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Shopping Centers Today -> May 2003
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GENERAL GROWTH REVAMPING TWO HOUSTON PROJECTS
BY DONNA MITCHELL
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| Memorial City is in the midst of a $300 million redevelopment. |
General Growth Properties is busy in Houston, raising the ceiling on one regional mall and adding a lifestyle section to another.
The company is turning The Woodlands Mall, which it owns, into a hybrid and simultaneously consulting on the redevelopment of Memorial City Mall, which it manages and leases for another owner. Both projects are set for a fall completion date.
Memorial City, six miles west of the downtown and owned by Houston-based MetroNational, is undergoing a $300 million redevelopment that will expand it to 1.9 million square feet of retail space from its current 1.2 million square feet, and add two anchors for a total of six.
“We’re going to improve our tenant mix with sparkling retailers,” said Harry Hadland, the mall’s general manager. More than 80 new tenants are being added with a view to making the mall more upscale. They include Coach and Sephora.
A new-format Lord & Taylor, with brighter lighting and wider aisles, opened as an anchor in the spring of 2002. A Target store will take over an old Montgomery Ward space that has been empty since the company went into bankruptcy early in 2001, and Dillard’s expects to open in late September. These will join Foley’s, Mervyn’s and Sears.
Memorial City has enjoyed an edge over nearby competing centers that are further from the city’s center. But Memorial City couldn’t capitalize on its great location, because it lacked high-profile, contemporary retailers, Hadland said.
Once completed, the mall will also feature a hockey rink and a lodge-themed seating area with a 60-foot-high open-stone fireplace, as well as several full-service restaurants, including California Pizza Kitchen, which will have their own entrances from a boulevard running past the mall.
The east end, anchored by Dillard’s, Foley’s and Lord & Taylor, will have traditional and upscale tenants. The redevelopment will set Lord & Taylor and Dillard’s closer to Foley’s on that end, and the mall is also leasing to Ann Taylor Loft, Caché and Sephora to add elegance, Hadland said.
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The mall’s walkways are being completely reworked to create the look of several major streets, complete with lampposts, leading to the rotunda. The architectural team designed the storefronts to look like two-story buildings and encouraged retailers to hang blade signs over their doorways, said Glenn Fuhrman, a MetroNational project director who is supervising the redevelopment’s architecture and construction.
The food court, completed last August, has been redesigned to resemble a bustling train station. The team removed old trellises, bulkheads and other nonstructural ceiling elements and raised the ceiling between 15 and 20 feet, adding clerestory windows.
Some of the mall’s entrances have been accented with limestone, in a nod to the stone found in the Texas hill country, said Fuhrman.
As if transforming Memorial City’s interior into the image of a downtown wasn’t hard enough, the team had to overcome the accumulated effects of two previous expansions and two renovations in the mall’s 36-year history. The engineers and architects knew that they would uncover a few structural and utility surprises as they ripped down layers of the mall during construction, Hadland said.
Once, demolition crews came across about 50 phone lines wired into the Foley’s store. Workers accidentally cut a line that fed credit card transaction machines. They managed to patch that up and run some temporary phone lines to the store before proceeding with the work — and before anyone could complain about a single interrupted sale.
“We caught it and took care of it, but it was an ‘uh-oh,’” said Fuhrman.
Another surprise occurred during work on the new food court. There was a major gas line running along the roof, feeding a nearby residential subdivision. The team had to reroute a new line (underground this time) before taking out the old one, said Fuhrman.
“A lot of people compared [the series of expansions] to pieces of a puzzle,” said Hadland.
MetroNational is looking for a big payoff after the redevelopment. The company expects Memorial City to ring up sales in excess of $450 per square foot after the improvements are done, Hadland said, versus about $300 per square foot before.
Meanwhile, General Growth is doing a 150,000-square-foot, open-air expansion to the enclosed Woodlands Mall, 26 miles north of downtown Houston. The company co-developed the shopping center with The Woodlands Operating Co. in 1994 to serve the growing population of Woodlands, a master-planned residential community in Montgomery County that its partner established in the early 1970s. The 27,000-acre community is rapidly outgrowing its master-planned origins and becoming more of a dynamic, independent town. More than 70,500 people live in Woodlands (there were only 127 residents in 1974), some in subsidized units, others in million-dollar mansions. There are churches and synagogues, public and private schools, and colleges.
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Making the mall even busier, its market stretches beyond Woodlands to encompass about 450,000 people within Montgomery and Harris counties, said Andrea Thompson, a General Growth group marketing manager.
“As the community has grown, we found that customers were asking for retailers for which we did not have the space before,” said Thompson.
Woodlands Mall sits in and serves as the town center. The expansion will bring it to a total of 1.3 million square feet.
For its part, Woodlands Operating Co. is building a 1.5-mile-long river through the center of town that will be as much functional as aesthetic. Water taxis on the river will link the office buildings, residential units, hotels and convention centers, and retail and entertainment space in the Woodlands Town Center. Not only will the river look good, but it will also alleviate downtown vehicular traffic, said Thompson.
“It will not only be for transportation,” Thompson said, “but it will encourage a hub of activity in the town center.”
Woodlands Mall’s outdoor portion will also be accessible by river, as well as by trolleys and pedestrian walkways in the town center, all of which will help make it a success, mall officials say.
The outdoor section will feature upscale retailers and restaurants, built on two levels off the mall’s central entrance. New tenants will include Barnes & Noble, The Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro and home furnishings and accessories retailer The Storehouse. Thompson said at press time that the mall was signing lease agreements with Ann Taylor Loft, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Williams-Sonoma and Z Gallerie.
The mall’s existing anchors are Dillard’s, Foley’s, J.C. Penney, Mervyn’s and Sears.
The expansion allows the mall to offer customers the full gamut of retail, said Kirk Dotson, a General Growth senior leasing agent.
“We don’t want to be two shopping experiences,” Dotson said. “We want customers to enjoy going into the mall. We’re giving these customers all the options that they need right here.”
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