The strategic partnership is starting with a 50% stake in a portfolio of grocery-anchored retail centers but will also target unanchored centers, street retail and mixed-used assets for investment.

“Forming APSP I reflects our shared conviction in the strength and resilience of neighborhood retail real estate and expands our existing capability to capitalize on attractive investment opportunities across the country,” Asana partner Reed Kracke said in a statement.

Asana and Norges didn’t disclose the properties the sovereign wealth fund bought into and declined a request from Bisnow to provide additional details Tuesday morning. Asana’s portfolio spans 10.3M SF in 25 cities, according to its website.  

The partnership with Norges is running alongside Asana’s existing Asana Partners Select Fund, and Asana has acquired at least two assets separately since the start of the year. It paid $151M for a Huntington Beach, California, shopping center in February, the same month it cut a deal to acquire a 197K SF retail center called The Arboretum in Austin.

The investment comes after Norges announced a strategic pivot to diversify its real estate investments across sectors and geographies.

The manager of some $2.2T in assets as part of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global said in December that it would invest up to 7% of its capital in global real estate, with a focus on buying into platforms and funds. Norges is looking to hold a diversified portfolio spread across the globe, with 30% to 70% of its portfolio allocated to North America. 

The three-year strategic plan aims to create a more balanced portfolio after the firm told the Norwegian government in a November letter that its real estate investments had underperformed its equity and bond holdings. 

Norges has already been putting some of that capital into grocery-anchored retail. Last month, it partnered with TPG, PSP Investments, La Caisse and others to buy Echo Realty and its 230 retail centers across the Midwest and Southeast in a deal valued at around $2B. 

Grocery-anchored retail and other necessity-based asset classes have become popular investment targets for institutional capital, including a $1.6B fund launched in December by Bain Capital Real Estate and 11North.

Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based CenterSquare has acquired four retail properties, adding to the firm’s essential service retail portfolio.

The latest additions bring CenterSquare’s portfolio to 80 properties nationwide. The acquisitions include the Trade Court Shoppes in Charlotte, the Deer Valley Shops in Phoenix, Lake Mead Gateway Plaza in Henderson, and The Shops at Foothills Mall in Fort Collins.

The Trade Court Shops is a 100% occupied property spanning 14,721 square feet and is the company’s 10th property in the Charlotte MSA. Deer Valley Shops features 17,043 square feet of retail space and is 83% leased. It is CenterSquare’s seventh property in the Phoenix MSA.

Lake Mead Gateway Plaza is a 19,671-square-foot retail center that is 100% occupied and marks the firm’s sixth acquisition in the Las Vegas MSA. CenterSquare’s fourth Colorado property, The Shops at Foothills Mall, is a 111,220-square-foot asset that is currently 88% leased.

StreetLIghts and Eastern Federal have been greenlit by the Charlotte City Council to move ahead on the redevelopment of a site that includes a vintage theater. Eastern Federal owns the theater site.

Dubbed The Manor, The Charlotte Business Journal reports the project is expected to include between 120 and 130 residential units and about 35,000 square feet of retail uses. The site currently has about 40,000 square feet of existing retail space, including the 70-year-old Regal Manor Twin Theatre, which closed during COVID.

Besides the movie theater, the site has a few retail buildings and an office building. It’s not yet clear what will be done to the structures as the project moves forward.

On its website, StreetLights Residential says it takes a design-centric approach to urban development, focusing on multifamily apartment homes and mixed-use developments. 

Harrison Street Asset Management offloaded a 106,000 Atlanta shopping center for $55.4 illion. Peachtree Station was purchased by TA Realty.

The Whole Foods-anchored center is 100% leased. The lease remains in effect until 2037. Other tenants include Starbucks, Chipotle, Cava, Verizon Wireless and First Watch.

JLL, which helped broker the deal, says the Whole Foods location ranks as the fourth-most-visited store in Georgia and among the top 40% of all Whole Foods locations nationwide by foot traffic, with an estimated 865,000-plus annual visits.

JLL represented Harrison Street in the deal. The JLL Capital Market’s Investment Sales and Advisory team included Jim Hamilton, Brad Buchanan, Andrew Kahn, Andrew Michols, Charlie Merrigan, Anton Serafini and John Perry Hilton.

The property benefits from its proximity to Atlanta’s most prestigious neighborhoods including Brookhaven, Buckhead and Sandy Springs, with strong daytime employment from nearby commercial centers and DeKalb Peachtree Airport, Georgia’s second-busiest airport.

The Q1 2026 retail reports agreed on several things. First, negative net absorption rates were reported across all five write-ups, with the lone exception being CBRE’s “U.S. Retail Figures.” Still, “multiple bankruptcy filings triggered a wave of closures, which added available space to the market,” the CBRE analysts explained.

