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STREETS OF MAYFAIR REBORN AS MIXED-USE CENTER

BY DONNA MITCHELL

Owners hope the installation of offices on upper floors will boost the retail below.

Once again, The Streets of Mayfair is remaking its image. After trying unsuccessfully to be another Bal Harbour (Fla.) Shops and then making a go of it as a retail-entertainment venue, the Coconut Grove, Fla., center is settling for a mixed-use format.

Though retail will remain a strong ingredient in the mix, developers are counting on the addition of offices on the enclosed center’s second and third levels to make it work.

“The whole project will come alive,” said Carol Greenberg Brooks, president of Continental Real Estate Cos., which is managing the project for the owners, New York City-based DRA Advisors.

Coming alive is something Streets of Mayfair’s successive owners have long wanted for the project, even though it might seem to have much in its favor. Owner-developer Kenneth Treister, of Coconut Grove, opened Streets of Mayfair in March 1979 with hopes of duplicating the success of the Bal Harbour Shops, 14 miles or so to the north. Its merchandising mix, like Bal Harbour’s when it first opened, included no anchors, but featured such luxury retailers as Versace and the first freestanding Yves St. Laurent in the United States, Brooks said.

Surely, Treister figured, local shoppers could afford these upscale shops, given that the average annual household income in Coconut Grove is $75,000.

“Coconut Grove is an urban setting with a lot of high-end condos and where people want to walk,” said Brooks. As for the shoppers, she noted, “people tend to look for a particular product and will pay for what they want.”

Streets of Mayfair was also well placed to benefit from South Florida’s thriving economy through the 1980s, noted Paco Diaz, senior vice president of retail brokerage at the Miami office of CB Richard Ellis.

“There was a lot of free money in Miami at the time,” said Diaz. That made South Florida a very chic place to be, and because South American economies were booming, tourists were spending lots of money in the area’s upscale stores. “It drove shopping and spending. That is why [the center] was able to do well in the very beginning.”

Eventually, though, Streets of Mayfair’s layout proved to be a challenge: The center featured “streets” and cafés, with in-line tenants arranged around internal courtyards, and the series of escalators and multilevels were confusing to navigate over the two-block span.

“You felt like you were in a European garden,” said Brooks, noting that the ownership refused to call Streets of Mayfair an enclosed mall or treat it as such. The public, however, did regard it as a mall — and a small one at that, measuring a mere 260,000 square feet.

Streets of Mayfair was neither large enough to be considered a major mall, nor small enough to be an exclusively high-end shopping center, said Diaz. Further, he adds, not many of the stores had much visibility from the street, a fatal flaw.

Streets of Mayfair’s second incarnation began in June 1995, with its purchase by LNR Property, a Miami real estate investment and management company. LNR converted it into a retail-entertainment center, filling in most of the courtyards and opening the property up with store entrances facing Grand Avenue, Coconut Grove’s major street.

LNR kept the Promenade, a pedestrian walkway that separates the east and west buildings, and the Atrium, which runs down the middle of the east building. It also leased space to mass-appeal chains, including Ann Taylor Loft and Borders, said Brooks.

To generate nightlife, LNR created an entertainment section on the third floor, anchoring it with a Regal Cinemas theater. It also leased space to the Improv comedy club.

But consumers didn’t bite.

“It’s hard to lure the strollers and the diners to the second and third floors,” said Brooks, describing it as a “meandering” journey. Those crowds that did climb to the third level for a movie didn’t linger in the other entertainment venues or stores on the way.

The second and third levels were hurting when DRA Advisors bought the property in May 1998, and it didn’t help that Regal Cinemas shut down in February 2001, amid considerable upheaval in the movie theater industry. The fate of the upper levels, however, wouldn’t have changed even if the theater had stayed open, observes Greg Masin, director of retail brokerage at commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield’s Miami office.

“People need to be given a reason to go up in general,” he said. “Without an anchor, there is an aversion.”

To add to the pressure, in 1990 the 220,000-square-foot CocoWalk, a retail-entertainment center built by Yaromir Steiner, who formed Steiner + Associates in 1993, opened just across the street. CocoWalk also has three enclosed levels, but visitors found them easier to navigate, given the center’s U-shaped design, than Streets of Mayfair’s sprawl, said Continental Real Estate officials.

Enough was enough. Continental Real Estate knew that Streets of Mayfair’s days as a multilevel retail center were over. In February 2001 it embarked on a nearly $6 million, mostly interior reconfiguration that has brought the retail to street level and converted the east building’s second and third floors into an office complex. The west building got a fresh paint job, but most of the renovations were done to the east building. The office and retail portions have separate parking, stairwells and elevator access.

Streets of Mayfair remains a strong retail destination, however, with stores that include Bath & Body Works, Benetton, Enzo Anglioni and The Limited.

Brokers hope the new configuration will put an end to Streets of Mayfair’s identity problems.

“The owner made a prudent decision to take advantage of a strong office submarket,” said Cushman & Wakefield’s Masin. “In turn, that feeds the retailers on the ground floor by putting people in the building on a regular basis.”

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