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Shopping Centers Today -> February 2002
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YOUNG BUCKS
Desert Ridge Marketplace caters to affluent Gen-Y shoppers
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By Donna Mitchell
The owners of Desert Ridge Marketplace, in Phoenix, reserved the best part of their newest shopping center for an increasingly cherished demographic: Generation Y.
Instead of merely putting up with the young people that swarm through the retail spaces of its latest project, Desert Ridge Marketplace, Phoenix-based Vestar Development Co. decided to create a centerpiece retail, restaurant and entertainment area around its young patrons.
This focal point, called The District, is located in the middle of the $180 million, 1.2 million-square-foot retail project and caters to Generation-Y shoppers (generally, those between the ages of 8 and 21) through such retailers as Hot Topic, Journeys, Eye Candy and Limited Too.
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Desert Ridge is the area’s second center that is geared to young people. Twenty-five miles away Westcor Partners, of Phoenix, skewed the retail mix at its Chandler (Ariz.) Fashion Center, a hybrid mall it opened in Chandler, Ariz., last October, to appeal to younger shoppers.
The decision by Vestar and Westcor to infuse youthful tones into their centers makes good business sense, according to observers. Both are surrounded by growing communities of young families, and that calls for centers that will provide retail and entertainment. Desert Ridge Marketplace is part of a master planned community called Desert Ridge, which will include up to 18,200 homes when it is completed in another 10 to 12 years.
Technically an open-air hybrid center combining power center and mall tenants, Desert Ridge Marketplace opened last November. Its developers refer to the project as a lifestyle center, even though its layout and tenants depart from the usual lifestyle center concept; there are no upscale home-oriented retailers, and the street setting, full of color, music and graphics, is far less subdued than the adjacent area for baby boomers.
“The lifestyle in this characterization is geared towards the Generation-Y consumer,” said Vestar’s executive vice president, David Larcher. The District’s vibrant streetscape is inspired by such places as Times Square in New York City, the developer says. Spanning 400,000 square feet, The District is anchored by an 18-screen AMC cinema at the east end, with Barnes & Noble, Tower Records and Jillian’s, an entertainment emporium, at the western edge. Vestar arranged the 25 Generation-Y retailers along a closely grouped pedestrian corridor.
Vestar tried hard to give The District sensory stimulants that make for good gathering places. An amphitheater in the common area allows Vestar to host musical events and other performances. Next to a rock-climbing wall is a large, outdoor video screen that plays footage of extreme sports. There are three grand “outdoor living room” areas, each one replete with torches, water fountains, fireplaces and restaurants, said Mark Tweed, formerly a principal at MCG Architects, who designed the entire project when he was at the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based firm. (Tweed launched his own company, HTH Group of Beverly Hills, after completing Desert Ridge Marketplace.) The fountains keep the air cool in the daytime, and the fireplaces ward off the cold desert air at night. According to Tweed, “Having your meal near fire or water is soothing.”
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Embracing young shoppers is smart, say industry observers, noting the group’s considerable spending resources and shopping savvy. In 2000, U.S. teen-agers spent about $155 billion, primarily on clothing and entertainment, according to Teen Research Unlimited, a New York City-based market research firm. There are 32 million teen-agers in the United States, a number that is expected to increase dramatically in the next decade, as the children of baby boomers start to have their own families.
Much of that windfall stems from divorce rates, said Carolyn Feimster, SCMD, president of CJF Marketing International, a Franklin Park, N.J.-based shopping center management company.
“Kids end up with numerous sets of grandparents, who give them money,” she said. But on the brighter side, teen-agers also get cash from jobs in malls, where they earn employee discounts on clothes, noted Kathy Anderson, SCMD, executive director and vice president at Phoenix-based Shop America Alliance, a marketing association for tourism and shopping destinations.
Such a large pool of big spenders will call for more mall neighborhoods dedicated to this group, experts say. Indeed, a handful of malls with youth-oriented neighborhoods have answered the call, including the Glendale (Calif.) Galleria, which opened a 15,000-square-foot section called The Zone in July 2000. The Zone’s tenants have sales that are 50 percent higher than those achieved by the merchants there before, said Candace Rice, SCMD, CLS, senior vice president for Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Donahue Schriber.
The rest of Desert Ridge Marketplace, about 800,000 square feet, comprises a parking lot surrounding The District and an outer perimeter featuring big-box stores that include Kohl’s, Target, Albertson’s and Marshall’s to cater to value-hunting parents.
Grown-ups are not left out of the fun, either. MCG Architects added touches to Desert Ridge Marketplace that make visitors feel as if they are being drawn into an exotic adventure, explained Larcher. Fourteen 40-foot tall obelisks line Highway 101, abutting the shopping center, each bearing the name of major retailers in the center; they become flaming torches at night to light the way inside.
Shoppers enter Desert Ridge Marketplace on a 700-foot-long cobblestone road lined with palm trees. Circling the parking lots, they are greeted with music from speakers and the aroma of food cooking in the restaurants. A series of covered walkways leading into The District offer shade from the desert sun. Since Desert Ridge Marketplace was built on a dry riverbed in the desert, Tweed’s team used shattered rock throughout the center and included high terra-cotta arches to capture the feeling of that environment, he said.
And yes, adults are welcome in The District, too. Indeed, the developer is counting on their support during the evenings; it contains 12 restaurants and an upscale dance bar.
“It’s something for the whole family,” Larcher said. This is important, because young adults and teen-agers probably won’t provide enough critical mass to justify gearing entire malls to that group, CJF’s Feimster explained. But the “clustering of those areas is definitely something we’ll be seeing more of in the future.”
Even where malls don’t set aside areas for young shoppers, developers are nevertheless catering to them. Chicago-based General Growth Properties’ Teen Xtreme campaign, a two-year-old marketing campaign aimed at Generation Y, has helped introduce a more trendy set of retailers to the REIT’s malls, said Penny Barre, vice president of marketing for General Growth.
Like other developers, General Growth knows it cannot afford to ignore this affluent group of shoppers.
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