Second, those bankruptcy backfills are being snapped up by what Colliers “U.S. Retail Figures” write-up called steady demand, adding that a “clear bifurcation persists, with tight availability for spall spaces and more modest availability among large anchor boxes.

Third, the construction pipeline continues to dwindle. JLL, in its “Retail Market Dynamics” report, said that gross deliveries of 7.8 million square feet were “partially offset by 2.6 million square feet of demolitions, comprising obsolete department stores and underperforming strip centers. As a result, net new supply “equated to roughly 5.2 million square feet for the quarter,” the JLL analysts said.

Additional reasons were given for flat rent growth and negative absorption. Newmark’s “Retail Market Conditions & Trends” said that market uncertainty didn’t help matters as “consumer sentiment continues to be negatively affected by lingering inflation, uncertainty about the job market and the impact of the Iran conflict on fuel costs and potentially other prices.” Still, Newmark analysts and others said that retail sales and consumer spending remain in positive territory.

Meanwhile, Cushman & Wakefield’s “MarketBeat” said that first quarters are generally slower for retail leasing, while “severe winter weather may have curtailed activity more than normal this year.”

As for the outlook, all the reports said that continued supply shortages will continue to exert pressure on rent growth. At the same time, consumer sentiment is worth keeping an eye on. “If elevated oil prices persist, higher costs for gasoline, utilities and consumer products are likely to weigh on household budgets and consumer confidence in Q2 and potentially longer,” said Cushman & Wakefield analysts.

JLL added that the supply situation isn’t likely to change anytime soon, adding that “location will matter more than the national average.” All the reports said that the Sun Belt markets outpaced the rest of the country in retail metrics, driven by population growth. “For the remainder of 2026, performance will be less about the market overall, and more about which markets a portfolio is in,” JLL researchers added.

Colliers forecast that limited supply, combined with robust demand, means a quick backfill, though Newmark analysts noted that backfill activity isn’t showing signs of slowing.

Newmark added that stagnant, older retail space could make the case for additional retail construction. But with construction costs still high and rents unable to justify new development, opportunities could exist in redeveloping underperforming centers “through redesign or mixed-use conversion,” which will remove outdated space from the market and “ultimately reduce the total retail footprint,” Newmark researchers said.

Meanwhile, as retailers are likely to remain cautious about near-term leasing while they monitor consumer conditions, Cushman & Wakefield researchers indicated that a broad pullback is unlikely.

“Assuming easing energy prices and a resilient labor market with only modest unemployment increases, retail demand should remain resilient, supporting vacancy stabilization through year-end,” they added.

Empire Group of Companies has replaced Diversified Partners with SimonCRE to complete the buildout of a proposed 120,000-square-foot retail center in Carefree. The Phoenix Business Journal reports the move was made due to an issue with delivering tenants. The Carefree Quarter project is expected to cost $60 million to build. The development will break ground in early 2027. Empire Group acquired the land in 2017 for $6.5 million.

The plan is for a 30,000-square-foot grocery store with a 16,000-square-foot building attached. There will also be three shops and eight pad buildings ranging in size from 1,700 square feet to 4,700 square feet,

Empire is working on a project in downtown Phoenix that will become Arizona’s tallest tower. Arro is a 1.8 million-square-foot development that includes two towers, each home to a hotel, residential units, a restaurant and office space. Anticipated groundbreaking is early next year.

The Raleigh skyline

Retail space is becoming such a hot commodity in North Carolina’s urban markets that developers are changing their plans to include more of it.

New York-based Tidal Real Estate Partners has altered plans for its proposed 20-story mixed-use tower in downtown Raleigh to add retail space, the Triangle Business Journal reported. The project’s ground-floor retail space will now span 20,601 SF instead of the originally planned 18,650 SF.

A Colliers Raleigh-Durham Q1 2026 retail market report noted that this is “the fourth consecutive year the market has maintained sub-3% vacancy, highlighting the ongoing scarcity of available space.” Raleigh’s Village District even has a waitlist for retailers looking to lease space, TBJ reported. 

A Marcus & Millichap retail forecast published in March ranked Raleigh and Charlotte as the top two retail markets in the U.S. Throughout last year, the report found, Raleigh withstood the departures of many big-box retailers through increased leasing demand from small-business owners.

Andrew Margulies, Marcus & Millichap’s senior managing director of investments for the Carolinas, previously told Bisnow that there is an almost unlimited appetite for well-located retail centers in both Charlotte and Raleigh. 

Several of Raleigh’s incoming high-rises will include ground-level retail, among them the 20-story The Strand, a predominantly residential building with nearly 9K SF of retail, and the 37-story Highline Glenwood, another residential building that will include 7,500 SF of retail.

