Each of his 7, 000-square-foot stores had at least 1, 500 square feet or so to spare.

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Friday's demonstration remained relatively peaceful, at least inside the cordoned-off perimeter of Tahrir Square.

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To experience the best leg of Via's cross-country service, take the Snow Train, which runs from Vancouver's grand beaux arts railroad station through a series of stunning snowbound mountain ranges to the hamlet of Jasper in the middle of 4, 200-square-mile Jasper National Park (home to some of the world's best, least-crowded skiing, at Marmot Basin).

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Part of that though, is that the city has to have a state-of-the-art arena, a convention center that has at least 500, 000 square feet and 6, 000 hotel rooms in four to five star hotels.

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Big items will have to go elsewhere--7-Eleven stores average only 2, 600 square feet, after all--and it will take at least a year to roll out this network nationwide.

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Construction starts for U.S. offices are rising from 2010, when they totaled 57 million square feet, the lowest since at least 1960, according to McGraw-Hill Construction, which began keeping national data that year.

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Investors mulling retail stocks have well-established metrics to look at, among them inventory turnover (cost of sales divided by inventory), same-store-sales growth (the change in sales for stores open at least one year) and sales per square foot.

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