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FORBES, TAUBMAN TEAM FOR UPSCALE ORLANDO CENTER

The Mall at Millenia in Miami uses a lot of glass to achieve a transparent look.

By Donna Mitchell

Two Michigan retail property developers said they always knew there was something missing in Orlando, Fla., despite its abundance of retail and entertainment venues: upscale shopping.

Come October 2002, Forbes Co. and Taubman Centers hope to fill that void when they open a new upscale shopping center for residents and tourists in this fast-growing market.

And what a place The Mall at Millenia, a 1.2 million-square-foot enclosed regional shopping center, will be, developers hope, with a lineup of big-name tenants exclusive to the central Florida area. Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus and Macy’s will anchor the center, making their first entries into the Orlando market, and attracting shoppers to the 160 specialty retail shops and restaurants that are also expected to open there.

The Forbes Co., Southfield, Mich., and Taubman, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., are developing The Mall at Millenia. The mall was first tagged Emporio Orlando when the project was originally proposed two years ago, but although the name of the project has changed, its goals haven’t altered at all.

The mall will be the showpiece of the Millenia Development, slated to be 5 million square feet of diverse commercial property on 405 acres in Orlando. When completed, The Mall at Millenia is expected to be a gleaming upscale shopping destination for the residential, tourist and convention population, with shops that are exclusive to the Orlando area. The project’s leasing brochure asserts that some 60% of the stores in the mall will be new to the Orlando market.

“It’s going to bring a very unique shopping environment, a sense of scale and space, and offer the latest trends in fashion,” Forbes Co. partner Nathan Forbes explained. Forbes, who is managing partner of the dual venture and is overseeing the mall project, declined to name the specialty retailer tenants that are expected to move into the mall. But he said, “We will have some type of exclusivity in our merchandise in the center. We want The Mall at Millenia to be on everyone’s itinerary when they travel to Orlando.”

Forbes and Taubman have another ambition for their mall: Oct. 18, 2002 is the nonnegotiable deadline for the center’s opening. Forbes thought that if they could set an opening two years in advance — the groundbreaking was in October 2000 — then setting a firm deadline would give everyone involved something to focus on.

“That’s the date and we just have to make that date,” Forbes said in June. “The structural steel is 50% erected.”

But some construction will be going on after that date: Neiman Marcus is slated to open in 2003, and other uses are being planned around the mall site. Parts of the Millenia Development include 1,200 hotel rooms and 2 million square feet of office space.

Forbes said he expects The Mall at Millenia to raise the standard for high-end shopping in the city in much the same way The Forum Shops ushered in upscale shopping in Las Vegas.

There is plenty of incentive to build such a project, he explained. For one, Orlando received an estimated 44 million visitors in 2000. And the city is usually the top U.S. destination among leisure visitors, according to the Visitor’s Center of Orlando’s Chamber of Commerce.

The Forbes and Taubman partnership seized on a prize location for the shopping center: The site is just off the newly built Interstate 4, and close to an intersection with Florida’s Turnpike. When finished, the mall will be within five miles of the Walt Disney World Resort, Sea World, Universal Studios and the Orange County Convention Center.

When outsiders visit the city’s attractions, they spend a lot of money — $19.5 billion last year, according to Forbes, and their spending is expected to top $20 billion in the current year. There is also the local population to consider: Orlando’s population of 1.6 million could reach 1.7 million by 2005. And about 20% of the city’s residents earned more than $75,000 per year in 2000, according to Claritas, a San Diego-based market research company. The mall site is also surrounded by several wealthy and exclusive neighborhoods, including Bay Hill and Isleworth, where corporate and movie studio executives, professional athletes and movie actors have set up house.

JPRA Architects of Farmington Hills, Mich., designed the center, using copious amounts of glass to achieve a transparent appearance. Because Orlando attracts so much international tourism, the architects decided that universally accepted themes would work best in the mall, and are using images of time, the universe and earth through graphic designs in the floors and projected onto surfaces. Its shops will be arranged around a gleaming rotunda and four elliptical courts, with vaulted glass roofs and sky lighted spaces throughout. Its grand court aims to be aesthetic and engaging. When shoppers enter the mall, they will be greeted by a 65-foot high glass rotunda and the water garden. The grand court will feature a dozen 30-foot high masts supporting canopies, each of which represents one month of the modern Julian calendar; graphic designs on the canopies will identify the months and the four seasons. Theatrical spotlights on the masts will illuminate the concave ceiling some 58 feet overhead.

At the opposite end of the mall’s front entrance will be the Winter Garden entryway, and between the Winter Garden and the grand court will be a series of water fountains. In all there will be a dozen unusual fountains throughout the mall site, both inside and outside. One particular fountain will be shaped like a cone, from which will emanate a laser system that projects constellations on the ceiling of the grand court, according to Jim Ryan, president of JPRA Architects. A few steps from the cone fountain will be an artificial river, about 50 feet long and shaped like a triangle.

The mall will cost Taubman and Forbes about $200 million to build, Forbes said, but its exclusive merchandise offerings will help it compete with nearby regional malls when it opens. One of those competitors will be Simon Property Group’s Florida Mall just four miles away, which has been catering to the local and tourist market since it opened in 1986. Simon recently beefed up the mall’s mix of retail tenants, as part of an ongoing 600,000-square-foot expansion. Gary Moss, Simon’s regional vice president for Florida, said the expansion was part of an overall game plan to make the Florida Mall a super-regional center. The mall is introducing at least one exclusive retailer to the central Florida market — Nordstrom, which should open around Oct. 15, 2002.

But Forbes remains confident about his mall’s likelihood for success in that market. “It’s an understored market,” he said. “There is definitely a need for more luxury brand goods. The Mall at Millenia will be the introduction of luxury shopping to the greater Orlando area.”

 

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