The master plan for Victoria Gardens is based on an elaborate story-board for how a downtown might have developed organically in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Intended to add texture, color, and interest to the project, not to fake a historic setting, the plan clearly depicts Victoria Gardens as a new project.
Over the past decade, a new retail DNA has evolved. No longer dominated by enclosed regional malls surrounded by seas of parking, the new retail model is decidedly more open, more integrated, and more lifestyle oriented. Many of the original rules of retail development still hold true, but today’s developers and designers are gradually changing them to embrace an evolving marketplace for the new millennium.
The most obvious change is the decrease in quantity of developable sites. The traditional mall developer has been forced to rethink the meaning of the old—and still true—adage “location, location, location.” Many existing centers are getting a makeover, adapting to trends and building in greater flexibility for future change.
These trends are being driven by lifestyle—a frequently used word that has come to mean many things to many people. At its core, “lifestyle” refers to consumers’ choices and the environments in which they spend their time. Today’s shoppers are searching for more than simply products in a convenient setting; instead, they are looking for more meaningful relationships with their shopping environments—places that respect and inspire their decisions.
From the details (pedestrian-friendly, open-air streets with well-defined and designed public areas) to the mix (anchors that are not necessarily department stores but might be big boxes, entertainment offerings, clustering of like uses, and well-programmed public areas), this new appreciation for lifestyle is increasingly seen at every level of design. Perhaps most important, this new generation of shopping centers is making better connections with consumers’ environments—where they work, live, and play—and becoming a more tightly woven component of their everyday activities. Altogether, these elements create environments where consumers choose to spend more of their time.
The key to understanding today’s shoppers no longer lies solely in demographics. Instead, psychographics now reigns supreme, predicting consumer behavior not only on socioeconomic standing but also on likes and dislikes, expressions, and aspirations. Even the qualities these shoppers do have in common have changed: turned off by traffic and long commutes, they expect shopping to be close to where they live and offer the convenience of accomplishing many things in one visit; they seek more diverse dining and entertainment options (and have researched those options), and they look for authenticity in their environments.
The lively design of West Hollywood Gateway in West Hollywood, California, creates a shopping destination.
Along the same lines, today’s shoppers look at urban-style density for precedents to the kinds of environments they crave. Even those who live in suburban areas seem to favor development that captures the vitality of urban streets (or the suburban version of urban streets), the convenience of public transit connections, and quick and easy pedestrian links to other development. Smart growth initiatives have bolstered this trend, offering incentives for developers looking to create urban-style infill projects.
Since the end of the 20th century, technology has continued to influence the shopping environment. Although the growing popularity of the Internet and online shopping has certainly changed traditional brick-and-mortar retailing, it has not—and will not—replace it. Instead, it has forced developers, designers, and particularly retailers to explore new ways to draw customers and to market and sell merchandise. Mobile technology and automatic identification tagging allow retailers to target with laserlike precision specific consumers based on buying patterns, demographics, and psychographics—or simply because a shopper carrying a mobile phone happened to walk by a “hot spot.”
Retailers are getting better all the time at implementing effective multichannel merchandising strategies aimed at integrating and exploiting the best of the bricks, clicks, and pics (catalog) channels. Today, thanks to distributors like Amazon.com and eBay, consumers have access to many more products, all available all the time at multiple price points.
Wide sidewalks and generously landscaped courtyards at West Hollywood Gateway contribute to establishing the area’s pedestrian-friendly character.
With all these factors influencing the retail environment, how has it changed? And more important, how does it need to continue to change to stay competitive and continue to attract today’s savvy consumers? It starts not with what is changing but with what is not: the absolutes of shopping center development and design. Reflecting decades of trial and error, these retail truths prove that some rules are meant not to be broken:
Once these tried-and-true rules have provided the foundation for a shopping center, developers and designers can begin to explore products that will capture today’s market. In other words, once the old rules are understood, the new rules can begin to govern how developers can create a fresh, competitive environment:
Even as design and leisure are more at a premium, creating strategies that showcase the stores and their products is crucial to attracting a good mix of tenants and giving them the visibility they need. The design of Zona Rosa, a new town center in the northern suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, is based on a street grid with buildings close to the streets, open spaces, and walkability.
Moreover, Generation M associates shopping with activism. Bombarded at an early age by clamoring brands, these young people consequently look for some meaning in their environments. They respond to authenticity and are suspicious of corporate objectives. As a result, initiatives like Target’s pink pop-up stores for breast cancer and Nike’s Livestrong bracelets resonate with this generation.
Creating smart suburban downtowns with a mix of uses can help form the logical connections to workplaces, shopping venues, and transportation that help these new Americans get to jobs, access a variety of stores to meet their needs, and retrieve public and educational services. Sensitive retail development can create vibrant community hubs that provide social support networks to enable immigrants to thrive in their new country.
For retail developers, mixed uses provide an opportunity to capitalize on all these advantages, creating built-in customers. Mutually supportive uses may generate higher total revenue than the sum of their parts. When carefully selected, the uses benefit from people visiting them at different times for different reasons, potentially creating around-the-clock revenue. Developers daunted by front-end risk—or inexperienced in one of the individual uses—will find that, over time, mixed-use development is a more sustainable investment than, say, a strip mall or some other single-use development. Not only will they be helping to develop places that will mature over time; they also may be rewarded by a variety of financial and zoning allowances offered by many cities.
Initially a challenge, parking became an advantage to Bridgeport Village in Tualatin, a suburban community in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. As regulated by urban growth boundaries, structured parking was required. The four-level parking structure for the 502,000-square-foot (46,655-square-meter) center provided seven to eight additional acres (2.8 to 3.2 hectares) for retail and open space. The 1,140-car structure is concealed behind the urban grid, which allows parking to be close to shops for customers’ convenience. Valet parking and surface parking are located strategically near restaurants, medium-format soft goods retailers, the supermarket, and convenience shops. The grid consists of eight 180- by 180-foot (on average) (55- by 55-meter) blocks.