With Tidal’s revamped plans for its tower, which sits on a 1.4-acre lot at 521 and 529 S. Wilmington St. and 108 Stronachs Alley, the developer has also added parking space and taken away some apartment units. There will now be 368 parking spaces in a 153,812 SF parking deck instead of 313 spaces in a 166,400 SF deck, as well as 13 fewer apartment units.

These changes — part of Tidal’s application to extend the approved site plans, which had been set to expire in February — have increased the size of the proposed tower from about 583K SF to just under 591K SF. 

The developer reportedly originally paid $12M for the site in 2021. 

Tidal’s extension was permitted, and the revised plans are good until January 2028, according to TBJ. While the developer has not yet submitted an application for a building permit, the site review process is already complete. 

Tidal’s other Raleigh projects in the works include the renovation and rebranding of its Holiday Inn on Hillsborough Street and the construction of a 13-story luxury hotel next to it.

Coterie Properties is leading a team aiming to transform The Station and Jefferson Plaza office properties along Holcomb Bridge Road in Norcross into a mixed-use development.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports plans include 320 wrap-style apartments, 30 townhomes and 16,100 square feet of restaurant and retail space.

The first phase of the redevelopment would focus on a pair of restaurant and retail buildings that would rise on the footprints of two existing buildings.

The rest of the buildings to the south of the creek would be torn down to make room for the apartments and townhomes.

A second phase of the project would likely include a new parking deck and approximately 150 age-restricted apartments for people ages 55 and older, replacing surface parking behind Jefferson Plaza.

With an estimated price tag exceeding $100 million, the first phase would be built concurrently and take about two years to complete.

Norcross City Council would have to rezone the properties in order for the project to move forward.

For single-tenant net lease (STNL) retail in the second half of 2025, Colliers reported a steady but increasingly selective environment, shaped by cautious consumer spending, tariff pressures, elevated construction costs and tighter capital markets. Vacancy held near 4.3% and new supply was still constrained by high development and financing costs.

Sales volume increased to $6.5 billion, a 14% increase from H1 2025. with the drugstore sector alone up 49%. The median cap rate for sales compressed to 6.7%, down 10 basis points, while the median price per square foot fell to $294, 4.9% lower than in H1.

“Deal activity increasingly reflected a preference for smaller format retail assets because of necessity-oriented tenants and investors’ continued focus on liquidity, operational efficiency, and long-term income
durability within the STNL sector,” wrote Anjee Solanki, Colliers national director, Retail Services & Practice Groups | U.S., and Nicole Larson, senior manager, National Retail Research | U.S.

Charlotte and Raleigh have emerged as the top two retail markets in the country, according to Marcus & Millichap’s 2026 Retail Investment Forecast Report published March 12.

The report weighs a mixture of forward-looking economic indicators and supply-and-demand variables over a 12-month period. 

Nationwide, the retail sector exhibited resiliency in 2025, with a rise in vacancy in the first half of the year followed by surging demand to finish the year strong, the report stated. 

Charlotte ended the year with accelerating net absorption while holding one of the 10 lowest vacancy rates among major markets, according to the report. Momentum in the city was driven by big-box, single-tenant move-ins. Those included new leases by supermarkets such as Publix, Harris Teeter and Lowes Foods.

Andrew Margulies, Marcus & Millichap’s senior managing director of investments for the Carolinas, told Bisnow that soft goods discount chains like T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and Burlington were also key drivers of positive retail activity in Charlotte, reflecting the budget-consciousness of many consumers.

“That category has really excelled over the past five to seven years in terms of new store accounts, fewer store closures, actually just adding more stores and absorbing more space,” Margulies said. 

The metro area experienced slowing construction and growing net absorption, combining for a 3.5% vacancy rate. That’s 40 basis points under the city’s trailing 10-year average, according to the report.

Raleigh-Durham actually weathered the departures of several notable big-box retailers, and its positive retail fundamentals were driven by small-shop demand. A rise in completed projects in Raleigh-Durham helped vacancy to tick up slightly to 3.0%, but that still ranked second-lowest among major U.S. markets. 

Marcus & Millichap’s report noted that years of “robust in-migration and household formation” have supported significant demand for retail space throughout the Southeast. Margulies said there is almost unlimited appetite right now for well-located retail centers in both Charlotte and Raleigh, putting upward pressure on pricing. 

“In some cases for the same asset that may have sold 12 months ago at one price, today actually could be worth more just from cap rate compression,” he said.

As office vacancy remains high after boom years in the state and the region still working off a glut of multifamily overbuilding, retail has become the coveted asset class in the area, Margulies said. 

“From a financing perspective, it is one of the most coveted asset classes for investing and commercial real estate,” he said. “If you lose a tenant in a building, you sometimes have two, three, four, five, six options of other tenants you could backfill the space with.”