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Shopping Centers Today -> April 2003
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CENTERBUILD ATTENDEES SHARE HYBRID LESSONS
BY DEBRA HAZEL
If Mall of Georgia, the first hybrid mall, were being built today, it might well be an entirely open-air center, its developer told attendees at ICSC’s 16th annual CenterBuild Conference, held in December in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“If we did it again, we probably would take the top off,” said Jim V. Woodcox, a partner at Ben Carter Properties, which co-developed Mall of Georgia, near Atlanta, with Scott Hudgens Corp. and Simon Property Group. Carter Properties’ next project, the 1.2 million-square-foot Deerwood Town Center, Jacksonville, Fla., scheduled to open in 2004, is entirely open-air.
Woodcox made his observation during a frank discussion of the triumphs and missteps of the hybrid format. Developers continue to refine this fledgling concept, which combines an enclosed regional mall and an open-air component, and which made its debut in 1999 with Mall of Georgia.
“The good news is, we were first and got a lot of attention,” Woodcox said. “The bad news is, we made some mistakes.”
To be sure, the 1.4 million-square-foot enclosed mall is beautiful, he said. But the 140,000-square-foot open-air space was probably about 10 percent too large to be fully leased at the time. The company also wishes now that it had improved village traffic by locating the cinema there, rather than in the mall.
And speaking of movie theaters, among the lessons that Westcor Partners learned from its FlatIron Crossing, Broomfield, Colo., is the importance of opening the mall and the theater that anchors the open-air portion at the same time. The theater industry’s financial problems in the late 1990s delayed openings at many centers.
“We spent a year without a theater, when the original idea was to have 800-pound gorillas at both ends,” said David Scholl, a senior vice president of development at Westcor.
FlatIron’s opening in 2000 gave Westcor time to rethink its next hybrid project, Chandler (Ariz.) Fashion Center, which opened the following year. The 1.3 million-square-foot mall is attached to a 150,000-square-foot open-air village, of which 95,000 square feet comprise a cinema. In contrast to FlatIron’s linear village design, Chandler is built around a courtyard.
Urban Retail Centers, too, learned a few things when it developed the Galleria at Roseville (Calif.) in 2000 and followed that up with The Streets at Southpoint, Durham, N.C., in 2002.
At Roseville, a lack of available land forced the developers to blend parking for the village and mall. Village customers must often park nearer the mall, and vice versa, forcing both to walk a distance. A larger land space at Southpoint allowed the mall and village to have separate parking areas.
In addition, whereas Roseville’s second level proved difficult to lease, Southpoint’s Main Street layout is one level, with the exception of the Barnes & Noble.
Despite these problems, developers continue to marry mall and open-air, and the format continues to evolve. Jordan Creek Town Center, under construction in West Des Moines, Iowa, will feature 500,000 square feet of village space, accompanying a 1 million-square-foot enclosed mall that will house the cinema. Unlike the other villages, Jordan Creek’s open-air portion will combine big-box and specialty tenants, with office space above some of the buildings.
“We intend to open this all at one time, 100 percent leased,” said Tim Gardels, vice president of construction and design at General Growth Properties, Jordan Creek’s developer.
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