Successful models already exist everywhere. Revitalized urban neighborhoods reveal that living above the shop really does work (as it always has) under the right conditions. New master-planned communities reveal that if cities, planners, developers, and designers work together from the start, the right density, pedestrian flow, scale, and tenant mix can make complex mixed-use development viable. Traditional shopping centers show that developers increasingly value links between public transit, offices, and residences that make shopping a more natural and convenient extension of people’s lives. Inside stores themselves, retailers are hoping to extend shoppers’ stays by embracing and communicating the “living” aspects of their brand.
From massive projects like Victory Park in Dallas and Atlantic Station in Atlanta to smaller projects like Highland Row in Memphis, Tennessee, mixed-use development is everywhere these days. But what defines mixed use? Is it a shopping center with 10,000 square feet (930 square meters) of office above retail? Is it a lifestyle center surrounded by power retail and apartments? Shopping Center Business (SCB) asked a number of expert developers across the country to share their opinions about what creates a mixed-use project and what parameters they use in deciding whether a project is mixed use.
We also wanted to know why everyone is developing mixed-use projects. Where is the demand coming from? Who is driving the industry to develop mixed-use properties? We have also seen a trend of mixed-use development in the suburbs, where strip centers and sprawl traditionally have ruled. Why are developers choosing suburban and rural areas to build mixed-use vertical projects?
A debate has surfaced in the industry about mixed-use projects versus multiuse projects. Some developers believe that many are inappropriately calling their projects mixed use. “I’ve heard ‘mixed use’ described as an apartment building with a dry cleaners and a café at the bottom,” says Brian Jones, CEO of Forest City Commercial Development’s Western Region. “And I’ve heard ‘mixed use’ refer to huge communities where you have housing and other uses. It is a misused name.”
Jones’s comment leads to the root of the debate: any project with more than one use can seemingly be termed mixed use. Along with the term “lifestyle center,” mixed use is the industry’s other ambiguous term.
“A true mixed-use application by our definition is multiple uses in the same building,” says Craig Kaser, president of TerreMark Partners, based in Atlanta. His thoughts are echoed by many developers, who believe that projects with many different property types in separate buildings should be termed “multiuse.” If that is the case, then a center with an adjacent hotel or apartment building should be multiuse, not mixed use, whether or not a single developer controls the land.
“‘Multiuse’ would be more horizontal in nature,” says Jones. “You have a number of uses in a planned project. As an example, I would describe our Victoria Gardens project, where we have a number of uses in one plan, as multiuse. Our Westminster project, where we have residential, lifestyle and power retail, and office space, is multiuse. It is a meaningful plan that incorporates all those uses. There are a lot of multiuse projects underway.”
Most of the developers SCB talked to agree. Overall, they also agreed that retail will create the draw but that residential and office space also must have a demand in the market to make the project viable. They also thought that mixed use should be vertical by nature and that each use must serve its purpose independently yet work together.
Some developers take the view that one exception seems to exist to the rule that mixed use must be vertical: if there are multiple uses in separate buildings, they must be located within a walkable environment. This definition would still exclude shopping centers with hotels or power centers on the periphery where the shopper is more likely to drive. It would include, however, communities where residents of an apartment building are likely to walk half a block to the retail component.
“In a walkable community, having uses in separate buildings does not break up the mix, as it were, but rather contributes to the overall diversity of the project,” says John Crossman, president of Florida-based Crossman & Company.
But the real difference, say others, is the way a project is developed. Is it being developed as a single project or as multiple projects developed on one piece of land?
“There is a very distinct difference between mixed use and multiuse,” says Clayton McCaffery, vice president of Chicago-based McCaffery Interests, developers of the award-winning mixed-use project, The Market Common, Clarendon, in Arlington, Virginia. “A mixed-use project requires the skill of the developer to thoughtfully and creatively work with investors, retailers, residents, and office occupants to understand and feel comfortable with the integration of each party’s interests and demands into a single cohesive project.”
Most developers SCB interviewed generally agreed with the definition that a mixed-use project must have three or more significant uses and physical integration that creates a single plan. Some developers narrow the number of uses to two when the project contains multifamily housing or office and retail. Most developers also agreed that retail is the must-have sector in a mixed-use development, with multifamily a close second, followed by hospitality, third, and office, fourth. Most developers did not have a hard formula of percentages that they allocated to each sector when developing mixed use.
“Percentages are more often dictated by local demand,” says Rodney Tucker, CEO of Citation Development, which is developing three mixed-use projects in the Las Vegas market. “Each component should act as a catalyst to support and enhance the complementing adjacent components.”
Retail is generally the most noticeable of the sectors in a mixed-use environment. It is what creates the project’s energy as well as the main attraction for outside visitors and what makes them feel a part of the project. Office, multifamily, and hotel uses must have significant demand to warrant their participation.
“For every use you introduce, the complexities of the development increase dramatically,” says Dougall McCorkle, vice president of commercial properties for The Lutgert Companies. “Often, each use has opposing needs. Office space and retailers both need convenient parking, for example, but parking for office space is static while retailers need those spaces to turn over quickly. Nonretail uses need ground-floor access and visibility, but it has to be done in a manner so as not to create dead zones in the retail landscape. And restaurants and residential units obviously have opposing needs when it comes to noise and energy.”
Many mixed-use projects are driven by developers whose history is in retail development, though most of the developers SCB interviewed have altered their practice to focus specifically on mixed-use properties. Some retail developers have brought in partners to develop other uses in a center.
“If you bring in codevelopers for certain uses of the project, then a whole new set of complications arise,” says McCorkle. “Factoring in the inevitable financing requirements from the lender with regard to preleasing office versus retail space and preselling condos really takes a lot of skill, patience, and perhaps luck to make the stars and moon align enough to pull it all off.”
Source: Excerpted and adapted from Randall Shearin, “Mastering Mixed-Use,” Shopping Center Business, June 2007, pp. 58–78. ©2007 France Publications, Inc.
All these tenets combine to create new models of retailing. No longer limited to regional malls and strip centers, today’s retail environment, while still resting on the tried and true rules of retail design, comes in all shapes and sizes.
