A two-day Valentine’s pop-up shop is slated to open this week in Midtown to benefit the American Heart Association, according to Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s retail group. Running from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 11 and 12, the Heart Boutique will include jewelers De Beers, Judith Ripka and Van Cleef & Arpels, along with Saks Fifth Avenue and other retailers. The pop-up shop, at 10 West 56th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, aims to be a one-stop Valentine’s Day gift shop, according to a release from Consolo. TRD

From the January issue: Faith Hope Consolo is the chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s retail leasing and sales division. Before joining Elliman in 2005, she served as vice chairman of Garrick-Aug Worldwide for nearly 20 years, founding the firm’s international division in 1987 and opening the European office in Paris. In a sit-down interview with The Real Deal, Consolo opened up about her parents’ deaths at a young age, her love of shopping, why she hasn’t touched Botox and her dating life. Click here to see the full interview.

From the December issue: Some Manhattan landlords are looking to get into the profit-sharing business. While the practice is not widespread in New York, so-called percentage rent is on the rise here, some brokers said.

Percentage renting “is definitely growing in New York City,” said Patrick Breslin, president of retail at Grubb & Ellis.

The pay structure — in which the landlord takes a base rent plus an additional amount if the retailer achieves a certain sales threshold, or “breakpoint” — has long been used in malls, brokers said.

About five years ago, percentage rents started appearing in Manhattan leases.

These days, brokers noted that they’re now seeing a slight uptick in these types of deals. [more]

From the December issue: All indicators are pointing toward this holiday shopping season in New York City outperforming the past two, which were among the worst in decades. At the same time, an increase in leasing activity in the city seen in the past year is expected to continue going into 2011 — especially if retailers have a strong showing this month.

Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of retail leasing at Prudential Douglas Elliman, believes that New York City retailers will do at least 2 to 3 percentage points better this holiday season than the past two years.

Jeff Roseman, executive vice president at Newmark Knight Frank, said consumer spending has been “pent up” for the past two years. “Retailers are discounting earlier and more often, and this could create the perfect storm for shoppers,” he said, predicting a “surprisingly good” holiday season. [more]

Retail vacancies continued to climb through the first quarter of 2010, according to real estate tracking firm Reis. Community shopping centers and shopping malls saw vacancy rates hit 10.8 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively, in the first quarter of 2010. The overall Reis outlook on retail is quite grim. The report predicts that consumer spending is unlikely to stabilize over the next 18 months and, therefore, “project[s] increasing vacancy levels and negative asking and effective rent growth through 2011,” the report says.

Retail real estate could be on its way back, with recovery expected to begin in 2010, according to the latest data from Real Capital Analytics. Additionally, the overall shopping environment could be favoring smaller retail real estate firms, a trend that some industry experts predict may continue. While larger retail landlords, like U.S. shopping mall owner General Growth Properties, have suffered in the recession, smaller property owners are able to more quickly adjust to changing economic conditions, according to Adam Ginsburg, co-chairman of GDC Properties, a shopping center owner operating out of Hawthorne, N.Y. “Because of our size, decisions work themselves to the top of the company fairly quickly,” Ginsburg said. “We have a very flat organization and can pull the trigger faster than those that have to go through management layers such as investment committees.” September saw the first monthly gain in same store sales across the country — albeit a .1 percent gain — the first jump in more than a year. With shopping activity possibly stabilizing, the 2009 holiday season could be crucial for retail real estate, according to Retail Traffic magazine. Al Williams, principal with Excess Space Retail Services, a real estate lease restructuring firm, said that if the holiday shopping season doesn’t go smoothly, the U.S. could see between 6,000 and 8,000 store closings in the first two quarters of 2010. [Retail Traffic Mag] and

Many pop-up shops are finding that a pop-up status can be a good first step toward permanent residency in New York City. One-time pop-uppers, like Kai D. menswear store at 75 Orchard Street between Grand and Broome streets, are signing long-term leases after their short-term occupancies run out, Crain’s reported. The strategy is also working for desperate landlords, who eagerly sign-on the temporary shops when tenants are hard to come by. After running its temporary shop for a month, Kai D. was able to negotiate a 13-month extension on its lease with its landlord, Dermott Co. Aaron Odle, a representative for Kai D., said that being able to move into the space temporarily helped it take the leap into permanent status. “You really need to be in a space to test it out, and we’ve decided that staying is the right thing to do,” Odle said.