 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Shopping Centers Today -> May 2002
 PRINT THIS STORY: |
  CHANGE TEXT SIZE: |
|
CONTINENTAL SEES COUNTRY TAKING TO THE STREETS
Continental Retail Development is striving to build a reputation as a premier developer of lifestyle shopping centers.
Since embarking on this course about three years ago, the company has developed six lifestyle centers in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast and in North Carolina, renaming them all under the moniker The Streets. With fewer malls being built, Continental Retail recognized that lifestyle centers are one of the new frontiers for retail property development.
“We’ve spent the time and money to develop the relationships with the specialty retail community,” said David Kass, president of Continental Retail, a subsidiary of Continental Real Estate Cos., of which his father, Frank, is chairman. “Now we feel like a legitimate lifestyle center developer, and we’re looking to do as many as we can.” Both firms are based in Columbus, Ohio.
Through The Streets program, Continental Retail hopes to become the industry leader for lifestyle projects in five to seven years, said Kass, although it will not abandon its initial development mandate, which is building mostly power centers and grocery-anchored centers.
The Streets brand emphasizes the pedestrian orientation of the projects the company is building, some with office and residential components. Continental purchased seven of the centers in The Streets series, while developing the other two — The Streets of Marlton (N.J.) Square and of The Waterfront, in the greater Pittsburgh area — from the ground up. Now there are three more projects underway: The Streets of Toringdon, Charlotte, N.C.; West Chester, Cincinnati; and Rivertown, Perrysburgh, a suburb of Toledo, Ohio.
Kass points to The Streets of Marlton Square, which opened in 1999 in Marlton, a suburb near Philadelphia, as representative of the company’s overall development strategy. Cities that occupy the lower end of the top draw — Philadelphia, for instance — and such second-tier cities as Cincinnati, present more room for development opportunities, he said.
“It’s hard to go to Chicago and New York,” Kass said. Aiming a few notches lower gives Continental “a better chance of finding opportunities for growth for under-retailed areas.”
Marlton Square is also an example of what a private company like Continental Retail can do when it is well capitalized through solid banking relationships. Owned equally by the Kass and Lucks families, the company relies on few outside investors for its $300 million worth of retail developments each year. Less outside money is probably a good thing, as investors are more wont to throw their support behind grocery-anchored neighborhood centers and projects anchored by successful discount retailers, being still a bit wary of lifestyle centers.
The Streets is not out to compete with the Wal-Mart- and Target-anchored cash cows, he said. Marlton Square reported sales of $450 per square foot for 2001, about $100 above the level the company had projected, he said. As for The Streets of The Waterfront, Kass is projecting a conservative $200 per square foot yearly.
This is quite a gear shift for Continental Real Estate, a company that started out 60 years ago as Continental Office Supply, providing furniture for Ohio retailers like those that would one day become its tenants. But the conversion was not as difficult as one might think, Kass noted.
“The hardest part is the tenant relationships,” he said. “Already having the relationship through clients, the rest is sticks and bricks. You just build it.”
— D.M.
 | Current Issue February 2012 |