PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

BRANCHING OUT

Dogwood Festival Market to bring retail to Flowood, Miss.

By Donna Mitchell

Flowood, Rankin County, Miss., has almost everything a city could need: a healthy, diverse economy, a growing housing stock and an affluent population. But it is missing something, too — places for people to spend their money.

However, Dogwood Festival Market, an upscale, open-air center, is about to change that. When it opens in spring 2002, Dogwood will bring national retailers to the city for the first time. And that’s only the beginning: Officials hope that the 304,000-square-foot center will spur a wave of other retail and commercial development in Flowood. Just 20 miles east of Jackson, the city has a population of 6,373 residents, swelling to 25,000 each day, thanks to the large companies — and their employees — that are drawn to Flowood because of its close proximity to the state’s capital city, Jackson International Airport and major highways.

Within a three-mile radius of the future Dogwood Festival Market, the average yearly household income is about $75,000, the highest in Mississippi, according to the project’s developer, Aronov Realty Management of Montgomery, Ala. Flowood, which covers 27 square miles, has worked hard to attract businesses and today is home to a mix of heavy industry, offices, and health care companies, including Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Mississippi and Jackson-based Ergon, an energy, technology and real estate conglomerate.

“We go out of our way to work with [businesses]; whatever it takes to get them to come in and build up our tax base,” said the city’s gung ho mayor, Gary Rhoads.

Flowood’s growth has also spurred the construction of new housing subdivisions, churches and schools in and around the city, and Rankin County is growing, too: The county’s population stands at almost 120,000, up about 37% from 87,000 in 1990, according to Tom Troxler, executive director of Rankin First Economic Development Authority of Brandon, Miss.

But up to now there has been little retail to serve this population, beyond big boxes — including three Super Wal-Marts — and local stores, and there isn’t a single mall in the whole county. So the city has set about changing that, just as it has encouraged other companies to locate there.

“We wanted to diversify the city and become a retail center,” Rhoads said. Dogwood will sit between the city’s residential and commercial districts.

Aronov broke ground on the project in March, after the city provided more than $4 million in tax-increment financing (TIF) to pay for some of the infrastructure; some of these improvements include the extension of a road south to Highway 25 to expose the center to much more traffic. Under the TIF, the city determined the amount of real estate taxes the shopping center would generate over a period of between 20 and 25 years, and then fronted the money to Aronov Realty in one lump sum. The so-called refunded cash was then packaged as a bond, which Aronov will repay to the city.

Dogwood Festival Market “is really the beginning of large, national retailers coming into the area,” according to Troxler. Department store McRae’s will anchor the center with 114,000 square feet of space on two levels — the only tenant that will have more than one story. Major tenants will include Old Navy, Borders Books & Cafe and Linens ’n Things, while Ann Taylor Loft, Gap/Gap Kids, Limited Too, Olde Tyme Commissary, Hibbert Sporting Goods and Tuxedo Shop will be among the specialty retailers.

Other developers are said to be eyeing surrounding properties as possible sites for further retail and commercial projects. Much of the land for future retail development might be purchased from two local landowners, William T. Hogg, owner of a food distributing company, and the Ridgeway family. It was Hogg who, in December 2000, sold the 40-acre Dogwood Festival Market site to Aronov. All told, about 350 acres of property might be up for grabs.

“They [the Ridgeways] are meeting with developers across the country every day,” said Rhoads. “Hogg has had top developers in the country calling on him; everyone is coming in with ideas.”

City officials say they expect future projects to be lifestyle centers, because that is where the growing trend lies for retail development, although there are few concrete proposals so far.

Flowood’s location is ideal, according to Jake Aronov, the development company’s chairman and CEO, because it lies on a principal highway artery that connects the City of Jackson and Rankin County.

“South of that will be a link to Highway 80,” Aronov said. “There is an artery leading north to fine, upscale residential houses. This is clearly the bull’s-eye of the eastward growth in the Jackson market.”

Aronov said that there has been solid residential growth north into Madison County, and east into Rankin County. But while the latter accounted for half of the new housing starts in the Jackson market, the previous retail development — what little there has been — occurred only in the north.

Aronov said the acreage of the site was too small for an imposing regional mall, and that local shoppers are more inclined to be drawn by a project that he likens to a lifestyle center.

“When we talk about lifestyle, we talk about a variety of retail merchandise offerings,” he said. “A lifestyle center provides a complete and well-rounded shopping experience.”

Although Dogwood Festival Market does not have the main street atmosphere common at lifestyle centers, company officials say it qualifies as one because it presents upscale shopping in an open-air setting. There will be restaurants, wide sidewalks and plenty of seating areas throughout the project, said Beau Young, CLS, developer of projects for Aronov Realty Management.

Dogwood Festival Market will be Aronov Realty’s first center of this type. Founded by Aaron Aronov, who was also a founding trustee and past chairman of ICSC, the company has a portfolio of about 60 regional malls and community centers throughout the Southeast.

The new center’s configuration is simple, shaped like a hockey stick, but the architecture strives to be more complex. Storefronts will make reference to the New Orleans plantation era, and the city of Jackson’s beginnings as a 1700s trading post, according to Everett Hatcher, executive vice president of the architectural firm Crawford McWilliams Hatcher, Birmingham, Ala.

“We have a lot of different colors — salmons, tans and deep green trims,” Hatcher said.

Dogwood Festival Market is expected to draw some traffic from Northpark, a 958,000-square-foot regional mall in the nearby city of Ridgeland, and the 1.2 million-square-foot Metrocenter Mall in Jackson, both about 20 miles away. It is not expected, however, to compete with them head-on, said Young. Northpark and Metrocenter do offer a wider selection of retailers, he conceded. But Dogwood has a major advantage of its own: It’s in town, not 20 miles away.

“This is a high-income pocket of Jackson, and we think it will meet their everyday needs,” Young said. “It’s just a new venue for people to shop more often.”

 

© 2008 ICSC. All rights reserved. | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Contact ICSC | ICSC Home |