What was old is now new again. The paradigm shift in retail development at the turn of the 21st century was the trend away from new enclosed and conditioned retail environments and an increasing focus on the development of open-air, street-oriented places for even the largest centers. The rise of an overall urban planning movement known as the new urbanism is at the heart of that shift. Based in part on the tenets of early 20th-century town planning and the still dominant European high street, these places feature a central commercial core with the highest density, then decreasing density of commercial and residential uses surrounding it.
This return to the basic urban design strategy of knitting uses together through the layout of streets and blocks has called into question many of the design norms of all types of shopping centers. A desire to shift importance to walkable streets and away from acres of free parking has transformed not only the design of new retail environments but also the renovation and expansion of existing ones. Street-oriented developments are gaining ground, and enclosed malls are being reinvented by adding open pedestrian components and incorporating other uses on former surface parking lots. Street-oriented developments, whether new or adaptive, are widely seen as having a more positive long-term benefit to their communities.
What was once a strict divide between enclosed and open-air shopping environments has begun to close. For ground-up developments, the term “open-air” once denoted single-loaded lines of stores facing parking fields that were usually targeted to lower- to mid-market shopping such as grocery-anchored and power centers. More extensive mid- to high-end comparison shopping in newly developed projects was associated with enclosed malls. Today, in places like Bowie Town Center in Bowie, Maryland, and The Grove in Los Angeles, “open-air” connotes new associations with traditional downtown street settings and represents all levels of shopping and price points. More important, though, these types of developments have ushered in the current phrase “lifestyle center.”
Does Your Life Have Style? As with most trends, clearly and specifically defining what a lifestyle center is poses a few complications. The phrase has become overused and vague, and what began as a leasing strategy has given rise to a wildly diverse project type that seems to have only a few common attributes. Yet everyone seems to know one when they see one.
Poag & McEwen, a Memphis-based developer, is largely credited with coining the term, but even its portfolio is diverse enough to question just what a lifestyle center is today. The International Council of Shopping Centers, sensing confusion among the ranks, tried to lay down the law and offered the following definition:1
A lifestyle center is most often located near affluent residential neighborhoods, has an upscale orientation, contains 150,000 to 500,000 square feet (14,000 to 46,500 square meters) of GLA, is built in an open-air format, and includes at least 50,000 square feet (4,650 square meters) of national specialty chain stores.
So that settled the matter. Or did it?
Increasingly, no one definition exists: shopping centers continue to hybridize and evolve, mixing components as market, location, and consumer preferences dictate.
From the standpoint of leasing or merchandise mix, lifestyle tenants tend to be those specialty retailers whose product line is focused on a particular ethos or activity. Barnes & Noble, for example, is often considered a lifestyle anchor because it responds to a culture that allegedly values all things literary. Nevertheless, the need to expand the notion of convenience and to serve the value-conscious consumer has led to the inclusion of big-box stores in such centers.
Four architecture firms designed an eclectic mix of buildings at Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Each street has a different feel: buildings evoking craftsman, mission, and Spanish colonial styles are located along North Main Street; South Street, where the department stores are located, evokes streamlined modernist styles; and the town square is surrounded by civic-looking structures that mimic the neoclassical style.
The iconic exterior facade of Neiman Marcus is part of the new expansion at Natick Collection in Natick, Massachusetts. The new addition also features condominiums above the mall shops with direct elevator access to the mall.
Moreover, from the perspective of design, lifestyle centers tend to be hard to pin down. Some are heavily themed environments that try to replicate well-imagined streetscapes such as The Grove (profiled in Chapter 9), while others favor a more authentic approach and try to tap into a local design vernacular or aesthetic such as Crocker Park. Either way, these centers do seem to rely on open-air environments, mix food uses with retail uses, and emphasize the social aspects of shopping. If a mall encourages circulation, the new format encourages shoppers to sit and relax. Thus, more attention tends to be paid to the details of the environment, especially those things that come in direct contact with the shopper such as tiling and paving, landscaping, and storefront details.
Beyond the Strip-Center Mentality. Conventional open-air centers have also evolved dramatically. What used to be considered a strip style of development has lost its luster, and today’s high-quality developments include many amenities and open spaces, with sidewalks, streets, and plazas treated as a series of outdoor rooms. Spaces between buildings are as carefully choreographed and composed as the buildings themselves. The artful arrangement of furnishings, lighting, fountains, special paving, and performance areas is key to capturing the most positive attributes of the traditional shopping street.
The success of these new developments, many of them patterned after established, long-successful urban shopping districts like Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, results in a focus for planning, design, and development known as “Main Street.” These developments are influenced by traditional town planning concepts, melded with many of the merchandising and anchoring concepts of regional malls such as Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
The Right Flow. The single-loaded strip center has been relegated to those sites where the automobile still reigns and municipal agencies are less concerned about sprawl or single-use developments. The more successful model lines a street environment with buildings on both sides and provides generous sidewalks and head-in, angled, or parallel parking. Two-level centers, with second-level retailers reached directly only from the second level, are rarely successful, but some examples do exist. Two-level retailers or restaurants reached from the ground floor are more likely to succeed. Adding residential units to the development not only increases security by adding a self-policing environment but also helps activate the environment at several times during the day.
Although pedestrian-only open-air retail environments are common and often successful, most developers opt to create vehicular streets with sidewalks. This solution provides the opportunity for on-street parking that, although limited, is important in the minds of both retailers and shoppers. Vehicular streets also capture more successfully the ambience and bustle of traditional street shopping. The coexistence of cars and pedestrians is encouraged and managed through carefully controlled street and sidewalk widths, appropriately placed crossing points, and on-street parking. Additional traffic mitigation is handled with traffic calming devices such as table intersections.
Fitting the Pieces Together. Once traffic issues have been resolved, attention should be paid to the interaction of streets, sidewalks, and setbacks. Streets and sidewalks of a certain width provide optimal dimensions for generous sidewalks, on-street parking, and two-way traffic. A building-to-building dimension of 80 to 86 feet (24 to 26 meters) provides for a 15-foot (4.6-meter) sidewalk, an optimal width to allow for projection of building awnings and signage, street trees, limited outdoor dining, and curb overhang of vehicles. It also provides for approximately 30 to 32 feet (9 to 9.7 meters) for angled head-in parking and 20 to 24 feet (6 to 7.3 meters) for two-way traffic.
