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LOCAL FLAVOR

Neighborhood businesses play key role at new Georgia super-regional

By Donna Mitchell

Forest City Enterprises didn’t just bring an upscale shopping center to the neighborhood when it built The Mall at Stonecrest in an Atlanta suburb; the developer also brought the neighborhood to the mall.

Stonecrest, which opened in Lithonia, DeKalb County, in October, is bringing upscale retail to a formerly affluent area that declined during the last recession. But the developers have deliberately tweaked its tenant mix to integrate key local institutions and make it part of the local fabric. Twenty-three local entrepreneurs are among the tenants, including a bookstore spun off from a major Atlanta church; the first mall location for a famous New York City restaurant; and a branch for Citizens Trust Bank, one of the first banks to be owned by African-Americans. The mall will also feature a local entrepreneur’s new concept for upscale men’s retail.

“We wanted to recognize and be part of the community,” said Harriet Edwards, regional director of leasing for Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, which teamed up with Toronto-based commercial developer Cadillac Fairview Corp. to build Stonecrest.

There was as much consideration given to the selection of local tenants as to the national chains. Conquer 2, the Christian bookstore, taps into the strong Southern churchgoing tradition. The store is operated by The New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, located a mile away, which claims about 27,000 congregants. The mall location is the church’s first off-site bookstore. Sylvia’s Restaurant, which serves Southern cooking and first opened in New York City’s Harlem, already has a popular restaurant in downtown Atlanta. And opening a branch of Citizens Trust Bank, founded in 1921 by African-Americans, brings an authentic piece of Atlanta history to the mall, Edwards observed.

There is nothing mom-and-pop about any of the other local tenants, either, Edwards said. Zachary Christian, the new retail concept, offers men’s upscale fashion while also catering to its customers’ innate attraction to electronic gadgets. Located close to Parisian, Zachary Christian sells men’s suits by such designers as Jhane Barnes and Giorgio Armani, along with electronic equipment such as portable DVD players, personal digital assistants and executive desktop stereo components. It also sells men’s toiletries and face washes for those too busy (or shy) to visit a cosmetics counter at, say, Parisian.

The Mall at Stonecrest is the ideal place to open this newest Zachary Christian, said Michael B. Allen, president and CEO of the Atlanta-based store, adding that he hopes to have a chain of 12 stores in 10 years.

“Forest City has done a great job in embracing the entrepreneurial spirit, with the economy like it is,” he said.

Edwards says it was Allen’s convincing business plan and those of the other locally owned tenants that earned these stores spaces inside the mall.

“These are well-run companies,” she said. “We do not compromise our standards in the way we do business.”

The 1.3 million-square-foot Mall at Stonecrest, which lies about 30 miles southeast of Atlanta, is anchored by Dillard’s, J.C. Penney, Parisian, Rich’s Department Stores and Sears. It also features a lineup of 120 specialty stores, including Ann Taylor Loft, Borders, Brookstone and Charlotte Russe. But it is not just another retail and entertainment complex serving yet another growing American suburb. The $131 million shopping center is part of a greater mixed-use development called Stonecrest that will include the Stonecrest Medical Center; about 1,000 mostly single-family housing units; two hotels; and about 2 million square feet of office space. The master-planned development should be completed in different phases by late 2003, said Russ Kellogg, vice president of development for Cadillac Fairview.

“We will end up with a campus environment that will feed into the mall,” said Emerick J. Corsi, a senior vice president of development for Forest City. “Stonecrest will be a recipient of that development.”

The Mall at Stonecrest brings upscale shopping back to DeKalb County, said Ed Nutting, a senior broker in the retail division of Marcus & Millichap. The recession of the early 1990s triggered the flight of affluent families from the area and quality retail followed. That hit the South DeKalb Mall, 10 miles from Lithonia in Decatur, particularly hard, he said.

As the economy made a comeback in the late 1990s, affluence returned and the communities grew. Edwards noted that the average household income within 10 miles of the shopping center is $70,000. There are subdivisions within a four-mile radius with homes valued at $1 million and where the average household income exceeds $200,000. By 2005, those earnings are expected to increase to $82,000, and the population within 10 miles is projected to increase to 431,000 from 380,000.

But with the opening of Stonecrest, this isn’t going to benefit South DeKalb Mall much, Nutting predicted.

“There is no doubt — if you are a shopper, you will go to Stonecrest, with its diversity and tenant mix,” he said.

South DeKalb Mall owner Dan O’Leary begs to differ, however. O’Leary, who is president and CEO of Atlanta-based O’Leary Partners, bought South DeKalb Mall in 1996 and has since recast the 700,000-square-foot center as a regional mall focused on providing merchandise and community services for its largely African-American customer base. That approach has begun to turn the mall around, he said, citing a sales-per-square-foot increase from $185 per square foot in 1996 to more than $301 in 2000.

The architectural team at Baltimore-based RTKL Associates designed the two-level Stonecrest with a crescent-shaped central area that exposes the department store anchors to traffic on nearby Interstate 20, according to Tom Witt, a vice president at RTKL and senior principal at its Dallas office. Two interior mall streets flare off at either end of the crescent and are connected by a section called the Gallery. The streets also serve as a passage between the exterior areas and the interior Gallery.

“It was broken down as a series of buildings instead of one monolithic structure,” said Michael Gentemann, associate vice president, project manager and lead designer on The Mall at Stonecrest. “It helps break down the scale.”

The interior Gallery sports glass handrails, and French limestone in the floors.

Outside, in the Plaza area occupied by the cinema and restaurants, the designers took a more playful approach. Two interactive fountains with small jets and bubbles invite patrons to run through and get wet, said Ian Bacon, vice president and development director for RTKL. There is a 40-foot-high glass wall running from the courtyard of the food court back to the enclosed portion of the mall and four 70-foot-high illuminated columns that draw passersby to the activity in the Plaza.

If shoppers want to see a show or host a party, the 16-screen MegaStar cinema promises mega comfort; aside from the 16 stadium-seating auditoriums, the theater features two VIP suites. Similar to the skyboxes in sports arenas, patrons can host private screenings and catered parties.

The Mall at Stonecrest is expected to draw from a huge area that stretches as far away as Augusta and as close as Atlanta with its combination of strong national and local tenants.

“We’ve been able to capture the community mall feeling in a large setting,” said Edwards, a move that she noted will “help established and new businesses in the area.”

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