Mixed Use Becoming the Norm
CHICAGO- ICSC DISPATCH: As mixed-use retail centers
become more common, developers are realizing that housing is a key component in
these types of projects, said speakers here at the International Council of
Shopping Centers’ Fall Conference here Tuesday. “Housing does create great
synergy with the retail department and will help center sales,” says Emerick
Corsi, executive vice president of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises.
Corsi
was referring to his company’s Victoria Gardens center in Rancho Cucamonga, CA,
which has 1.3 million sf of retail, including such anchors as AMC Theatre, J.C.
Penney and Macy’s. The project is adding 500 residential units that executives
hope will boost the center’s already strong sales per sf of $600.
General Growth
Properties’ Summerlin Centre in Las Vegas will be a 1.2 million-sf
retail-entertainment center in a 22,500-anchor, master-planned community with
about 5,500 residences when it opens in 2008. When building the retail for a
project like this, General Growth has taken into consideration that the demand
for the store’s opening hours will likely differ from typical retail centers,
says Thomas D’Alesandro, the locally based firm’s senior vice president of development.
“These
places have their peak demand in the evening,” he says. “They almost need to be
designed by how they look at night, even more than the day.”
Condos that are sold with some of these newer mixed-use projects aren’t
cheap either. At Developers Diversified Realty’s Shops at Midtown Miami, they
are going for between $200,000 and $800,000, while the asking price at Uptown
Park Ridge (IL), being developed by Mid-America Real Estate Corp, is from
$400,000 to $1 million.
Since
such large retail real estate developers are planning these projects, smaller
companies are bound to follow, says Brian Leary, vice president of design and
development for the Atlantic Station mixed-use project in Downtown Atlanta.
“Whenever they do something, it ripples through the entire industry,” he says.