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Shopping Centers Today -> October 2003
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CLEVELAND’S RETAIL BOOM
This year is proving to be a bumper year for retail construction in the Cleveland, area, with more than 2 million square feet of new development going up in and around this Great Lakes city of 2.9 million inhabitants.
Several centers are under development besides University Square. In Lyndhurst, on the affluent east side of Cleveland, First Interstate Properties, Beachwood, Ohio, is unveiling Legacy Village, a 615,000-square-foot lifestyle center offering such retailers as Ann Taylor Loft, Crate & Barrel and Restoration Hardware, and a 2,440-square-foot Contessa art gallery. Billed by the developer as Ohio’s first lifestyle center, it will feature some unusual tenants, including a Viking Culinary Arts Center, offering a cooking school and a store that sells professional culinary tools. Viking manufactures high-end stoves.
Nearby in Woodmere is the 300,000-square-foot Eton Chagrin Boulevard, a redevelopment by local developer Robert L. Stark Enterprises of the 25-year-old Eton Square, which is reopening this fall with a chic lifestyle focus. The center’s 20 retailers, a high proportion of which are new to the area, include Barnes & Noble, Chico’s and a Sur la Table kitchenware store. Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Bravo Cucina Italiana will be among Eton’s restaurants.
Next year Stark Enterprises has another project coming: Crocker Park, in Westlake, Ohio. Average household income in the area, which lies 26 miles west of Cleveland, exceeds $100,000 per year. The 1.7 million-square-foot, mixed-use town center will combine 200,000 square feet of office space, 700,000 square feet of residential facilities and 800,000 square feet of lifestyle retail and restaurants.
This building boom may seem surprising given Greater Cleveland’s overall retail vacancy rate of 10.1 percent, the highest in 15 years, according to the CB Richard Ellis Retail Market Survey. But much of that empty space is the result of the recent closings of a number of large-format stores, including Ames, Kmart and the defunct local DIY Home Improvement chain, says Mark Rantala, vice president and director of retail services at the Westlake office of real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis.
Rantala blames the weak local and national economies for the overcapacity, but points out that suburban retail is much healthier.
“The 2 million square feet will generally be absorbed and nearly fully leased,” he predicts. “These new malls are not adding vacancy to the city.”
— S.T.
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