Chicago — Englewood Construction, one of the country’s leading commercial construction firms, has five new retail projects to kick off 2012.

“These projects are an excellent start to what already promises to be a great year for us in the retail sector,” says William Di Santo, president of Lemont, Ill.-based Englewood Construction. “Based on the work we have on the books already, as well as the number of projects we continue to see coming through our estimating department, we’re very optimistic about what the coming year holds for us as a company, as well as for the commercial construction industry as a whole.”

Di Santo notes that four of these five projects are located inside malls, which he takes as a positive sign for the shopping center sector.

“In the last year we’ve seen a real surge in the number of projects moving into empty mall space, and that trend seems to be continuing in 2012,” says Di Santo. “There is prime retail space available for smart retailers to occupy, and things certainly look to be moving in the right direction for shopping malls when you see previously vacated retail space starting to fill up again.”

In fact, in its newest project for Wisconsin-based doll retailer American Girl, Englewood Construction will combine four vacant storefronts into one large 15,000-square-foot retail space for American Girl. The project, located in The Falls Mall in Miami, marks the seventh store Englewood Construction has built for American Girl.

Construction on the 15,000-square-foot store, which is American Girl’s first Florida location, will start this spring and is scheduled for completion in November 2012. Pasadena, Calif.-based Jacobs Engineering Group is serving as architect for the store.

Englewood Construction is also renovating mall space as part of three new projects for maternity clothing retailer Destination Maternity.

The first project was a 4,007-square-foot Destination Maternity store in Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., which was completed in January. The construction firm also recently completed two stores for the maternity retailer under the Motherhood Maternity name: a 1,852-square-foot store located in The Shoppes at Grand Prairie Mall in Peoria, Ill.; and a 1,537-square-foot store at Marketplace at Seminole Towne Center in Sanford, Fla. The architect for all three projects is Cortland Morgan, Architects out of Arlington, Texas.

In the Chicago area, Englewood Construction is under contract with Brixmor to complete an interior build-out for party supply retailer Party City. Scheduled for completion this month, the 11,930-square-foot Party City store is located in the Annex of Arlington Heights along the Rand Road corridor in Arlington Heights, Ill. The retail space was formerly occupied by retailer Pier One Imports. The architect for the project is Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based JTS Architects.

Englewood Construction, Inc. is a commercial general contractor specializing in the construction of retail, restaurant, shopping center, hotel, education and office/industrial projects throughout the United States. For more information, visit www.englewoodconstruction.com.