Alternatives to curbs can achieve comparable (in some cases, enhanced) interaction between streets and sidewalks. For example, bollards (rigid posts that serve as a symbolic and actual barrier to vehicles) with no curbs delineate streets with easier transition for pedestrians. Still, this approach is not without challenges as raised planters on sidewalks can become barriers to pedestrians, thereby reducing the overall impact and familiarity of the classic shopping street experience.
Climate Concerns. Although an open-air center might seemingly be more successful in a warm climate, many examples exist of success even in colder, wetter areas, and attempts at total protection from rain are typically unwarranted. Tenant- or landlord-provided awnings and overhangs allow shoppers to duck out of the rain in case of a downpour.
With a resurgent interest in downtown and city shopping, an increasing number of infill developments are being created. Layered with many more complexities than suburban development and often working in the context of an unusually shaped site, urban infill development poses the need for complex design. That said, urban infill development can provide easy-to-understand demographics, an existing infrastructure, an instantly recognizable address, and smaller, more manageable development sites.
Going Up. In the densest urban areas, verticality makes financial sense. As open urban spaces diminish, the shortage of real estate drives development expenses up. Because of the difficulties in assembling land for retailing, vertical retail, the layering of multi-tenant retail space in a compact city block, is a challenging but viable option and can enhance a pedestrian-friendly environment.
Century Theatres created a prototype with two separate theaters under one roof for Church Street Plaza, a $181 million mixed-use redevelopment project in downtown Evanston, Illinois. Both the city and Northwestern University owned the 7.2-acre (2.9-hectare) site; the intent was to create a vibrant place for faculty and students to enjoy. CineArts has six screens showing independent and specialty films geared toward the university audience and a traditional multiplex with 12 screens. The two theaters, each with its own lobby, are on the second floor to maximize retail space at the street level.
The challenge of vertical retailing is to encourage shoppers to move upward, beyond just the one or two levels they would normally visit. The same analysis of anchoring that typically happens horizontally in a suburban project is attempted vertically, requiring an equal draw to be placed at the top and pedestrian traffic pulled farther into the diagram. Common areas are lined with stores like a mall, with floor openings to visually connect the levels.
It is most common in highly dense urban environments such as in Asia’s major cities, where multiple examples of vertical retail exist and thrive. Density of people is a critical aspect in making vertical retailing succeed. Namba Parks, an eight-story shopping center in Osaka, Japan, is profiled in Chapter 9.
Although density in North American cities generally is not sufficient to support such verticality (and it has not been the preferred experience among shoppers), this configuration has been successfully developed in certain cities. For example, Westfield San Francisco Centre opened in 2006 when an existing vertical center was expanded to include the renovation and reconfiguration of an adjacent historic department store. The two structures that make up the Westfield San Francisco Centre are linked on five levels, with a Nordstrom store positioned at its upper floors as one of the anchors.
Parking Challenges. Generally speaking, city ordinances require more parking space than needed, as they are more likely based on a single-use suburban model without adjusting for shared parking or pedestrian (residents, office workers, tourists) and transit access. A few exceptions such as Manhattan, Boston, and San Francisco exist, where ordinances in effect allow developers to provide the number of spaces the developer determines is sufficient.
Regardless of the process used to determine the number of spaces, costs associated with underground parking must be considered; such costs are one of many financial impacts that force developers to rely on market conditions that allow for substantial rents and assume pent-up demand in the marketplace.
Navigation. From a functional standpoint, the most important design consideration in urban infill retail development, as in any retail development, is to craft a pedestrian flow that propels shoppers through the entire space. In vertical configurations, the positioning of escalators, elevators, major tenants, access points from the street, and parking is of paramount importance and is very different from that required for horizontal or suburban counterparts. Infrastructure design is also a challenge, as vertically oriented spaces for service and deliveries, HVAC, and life-safety systems affect cost and structure.
Beyond function, the design statement created—that is, the story told by the project and the sum total of the visitor’s experience—is equally important. A high-quality experience borne out by materials, details, and ambience is the constant that puts a few urban infill retail projects in the top tier of retail development.
As successful models continue to pop up all over the United States and abroad, mixed-use development is finally being seen as a valid long-term investment for many developers. With a greater understanding of the front-end risks and how to accommodate them, developers are seeing how effective partnerships can lead to vibrant places that enjoy around-the-clock activity. With mixed uses, developers have the chance not only to get a longer return on their investment and at times benefit from public sector incentives or partnerships but also to introduce uses that strengthen the rest of them.
Integrating Office Space. Increasingly, office uses are positioned directly above retail space in open-air settings. This blending of uses has multiple benefits. Where offices occupy second and third stories only, tenants tend to be small, professional, medical, legal, or real estate businesses and provide a moderate daily traffic flow for the retail space tenants, particularly restaurants. Higher-rise office space often attracts larger companies but, in any case, the total additional employees provide stronger support for the ground-floor retail space. Companies that offer retail and/or residential space in addition to office space provide an additional benefit to employees and create a better workplace. Places like Legacy Town Center in Plano, Texas, and Kierland Commons in Scottsdale, Arizona, have successfully integrated office with retail space.
At least some on-street parking is important in these projects because of the perception of convenience that it provides. Actual parking requirements are typically filled through a combination of on-street parking and fields of parking located behind the buildings, with amenity-rich passages connecting them to the retail main street. Although parking structures provide more parking closer to the street, the economics of most open-air centers make garage construction financially difficult. In some cases, cities motivated by the promise of additional revenue from sales taxes and the creation of a dense commercial core fund structured parking and other infrastructure through public/private partnerships.
Structured parking and vertical mixed uses at Crocker Park in Westlake, Ohio, resulted in a project with 26 percent open space that includes median parks, neighborhood greens, and sidewalk places. The site was a 75-acre (30-hectare) greenfield; Crocker Park now incorporates more than 600,000 square feet (55,760 square meters) of retail space with more than 1 million square feet (93,000 square meters) of upper-story apartments and office space, townhouses, and condominiums.
