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FIVE-STAR SHOPPING

Luxury hotel style comes to Glimcher’s Polaris Fashion Place

By Dave Bodamer

Glimcher Realty Trust says Polaris Fashion Place will look and feel like a luxury hotel.

Driven by the desire to have a signature project in its home market and a vision to create an elegant mall unlike any it has undertaken before, Columbus-based Glimcher Realty Trust this month opens Polaris Fashion Place, a property marked by its size — 1.5 million square feet — and its feel, reminiscent of a luxury hotel.

“It’s really a very special mall and shopping experience that we’re creating,” Glimcher Realty Trust President Michael Glimcher said. “It’s designed to feel like an elegant hotel, like the Ritz-Carlton. We’re offering a shopping experience unlike anything in the marketplace. … In terms of size, it’s equal to the largest projects in our portfolio.”

The center’s most distinguishing trait is its aesthetic. Its decor features dark wood finishes, carpeted and granite floors, porcelain ornamentation and mall entrances that look like the fronts of houses. Instead of benches, the mall is furnished with sofas, couches and other soft seating options.

In the same vein, Glimcher is providing concierge services beyond those shoppers typically find at a regional mall. Here customers can make reservations at any of the mall’s restaurants as well as book for travel and hotels. The mall also will offer baggage and package checking, free gift wrapping year-round and personal shopping services provided by staff members conversant in several languages.

The mall will have valet parking and will even drop off customers’ cars at a different entrance from the one at which they arrived.

But while its ambience is upscale, Glimcher wants the mall to appeal to customers across income levels. The anchors — Lazarus, Saks, Sears, J.C. Penney, The Great Indoors, Lord & Taylor, and Kaufmann’s — are representative of the broad mix of retail present at the center.

“We looked at other shopping centers, especially in our marketplace, and we wanted to distinguish ourselves,” Polaris General Manager Chris Lavender said. “We felt that the consumer was demanding a higher level of satisfaction, not only of merchandise content, but of the experience of going to the mall.”

Four of the anchors — Saks, Lord & Taylor, Kaufmann’s and The Great Indoors, are new to the market — while the other three are relocating from the nearby Northland Mall.

Polaris opens with all seven anchors and, with 95 inline tenants, is 95% leased.

“To come out of the ground with seven anchors initially, I don’t think that’s been done ever,” Glimcher said.

Carroll Simantz, a spokeswoman for Sears, said the company’s decision was made easy by the decision of its co-anchors at Northland to move to Polaris. Moreover, the anchor balance at Polaris represents a mix of both high-end and midrange department stores, which will attract a broad audience, she said.

Glimcher said he took a very active role in the mall’s development, weighing in on every detail, down to handrails and individual pieces of furniture.

“We looked at regional malls around the country. We saw many malls using soft seating, but never really saw an example where someone had thought it out from start to finish,” Glimcher said. “We wanted to create a feeling of arriving at a resort or fine hotel.

“We asked ourselves, ‘What if we could make the customer feel like they are at home? Will they stay longer? Will they sit down on big leather club chairs and relax?’” Glimcher said.

Polaris also has formed an alliance with the Columbus Zoo to develop a children’s play area at the center. The 1,800-square-foot area, called “The Zoo,” will be divided into four sections that feature endangered species of the water, the savanna, the jungle and the forest.

“We are excited about the opportunity to teach children about the importance of conservation through hands-on activities,” said Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo.

Polaris is sited due north of downtown Columbus and is no farther than a 20-minute drive from any part of the city. It sits on a site that had been the subject of four or five other development proposals over nearly 20 years before Glimcher won approval for Polaris.

From start to finish, construction lasted just 16 months.

“Building a project of this size and scope is usually a 30-month process,” Lavender said. “We worked on a very compressed time schedule. We felt like there was a huge demand from the retail sector to get this mall open.”

Lavender added the city was very supportive of the process, awarding the mall $22 million in tax-incremental financing for road infrastructure improvements surrounding the center.

“They bent over backward to make sure the permitting process went smoothly,” he said.

Polaris opens Oct. 25, just one month after the second phase of the nearby Easton Town Center (See story, Columbus discovers streetscape concept) opened. The two projects combined are bringing in 2.3 million square feet of new retail space less than 10 miles from each other. The result, according to one retail analyst, is that Columbus is going from being below capacity to above capacity in terms of retail space.

“When considering the impact of Polaris on the Central Ohio region, you have to look at the fact that Columbus is opening two regional malls this year,” said Christopher D. Boring, president of Boulevard Strategies, a Columbus-based retail consulting firm. “The only other market opening two malls this year is Atlanta. I think with weakened Northland and Westland malls, the central Ohio market will be able to absorb that much space, but this is going to have a negative impact on some smaller malls in Columbus.”

Easton and Polaris are competing on multiple levels: The two bring three high-end department stores — Saks and Lord & Taylor at Polaris, and Nordstrom at Easton — into the market nearly simultaneously. In addition, because Limited Inc. is one of the developers of Easton, it is opening all of its concepts at that mall and none at Polaris. The 10-mile market radii around each of the two malls overlaps, but Easton is in a denser area, with 300,000 residents within its 10-mile radius compared to 200,000 for Polaris, Boring said. However, the average household income surrounding Polaris is higher, which could offset the differences in population, he said.

Lavender said that while Easton is a competitor, the centers are offering two different retail experiences.

“Easton is entertainment-oriented. It is open-air for the most part; it’s a lifestyle center type of shopping setting,” Lavender said. “Polaris is 1.5 million square feet of retail under one roof with fine restaurants in that mix.”

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