Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/498466
Group's long-awaited, 350,000-square- foot World Trade Center shopping site, which will boast about 150 retail ten- ants, is set to open in this coming sec- ond half in an oval-shaped, below-grade space in New York City. As for the persistent question about whether online commerce will kill these malls, the simple answer is: hardly. Shopping centers owned by re- tail REITs generated a record $550 in sales per square foot in the third quar- ter of last year, significantly more than the previous high of $450 per square foot generated in 2007, according to Green Street Advisors. Most of the plans now on the drawing boards continue to be in- fill projects, according to developer Terry Montesi, chairman and CEO of Fort Worth, Texas–based Trademark Property Co., which has a half-dozen retail-anchored projects in the works. "Retailers are still cautious, and most of their energy is directed to those up- and-coming, in-fill retail districts with a Millennial focus," he said. Trade- mark's Napa Center, which will bring about 40 shops and restaurants plus an upscale, 180-room Archer Hotel to downtown Napa, Calif., by the fall of next year, is among those. The firm's lone new build, Fort Worth's sustain- ably oriented Waterside, is a 63-acre mixed-use district rising along the Trinity River, anchored by a Whole Foods and featuring several fitness and high-tech amenities and outdoor- seating venues. Waterside will have 200,000 square feet of retail, residen- tial and office space plus a hotel. The first phase is to be completed later this year. Another riverside mixed-use project, Crawford Hoying's $350 million Bridge Park, on the Scioto River, in Crawford's home base of Dublin, Ohio, will fill a need for the sort of dense urban village that can help the town retain its young professionals, says Brent Crawford, a principal of the firm. Bridge Park will offer about 260,000 square feet of res- taurant, retail and office space, plus 372 upscale apartments. "Ideally, we'd like to introduce some local and regional firsts to the market in addition to high- quality national tenants," he said. Palm trees make a compelling back- drop for some new shopping centers, it seems. DeBartolo Development has bro- ken ground on Ka Makana Ali'i, in Ka- polei, Hawaii, a 1.4 million-square-foot regional center in West Oahu, where some 80,000 new homes are to be built by 2025. The first phase, which is to be completed by next year, will have a Macy's and about 100 shops and res- taurants, plus two hotels, a cinema and some office space. With land at a premium, redevelop- ment projects are becoming increasingly creative. The Howard Hughes Corp.'s extensive South Street Seaport redevel- opment, in New York City, is on track for a summer 2017 opening. This will offer 300,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, plus a rooftop space for public events. Meanwhile, Down- town Summerlin, Hughes Corp.'s 1.6 million-square-foot, open-air shopping, dining and entertainment complex in Las Vegas, opened last fall with an- chors Dillard's, Macy's and Trader Joe's among the 125 tenants. Paramus, N.J.–based Krame Devel- opment has taken over the 28-acre site of a USG Corp. facility for conversion to the 245,000-square-foot Clark Com- mons. The fully leased shopping cen- ter is slated to open this summer, with 27 shops and restaurants, including a Whole Foods. Grocery-anchored shopping centers continue to dominate nonmall con- struction, says Herbert D. Weitzman, executive chairman of the Weitzman Group/Cencor Realty Services. He cites ICSC data indicating that a foods- business focus accounted for most of the new retail space built last year. "Grocery-anchored community centers are driven by tenants least affected by the Internet," Weitzman said. "Online sales are only about 1 percent of the grocery market." Grocery stores are not just critical traffic drivers, he says. "They're growing as other retailers ad- just footprints downward." Cencor is building a pair of Kroger- anchored Texas centers, one in Lewis- ville, just west of Dallas, and the other in Clute, south of Houston. Lewisville's 400,000-square-foot Castle Hills Mar- ketplace, a hybrid community-regional center, attracted six restaurants. Clute's Woodshore Marketplace, which will fea- ture a 123,000-square-foot Kroger, will be strategically situated near an expand- ing Dow Chemical complex expected to employ about 6,000 by next year, when the center opens. Some sites have suffered through seemingly endless unsuccessful devel- opment attempts and a lot of political wrangling. Among these is the 82-acre waterfront property in Bridgeport, Conn., that will soon become developer RCI Group's Steelpointe Harbor. After several developers over decades proved unable to get the deal done, RCI finally gained traction with an administration that sees the project as the "symbol for a new Bridgeport — an absolutely iconic and in-your-face project," according to project leasing consultant Douglas Jerum, of Rochester, N.Y.–based Fer- rara Jerum International. Steelpointe's 150 S C T / M a y 2 0 1 5 With land at a premium, redevelopment projects are becoming increasingly creative.