Residential units are located directly above ground-level retail at Santana Row in San Jose, California. Now a high-density, multistory mixed-use neighborhood, the project replaced a 1960s-era single-story suburban shopping center.
Integrating Residential Space. Residential uses above or adjacent to open-air retail increasingly are seen as adding value to a retail-driven development. Chances of the development’s long-term sustainability increase, based in part on the built-in customer base for shopping and on opportunity for multiple revenue streams. This form of mixed-use development is designed horizontally (often called multiuse), with residential blocks adjacent and connected to shopping streets (as in Legacy Town Center) or vertically (called mixed use), with residential uses directly above the stores (as in Santana Row in San Jose, California, and the Market Common, Clarendon, in Arlington, Virginia). Vertical mixing is generally regarded as more challenging from the points of view of both development and design. Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems of the residential portion must be clustered to minimize the impact to the retail leased space below, and the ideal column spacing for the uses tends to complicate the situation. Office above retail, as noted, typically has much less impact on stores below. Additionally, horizontally organized retail/residential master plans can be implemented more easily through multiple developers.
Residential mixed with retail has another very practical added benefit. The perception of security is increased, simply because in the evening and later (when stores close) spaces are occupied above or near the shopping streets, resulting in more eyes on the street: in effect, residents become watchdogs for the development. Thus, opportunities for trouble are minimized compared with a dark, single-use street.
The proliferation of mass transit in major U.S. cities has spawned a new form of retail-driven development around the stations serving these systems. New stations often create value where it did not exist before (Mockingbird Station in Dallas, Texas, for example). Delivering more customers at more hours of the day, transit has become another form of “anchor” for retail developments. The blending of residential and office space further capitalizes on the connectivity to other areas of a city through mass transit, and cities typically encourage mixed-use development near transit stations, allowing greater density at these locations.
Downtown Silver Spring in Silver Spring, Maryland, is an infill project by The Peterson Companies developed near an already established transit district.
One obvious benefit of transit-oriented development is the promise of diminished reliance on automobiles, a notion that may translate into less need for parking. Although parking mitigation is a clear asset and encouraging the use of mass transit is consonant with smart growth initiatives, exactly quantifying these benefits can be difficult. The actual walking time from the transit station to the retail center, for example, may be beyond what most people consider convenient, and the willingness to use transit for shopping trips varies depending on local norms and density. Nonetheless, transit-oriented development will become increasingly important in the real estate industry, especially in those regions where population growth is most pronounced.
Given the public’s interest in open-air formats, developers, and especially REITs, continue to explore the evolution of the traditional model and how to maximize the value of an asset. Hybrid malls—those that mix indoor and outdoor spaces or traditional retailing with lifestyle or entertainment-driven tenants—have become an increasingly popular new type of development.
At Market Street at The Woodlands near Houston, Texas, the spaces between buildings were designed to act as outdoor rooms, encouraging shoppers to linger and relax.
Englewood City Center. The first major transit-oriented development (TOD) in the Denver area, Englewood City Center receives frequent visits from practitioners seeking to understand the concept of TOD. Encompassing 55 acres (22.3 hectares), Englewood City Center is a public/private development that was completed in 2002 to replace an aging shopping center. It includes 438 residential units, 700,000 square feet (65,100 square meters) of retail space that includes a Wal-Mart, the Englewood municipal offices and library, and a large civic open space.
Englewood City Center offers numerous lessons for how to develop TODs. The site is well laid out and walkable, particularly from the station platform. Residential development (whose residents are most likely to use light rail), the civic center, and the park are located closest to the station. Most major retailers are visible from the nearby major roadway, and all uses are connected on a street grid, with pedestrian connections to adjacent neighborhoods.
Public art abounds. In addition to a fountain in the park, numerous pieces of public art, mostly sculpture, improve the pedestrian realm.
Much of the development is denser than the surrounding area, and mixed-use buildings are common. For example, a gym is located on the second floor of a retail structure. Many of the residential buildings contain ground-floor retail space, and some retail structures include second-story office space.
A critical piece of Englewood City Center, Wal-Mart provided the financing for the project to move ahead. The city and developer realized that a big-box store and light rail could both be part of the same project, as long as they were in appropriate locations on the site. The Wal-Mart site is also part of the street grid, enabling it to be more easily redeveloped in the event the store closes.
Developers: City of Englewood, Miller Weingarten, Regional Transportation District, Trammell Crow Residential, Wal-Mart
Area plan: Calthorpe Associates
Brighton Pavilions. Adjacent to an existing bus park-and-ride in the northeast Denver metropolitan area, Brighton Pavilions opened in 2005. Designed by Gensler, a Houston-based architecture firm, it includes retail space, restaurants, and a 12-screen movie theater on a 14-acre (5.7-hectare) site near downtown Brighton.
Brighton Pavilions is unusual in that it is a TOD based on bus, not rail, service. It is, however, a successful partnership with the Regional Transportation District. The retail stores and park-and-ride service are complementary uses, and each benefits from the other, particularly at commuting times. Commuters share the parking facility by day, patrons of the theater and sit-down restaurants in the evenings.
Developers: Brighton Urban Development Company, city of Brighton, Regional Transportation District
Source: Adapted from Sam Newberg, “ULX Ten Denver TODs,” Urban Land, September 2006, pp. 76–80.
Although the hybrid is an evolving model, a number of consistent elements are starting to emerge. Successful hybrids rely on seamless transitions between spaces as well as aggressive leasing strategies to ensure a consistent and appropriate tenant mix. As one might expect, hybrids combine the complications of their respective components—parking, circulation, sight lines, anchoring, tenanting—but offer shoppers greater diversity in environments and typically bring developers greater flexibility in leasing.
Unquestionably, the United States led the world in mall development for more than four decades following World War II. Driven by ample space, a growing population with immense buying power, and affordable gas prices, the United States built shopping centers in middle-class suburbs and anchored them with large department stores in simple horizontal structures surrounded by a sea of cars. Internationally, however, retailing remained more localized and much more compact, owing to historic urban development or sheer population density and greater reliance on foot traffic and public transportation. As conditions in the United States urban market change—less space to develop, rising land costs, high gas prices, and a shift in consumers’ preferences—the United States is starting to look to international models for ways to adapt the shopping environment.
