ICSC: International Council of Shopping Centers

Mixed-use malls are the future, conference hears

Mixing other uses with a mall has been the exception until now. Expect it to become the rule, says a leading advocate of mixed-use development.

Mixed-use development has gone from novelty to normality in about two decades, Yaromir Steiner, founder and CEO of Columbus, Ohio–based Steiner + Associates, told a full hotel ballroom of attendees Tuesday during the keynote speech of ICSC’s 2008 Conference on Mixed Use Development in downtown Chicago “Open air is essential, drivable streets connected to the local street grid are important, and public spaces are the anchors of the projects.”

Steiner, a pioneer developer of the mixed-use town center concept, that the concept has gone from novelty to normality in about two decades. Current economic conditions have put the brakes on most kinds of development for now, but when conditions turn around, developers, financiers, tenants and even municipalities will once again eagerly pursue mixed-use town centers.

Mixed-use town center developers will build on the ideas that have evolved over the last 20 years, Steiner noted. “Open air is essential, drivable streets connected to the local street grid are important, and public spaces are the anchors of the projects.”

Steiner also offered a number of ideas about the direction mixed-use town center development will take in the future. “For one thing, municipal planners will not only support such projects, in some cases, they will require them,” he said, since towns, cities and counties now understand the positive impact such projects have on a local coffers. “It’s already happened a few times.”

Moreover, he continued, the non-retail components of such mixed-use developments will probably increase in the future into the range of 30 percent to 40 percent of the total investment, maybe even more than half. “It’s been established that all of the other components — apartments, hotel, office — do better in concert with the retail component,” he said, though he added that legal and financial separation of the components might be necessary to get financing for the entire project.

Developers may have considerably more experience with mixed-use town centers than before, but Steiner stressed that that doesn’t mean the projects will be any easier going forward. Mixed-use town center developers will need a more holistic view of their business in the future, he said, as did “early developers who created distinct places, such as J.C. Nichols [creator of Country Club Plaza in Kansas City] and Addison Mizner [father of Boca Raton]. “ ‘Renaissance’ developers will be needed.”