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Shopping Centers Today -> November 2002
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CENTERBUILD TO FOCUS ON INDUSTRY’S CHANGING NEEDS
Lifestyle centers, sustainable design, renovation and the International Building Code will be among the topics discussed at ICSC’s CenterBuild Conference, to be held Dec. 4-7 at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, near Phoenix.
Some 1,200 developers, retailers, architects, designers, contractors, engineers and tenant coordinators from the shopping center and retail areas are expected to attend. In a major shift, the meeting has been made a half-day shorter to accommodate attendees’ travel schedules. The final day will be reserved for golf and tennis tournaments, followed by a luncheon.
This year’s program focuses in particular on the changing needs of developers and retailers.
“Each program has a developer and a retailer giving a presentation — they’re the people who give us the work,” said James P. Ryan, president of Farmington Hills, Mich.-based JPRA Architects, chairman of the planning committee for this year’s conference.
General sessions will focus on political, societal and overall retail real estate development trends. Geoffrey Booth, senior vice president of the Urban Land Institute, will moderate a discussion of development trends involving Steven J. Guttman, chairman and CEO of Federal Realty Investment Trust; David J. Contis, CLS, the COO of The Macerich Co.; and Merrie S. Frankel, a senior analyst at Moody’s Investors Service.
Concurrent sessions will include “Main Street Retailing” and “Big-Box Retail,” as well as “Hybrid Centers/New Concepts in Shopping Centers: Do They Really Work?” Workshops, to be held in a classroom setting, will include retailers, developers, architects and designers. Among the workshop topics will be “More Secrets and Lies of Exhibits Oriented to Retailers,” which offers true stories of the way lease exhibits are used to attract retailers.
More than 150 roundtables will allow small-group discussion on such topics as “Project Management Software Dilemmas.” If space permits, one or two tables will be set aside for impromptu discussions.
“There’s more sharing here than any conference I’ve been at,” Ryan said. Interaction will be further encouraged with members of the program committee, who will be wearing special CenterBuild shirts.
Not everything will be geared directly to development and design. David Brooks, political analyst for PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and broadcast journalist Mort Crim will discuss political trends.
“What I am aiming for is to improve the ability to enrich yourself both personally and for your industry, and to improve the networking,” said 2002 planning committee Assistant Chairwoman Martha Spatz, senior vice president of architectural services at Urban Retail Properties.
ICSC’s first CenterBuild was held in New Orleans in 1982. Then called the Design and Construction Conference, it was renamed in 1987. Three years later the program was retooled to its current format of workshops, sessions and roundtables. The meeting has been held in the Phoenix area since 1995.
To register online, visit www.icsc.org.
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