Discussions about shopping centers all over the globe share some commonalities. Successful retailing everywhere contains several fundamental elements: demographic relevance, attractive anchors, effective circulation, good sight lines, and an appreciation for the shopping experience. But increasingly, developers in the United States are learning several lessons from overseas models.
The 300,000-square-foot (28,000-square-meter) Ayala Center Greenbelt 3 in Manila integrates outdoor space with retail. A series of highly landscaped courtyards, plazas, and walkways line one side of the development; on the other side, retail is oriented toward city streets.
Before the emergence of lifestyle-oriented and mixed-use centers, the American enclosed regional mall provided the standard for many parts of the world. Today, the opposite is occurring. International retail models are increasingly being applied to American centers.
Asia’s dense population has necessitated vertical design. In Japan and Taiwan, shopping centers can tower as high as 12 stories. China has borrowed from both other Asian and global models, maintaining a vertical structure while extending horizontally where possible. Divided into distinctive halves, City Crossing in Shenzhen, China, for example, is a moderate four and six stories high. Chinese shopping centers are largely enclosed structures, allowing patrons to escape the hot, damp summer climate.
Department stores in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea have a different character and merchandising strategy from their U.S. counterparts, which often works against the success of inline shops. Most Asian department stores lease space to certain international brands such as Burberry and Gucci, making them a type of shopping center within a shopping center.
American-style retail development in the Middle East has existed for many years, and it continues to evolve. Cultural, economic, and climatic issues pose a wealth of challenges to architects, developers, and retailers interested in the market. Yet despite these challenges, many Arab countries have embraced an aggressive commercial approach to development and have creatively adapted Western-style retail models to fit their indigenous cultures. The United Arab Emirates has been among the most progressive countries in the region in translating western shopping trends into a local context, while even the more conservative Islamic cultures have figured out ways of adhering to sharia law and maintaining a robust retail environment. In Saudi Arabia, for example, where women are required to be veiled in public, retail designers have created special anchors where women can enter, unveil, and, in the presence of women only, enjoy a pleasant shopping experience. The hot desert climate limits the use of skylights and water, two fundamentals in many western-style developments. But Arab architects have been dealing with these issues for centuries, creating public markets (souks) that have vitality and a sense of place that rivals anything the West has to offer.
Many Arab countries have embraced an aggressive commercial approach to development and creatively adapted western-style retail models to their local context. Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has 2.4 million square feet (223,000 square meters) of GLA and includes an indoor ski slope.
Although many Asian malls have successfully translated the familiar formula from the United States — large anchor tenants, powerful branding, a coordinated merchandising mix, and comfortable, climate-controlled surroundings—fundamental differences in composition remain. Malls in Asia tend to have many more stores, which tend to be much more compact, with a shallow footprint. This phenomenon stems from many factors but ultimately arises from a cultural tradition that revolves around the local bazaar or outdoor market as the community centerpiece.
The second phase of Pondok Indah, a three-level mall in Jakarta, Indonesia, is an example of an American mall translated into an Indonesian setting. The transfer of American retail technology and planning to Indonesia, in combination with recognizable elements of Indonesian art, society, and retail culture, resulted in a distinctive finished product. Completed in 2005, the 614,000 square feet (57,000 square meters) includes retail and entertainment space.
These markets, or souks, represent some of the earliest and most organic “malls.” The densely packed clustering of small individual stalls and the resultant commercial intensity represent retail exchange and social interaction at their most essential. The design of Pondok Indah, in Jakarta, Indonesia, may break rules in a nation accustomed to small shops crammed into a retail space with limited public amenities, but it still manages to capture the bustling vitality and communal energy so familiar to local residents. Pondok addresses the issue of more stores and smaller parcels by devoting more open space to the movement of pedestrians. Broad avenues and frequent literal and metaphorical connectors facilitate intuitive, free-flowing circulation.
Pondok Indah is clearly a contemporary space, but the fusion of its contemporary elements with the vitality and subliminal geometry of a traditional souk has transformed it into a place that transcends traditional formulas and creates something entirely new.
Acknowledging these cultural touchstones through design can have significant benefits. Just as mall design in the United States has recognized that a connection exists between enlivened, activated spaces and profitable places, the design of Asian malls is undergoing a similar philosophical renaissance. The energy and creativity behind that renaissance have fueled a corresponding flow of inspiration to the United States and Europe.
In particular, by embracing the concept of integrated entertainment components to a greater extent than is done in the United States, Asian malls like Tai Mall in Taipei, Taiwan, and Bandung SuperMal in Bandung, Indonesia, have shown that heretofore unheard-of levels of interactive entertainment can not only work in a retail environment but also thrive there. The entertainment component of Pondok Indah’s second phase includes an ice rink, a bowling center, state-of-the-art technologies employed in three-dimensional interactive games and rides, and even a climbing wall—an array of entertainment options rarely found in the United States.
Preexisting civic infrastructure often dictates design decisions, and the fundamental question of where — and how—a project will fit into the urban landscape is frequently a more pressing and complicated concern in Asia than it is in the United States. Global retailers like IKEA and Wal-Mart illustrate the dichotomy perfectly. In the United States, these companies are uncompromising in their dedication to freestanding pad locations with a warehouse-style floor plan. But in Asia, IKEA and Wal-Mart are frequently located inside a larger mall with a vertical, multilevel layout. Second-level entries are not uncommon, with no ground-level access whatsoever.
Pondok Indah’s design aesthetic exhibits an unmistakable Asian influence, with open courts and soaring, elegant spaces throughout.
In Asia, where despite a recent boom in suburbanization the vast majority of people live in densely populated urban areas, malls must not only become part of the urban landscape but also bring some of the energy and dynamism of that urban environment inside. In the retail context of metropolises like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Mumbai, dramatic lighting, powerful graphics and signs, and an energized retail environment are necessary commodities.
The story of Asian malls is as much about limits as it is about possibilities — as much about which ideas to exclude as about which to include. The marketplace of ideas flows freely across geopolitical borders, but an intellectual flexibility and a willingness to make allowances for culture and setting can make the difference between a resounding success and a dull thud.
