Envy Apartment

It took less than a month to find a new use for the palatial sandstone building in the heart of Edinburgh that was once a jewel of Sir Philip Green ’s retail empire. The Scottish capital was one of more than 100 British towns and cities to see a large gap open up in its high street when BHS collapsed last year. For some provincial shopping streets , the clothing and homeware outlet had been their biggest draw. The chain’s demise has forced landlords to be creative in filling those gaps, often by embracing gym operators and pound shops as well as other retailers, in the hope they can seed life in the darkened stores. With other department stores looking vulnerable, having survived a cyclical downturn only to be plunged into a new battle against obsolescence, what has happened to BHS’s stores might prove instructive for the future. Scottish Home Stores on Princes Street in Edinburgh © Alamy On Edinburgh’s bustling Princes Street , local entrepreneurs reopened the former BHS as “ S...

Two brothers are at war over one of Victoria's biggest real estate empires , worth more than $500 million, four decades after their Italian family founded the dynasty. Former Carlton Football Club director and developer Colin De Lutis lives in a Toorak mansion three doors from younger brother Paul , who has taken him to the Supreme Court over how their property and business assets will be sliced up. Colin and Paul De Lutis are battling each other in the Supreme Court .  Photo: Supplied Paul has wanted out of the family business since 2014 but an acrimonious argument is playing out in the Supreme Court  over the break-up. Together with their mother Anna the brothers own 38 properties worth more than half a billion dollars, amassed since the family bought a Smith Street, Collingwood, shop in 1973. There, the family founded Westco Jeans and grew it into a chain of 160 retail outlets. It sold in 1999 for $85 million. That money was sunk into property and the De Lutis portfolio ...