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Shopping Centers Today -> March 2004
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CENTER TO EXPAND GREENSBORO’S RETAIL OPTIONS
BY DONNA MITCHELL
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Locally based Koury Corp. broke ground in September on The Village at North Elm, a 150,000-square-foot project with 83,000 square feet of retail that will go up four miles north of the downtown.
The Village at North Elm will feature street-level retail and second-floor office and apartment space. The $40 million project will be an expansion of the existing North Elm Village, a 100,000-square-foot neighborhood center anchored by a Harris Teeter supermarket, explained Bobbie Cross, director of leasing for Koury.
“Outside of downtown, there are no traditional mixed-use developments,” said Marty Cotis, president and CEO of Cotis Properties, a Greensboro-based retail developer not involved in the Village project. “That would be a first for Greensboro.”
Cotis should know. His company recently tried to secure zoning approvals for a three-story mixed-use project about four miles away. But the effort was stymied by municipal officials. Mixed-use projects in Greensboro often face opposition from local residents who resist commercial space coming into their neighborhoods, said Cotis.
But neighbors of the Village at Greensboro are more accustomed to change. The site is between two residential subdivisions — Lake Jeannette, which lies to the north and Irving Park to the south. Within the project’s three-mile trade area, the population grew from 49,562 in 2000 to 55,353 in 2003, while the average household income rose from $58,520 to $69,974 during the same period, says Cross.
Over the last five years, approximately 700,000 square feet of new office space has been developed nearby, creating demand for retail and restaurants, says Cross.
North Elm Village was built in 1996, and the Harris Teeter earns about $400 in sales per square foot annually, said Cross, though she declined to release sales figures for the project’s other shops.
Koury is aiming to supply the retail portion with a diverse merchandising lineup at The Village at North Elm, consisting of local and national retailers. Come September, Koury expects to complete the 60,000 square feet of the project’s retail portion, along with about 50,000 square feet of office space. The remaining 23,000 square feet of retail space, plus the apartments above, should be finished in a second phase, said Cross. An additional 200 luxury apartments are to be completed in the fall 2005.
The developer says the project will resemble a lifestyle center, with landscaping, walkways and outdoor restaurant seating.
It doesn’t hurt that the Village is a half mile away from the Outer Loop, a highway being constructed on Greensboro’s perimeter. A nearby interchange should be completed in 2007, said Cross.
Greensboro has two regional shopping centers within 11 miles of The Village at North Elm. Koury owns one of them, the 1.1 million-square-foot Four Seasons Towne Center. But that is all the way on the southern end of town, Koury executives note, predicting that The Village will make its own mark to the north.
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