Although the genesis and subsequent evolution of the modern mall is a distinctly American phenomenon, it would be an oversimplification to say that the United States “exported” malls and contemporary retail concepts to Asia. The reality is much more nuanced, involves a much more reciprocal relationship, and is much, much more interesting.
It boils down to the fact that the place dictates the design and function of a retail environment. Understanding and appreciating what makes a successful mall requires, on a fundamental level, mastery of the same information in Asia as it does in the United States. The data might be different, but the analytical tools and design and development prerequisites are identical: know your people and know your place. A well-designed retail space comforts, satisfies, and stimulates people while honoring the spatial relationships, cultural priorities, and aesthetic synergies of the place.
Like Pondok Indah and its contemporaries, once fundamental cultural distinctions have been taken into account, it is then possible to innovate, adding elements that expand boundaries and challenge conventional notions about design and development. The journey from cultural context to a built environment is not a long one, and the ultimate destination is well worth the trip.
Source: Excerpted and adapted from Ahsin Rasheed, “The Great Mall of China,” Urban Land, January 2007, p. 82.
An urban infill project, Potsdamer Platz Arkaden in Berlin, Germany, includes more than 430,000 square feet (40,000 square meters) of retail space and seamlessly blends shopping with the public realm.
Since the late 1970s, Europe has drawn on U.S.-style retail development to both positive and negative effects. Many of the out-of-town developments that sprang up in the 1970s and 1980s duplicated the mistakes of U.S. centers from the previous decade: reliance on automobiles, single-use centers, and acres of surface parking. Culturally, some facets simply did not translate. Food courts, for instance, perfect for an American shopper concerned with convenience and speed over quality, were out of sync with European sensibilities. Beyond these differences, complicated lease and ownership structures often meant that the centers were difficult to renovate, leaving huge retail behemoths hulking on the edge of towns.
To combat this outcome and to encourage their urban locales to regenerate, many European countries enacted legislation sharply restricting out-of-town development. The result has been a greater emphasis on urban or intown development. Although these projects do not have the density of Asian retail centers, they tend to be multiuse and multilevel. Retail and residential uses are almost always combined, and public transportation plays an integral role in generating the necessary foot traffic. Park Place in Croydon, England, mirrors this development style by offering a retail and office district connected to a bus station.
European retailing has long been defined by town centers that blend shops, residences, and civic uses within clearly defined borders and edges. Because they provide successful examples of navigation and prove to the rest of the world that living above a shop is a viable format, the international development community has looked to these European town centers as models for smart growth. At the same time, European retail developers have looked to international urban retail projects to meet the challenges of the dwindling number of greenfield sites and increasing pressure to build sustainable developments.
As in other parts of the world, retailing in Central and South America reflects cultural and economic forces. Large suburban U.S.-style centers are the exception, though several exist, especially outside larger cities. As in Europe, such centers tend to mix fashion retailing with durable goods and convenience shopping, so it is not uncommon to find a grocery store or hypermarket in a mall environment. Different from most global models, Latin American anchors are often a combination of large-format (medium by U.S. standards) retail, restaurants, and common space. Because the region’s retail formats are smaller, circulation is more flexible, and navigation and public space planning can be more innovative. Perhaps because of the tangible and dynamic nature of Latin American culture and the inviting climate, developers are often more open to cutting-edge design than their counterparts abroad. One significant difference between U.S. and Central and Latin American centers, particularly for higher-end examples, is the presence of security guards and equipment.
Planning and design can move beyond the preliminary or conceptual stage once the feasibility of creating a shopping center has been determined. Designing a shopping center is more complex than ever given changes in consumers’ preferences, evolution of the retail model, and increase in uses and functions.
One issue that spans both site and building planning is the need to design for people with disabilities. Under provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), today’s centers must be accessible to the handicapped. ADA covers arrival and parking areas, walkways, ramps, entrances and doorways, corridors, stairs, elevators, toilet facilities, drinking fountains, public telephones, and signs. Federal, state, and local laws mandating accessibility in privately owned public buildings (including shopping centers) are incorporated into building codes. The developer and the design team must be aware of all accessibility codes and must make certain that the requirements are incorporated in the center’s design. Failure to do so will add costs later, because installed features that fail to provide access to people with disabilities according to codes will have to be replaced with components that do. Such changes also take time and could delay the occupancy permit for the center.
Access and visibility are the most important factors in the successful design of a center. A clearly visible retail identity is essential to initiate and encourage pleasant arrival. A logical hierarchy of roads is crucial in leading shoppers safely and efficiently from the road network to parking for the stores. Locating entry and egress to the site for customers’ easy use is paramount. Once on site, providing ample and convenient parking allows the maximum number of customers to use the center without long walking distances.
With proper initial site planning, the functional aspects of the center will assuredly work for the life of the project. Proper site planning allows expansion of the initial project as economics permit. An initial site plan should take into account present program requirements (as outlined through a feasibility study) and the possible future requirements of the site, building in flexibility not only for growth and expansion but also for changes in use. Such changes may involve, for example, consideration of a one-level center that could one day accommodate an upper level and the requisite infrastructure entailed. Similarly, changes in anchors and food and entertainment strategies are inevitable, so the initial design must be inherently flexible.
Two of the most critical elements in designing for now and the future are the related issues of traffic circulation and structured parking. Preparing for logical design and construction that both support initial development and do not ultimately require the reworking of existing infrastructure (roads, utilities, and parking decks) is absolutely essential. Increasingly, phased development includes placing parking structures on the original surface parking sites to accommodate new major anchors and additional stores, all of which could not occur without appropriate initial planning.
Although it seems self-evident, it bears repeating that the parking lot is often a shopper’s first contact with a mall, and the experience of parking should be as pleasant and welcoming as possible. Too often, it is not. If visitors feel lost and disoriented—or worse, threatened—they will likely not return. Indeed, the parking area should support the center’s prime role of providing an attractive and convenient marketplace. Given the critical support function, as well as the significant land area devoted to it, parking areas must be carefully planned and designed. Components of parking design— size of parking area, driveway layout, access aisles, individual stall dimensions and arrangements, pedestrian movements from the parking area to the center, grading, paving, landscaping, and lighting—are major elements of site planning.
