Bed Bath & Beyond locations across America will soon be replaced by Burlington Stores outposts and a range of other businesses, after the failed home goods retailer auctioned off its leases as part of its bankruptcy proceedings, court records show. The doomed big-box store selected bidders for 109 of its leases after a Monday auction. Off-price giant Burlington agreed to take over 44 of the locations for $12 million, the largest share of the leases, records filed late Tuesday show. Burlington secured six more leases for $1.53 million outside the auction process, bringing the total number of locations to 50 for $13.53 million, records show. Many of the locations are considered “top notch,” said Bill Read, executive
vice president of commercial real estate firm Retail Specialists. Bed Bath’s lease auction provided retailers in growth mode an opportunity to snag space in prime locations amid a dearth of quality commercial real estate. “In aggregate, the Bed Bath & Beyond locations were some of the best that I’ve seen become available. They’re usually in large community centers with Target as an anchor and multiple other desirable anchor tenants in the shopping center,” Read told CNBC. “These are generally in well-established, mature markets that have a proven track record of generating high sales,” he continued. Several other retailers snatched up the leases.
Here’s a list of the top winners:
Macy’s paid $1.2 million for a lease in ritzy Winter Park, Florida, for a potential Bloomingdale’s location, and Barnes & Noble secured a lease in Concord, North Carolina, for $129,015. Landlords apart from those companies won 37 of the leases, the next-largest portion after Burlington. Those landlords can now find their own tenants and potentially get a higher rent price than they’d be able to within the auction process. The leases are for both Bed Bath & Beyond and Buy Buy Baby locations. Leases for the Buy Buy Baby outposts could be clawed back depending on what happens at an auction for the chain’s assets, Bed Bath & Beyond said in a court filing. The leases sold are for stores that range in size from 14,000 square feet all the way to 92,000 square feet.
Source: CNBC