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Chicureo to pioneer U.S.-style retail in Chile

By Candace Talmadge

The North American retail model will undergo a cultural evolution when Ciudad Chicureo, a 3,000-acre planned mixed-use development, rises among the foothills north of Santiago, Chile.

Developers expect Chicureo, a North American-style mixed-use project under way in the Chilean foothills near Santiago, to take 10 to 15 years to complete.

Schmidtz and Valdes Arquitectos of Santiago, and RTKL of Baltimore are creating a master plan for this new city, said Paris Rutherford, AICP, associate vice president/director of planning for the Dallas office of RTKL.

The two firms won the master planning contract in the largest design competition ever held in Chile, he said. The developer and builder is Chicureo Desarollos Inmobiliarios, S.A., a Santiago-based group of five families that has consolidated its properties north of Chile's capital in the site for the new satellite city that will combine retail, housing and office components.

The entire project will take between 10 and 15 years to complete, Rutherford estimated. Depending on the final housing density, which has yet to be determined, the city ultimately could accommodate anywhere between 300,000 and 700,000 people, he said. With preliminary government approvals pending, on-site work and construction are scheduled to start late this year.

Chicureo stands out from other Chilean real-estate projects in its distinctively mixed-use design, because, in the past 10 years, bedroom communities have been the exclusive focus of residential construction in this country, Rutherford said. And while other South American nations like Argentina and Brazil have adapted the North American retail model in their projects, this is a first for Chile.

"We've been pushing hard for a mixed-use environment," he said. "We want people in their homes to have the option to walk to work, shopping, and entertainment."

Working with Chilean retailers, who are accustomed to operating differently from their northern counterparts, is one of the many challenges in planning such a city, Rutherford explained. For example, in Chile there is usually no direct relationship between the available parking and the user. Often, retail developments have no dedicated parking space at all, and customers drive around until they find a space on the street.

Suppliers have also posed a parking problem. Instead of hiding their trucks by unloading in the rear of the stores, rigs have customarily parked in front to drop off merchandise. Thirdly, Chilean retail structures frequently don't take full advantage of visibility to the street. Instead, tenants are tucked away in the backs of buildings, with no signage to let consumers know what shopping is available and where it is located. This creates confusion unless visitors already know the neighborhood, he said.

"Chilean shoppers have grown up in that environment, so they are used to it," Rutherford added. "But stores there don't turn the same kind of volumes as they do in the United States."

The goal is to find tactful and sensitive ways to meld the advantages of the North American retail model with Chilean cultural aesthetics, local design, architecture and building materials.

"We're not looking for Las Vegas," he emphasized. "We don't want North American sprawl. We want neighborhood ownership with a close relationship to the environment."

As this site plan shows, Chicureo stands out from other Chilean projects because of its mixed-use design.

The master plan will encourage this by integrating acres of open spaces with a series of lakes throughout the city. These "greenbelts," along with streets, will represent about 30% of the available acreage, he added.

Probably the greatest challenge in the planning phase is defining what is uniquely Chilean, and then embodying that quality in the layout and architecture of Chicureo. Some blend of an almost rural lifestyle with cosmopolitan architecture will probably prevail throughout the entire project, including the retail portions.

"The major framework will have more of a rural feel to it," Rutherford said. "As you transition to the city center, the outside spaces will become more formal."

The first retail development in Chicureo will be part of a 400,000-square-foot village center located in the southern part of the city. The retail and restaurant portion will total three-quarters of the space, with the rest devoted to small offices and loft housing above the retail area. The village center is just a 10-minute drive from Santiago's affluent La Dehesa neighborhood, which Rutherford regards as underserved by retail.

As the project progresses, a 2 million-square-foot city center will be located at the northern edge of Chicureo between two major streets, with connections back to Santiago. Both the village and urban centers will be very pedestrian-focused. There will be off-street parking, street-level retail, midrise office buildings and some high-density residential construction.

Environmental graphics will be a major focus in the design of the retail portions of both centers. Rutherford defined the term as signage that incorporates local materials and blends into the overall theme of the development. Retailers' names and logos will not be blaring in neon.

One major activity of the planning stage is the incorporation of architectural diversity into the village and urban centers as well as the residential areas. The aim, Rutherford said, is to have the commercial structures and the dwellings appear to have been built over a period of time rather than all at once.

This is part of the overall effort to introduce change and retail innovation in a subtle, sensitive manner.

"Most of the areas people like to frequent have small shops and markets that have developed over hundreds of years," he pointed out. "We want to combine that kind of ambiance with contemporary merchandising and modern metals."