Kierland Commons in Scottsdale, Arizona, uses a hierarchy of streets to create optimal access to the site, directing traffic to the parking areas and facilitating movement in the development.
The guiding principles in planning the parking area are the number of spaces needed as well as required by the local zoning ordinance, and their best arrangement. Parking that is well distributed helps minimize the need for consumers to park more than one time per visit. A successful shopping center depends on adequate parking—not too much but not too little. For this reason, parking requirements at shopping centers have received considerable attention over the years.
Parking Standards and Demand. The fact that a customer usually visits several stores during a single shopping trip and the rate of turnover of the spaces distinguish parking requirements for shopping centers from those of freestanding commercial enterprises.
Parking standards are expressed as a parking ratio— the number of parking spaces per 1,000 square feet (93 square meters) of GLA in a shopping center. GLA is a known and realistic factor for measuring the adequacy of parking provisions in relation to retail use.
Based on a comprehensive study of parking requirements for shopping centers conducted by ULI and the International Council of Shopping Centers in 1999, the following base parking standards are recommended for a typical shopping center today:
Studies have established the 20th-highest demand hour of the year as the appropriate hour for determining requirements. The above standards will serve patrons’ and employees’ needs at the 20th-busiest hour of the year, allowing a surplus of parking during all but 19 hours of the more than 3,000 hours during which a typical center is open annually. In other words, during only 19 hours of each year, typically distributed over ten peak shopping days, some patrons will not be able to find vacant spaces when they first enter the center.3
In addition to size of the center, the amount of parking needed at a shopping center is affected by the treatment of employee parking during shopping peaks, the percentage of nonauto travel to the center, and the proportion of restaurant, cinema, and entertainment land uses.
The study found that approximately 20 percent of the total parking demand during the peak period is generally attributable to employees and incorporates this finding in the above ratio. Thus, centers that require employees to park off site during the peak season could see up to 20 percent reduction in parking demand. This adjustment should be used with caution, however, as centers with uncontrolled free parking often have difficulty completely enforcing employee parking.4
Although pedestrian-only open-air retail environments are common and often successful, most developers opt to create vehicular streets with sidewalks. This solution provides the opportunity for on-street parking that, although limited, is important in the minds of both retailers and shoppers. Vehicular streets also capture more successfully the ambience and bustle of traditional shopping streets. Pictured: The Greene, Beavercreek, Ohio.
Parking ratios apply to centers that are primarily dependent on autos, with minimal walk-in or transit use. Centers that are almost exclusively dependent on transit or pedestrian traffic must determine, through either existing zoning ordinances that may use reduced parking requirements as an incentive to build at transit stations or negotiations with the local government, what is required. Atlantic Terminal in highly transit-dependent Brooklyn, New York, sits on top of the third-largest transit hub in New York City and even with Target as the anchor, does not provide parking on site (see the case study in Chapter 9). Still, proximity to transit stations does not automatically reduce retail parking needs by a predetermined amount, as the location of transit stations may still require walking beyond the distance considered convenient. A favorable planning environment in the general area and appropriate site planning may encourage the use of transit in these situations.
Round bollards instead of curbs at Crossings at Corona, in Corona, California, are used to delineate walkways from roads, providing an easy transition for pedestrians. The size, shape, and spacing of the bollards clearly separate the two activities without interfering with sight lines and pedestrian flow.
The parking ratios presented above apply to centers that have no more than 10 percent of their GLA occupied by restaurants, entertainment venues, and/or cinema space. For centers where these uses occupy 11 to 20 percent of GLA, a linear incremental increase of .03 space per 1,000 square feet (93 square meters) for each percent above 10 percent is recommended. For centers where these uses occupy more than 20 percent of GLA, a different approach is recommended. Restaurants and nightclubs have significantly higher parking needs per 1,000 square feet (93 square meters) of GLA, and requirements for movie theaters are best calculated per seat. Further, these uses may have different needs for weekdays versus weekends, time of day, and seasonal requirements than other tenants in shopping centers. For this reason, it is recommended that determination of parking requirements where these uses occupy more than 20 percent of the center’s GLA be made through a shared parking analysis.5 The shared parking methodology provides a systematic way to adjust parking ratios for each of these uses.6
Shared Parking. Shared parking is the use of a parking space to serve two or more individual land uses without conflict or encroachment.7 The need to understand and adopt shared parking has grown as shopping center projects incorporate various nonretail uses on the same site, whether horizontally or vertically. Moreover, with parking costs ranging from $3,000 per space on grade to $15,000 per space in elevated structures to $30,000 per space for underground parking,8 the ability to reduce and share the total number of parking spaces becomes a valuable exercise for the owner to consider. Both developers and communities are demanding greater care in the design of parking areas to enhance the project.
Program uses that work best synergistically are those where patrons’ use peaks at different times of the day. For example, hour-by-hour use patterns detailed in Shared Parking for a wide range of retail and nonretail uses indicate that weekday parking for most retail peaks by midday and stays fairly constant until about 7:00 p.m., while parking for fine and casual dining peaks between 6:00 and 10:00 p.m., and that for cinemas peaks between 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. Office parking peaks during the work day, and use declines rapidly after 5:00 p.m.9
Different land uses experience peak parking demands at different hours of the day as well as days of the week and seasons of the year. In addition, the “captive market effect” of a mixed-use project influences parking demand; that is, in a mixed-use project, customers may be attracted to two or more land uses on a single auto trip to the project. Because of these characteristics, less demand is generated for parking space in mixed-use projects than in separate freestanding developments of similar size and character; moreover, two or more land uses may share a parking facility. For this reason, estimated parking demand for a shopping center that is part of a mixed-use development should be based on an estimate of shared parking demand for the entire project.
The methodology in the ULI/ICSC study of shared parking includes nine steps that can be used to estimate the parking demand in a mixed-use development:10
Structured parking rises above a grocery store at 40th @ Walnut near the University of Pennsylvania in west Philadelphia. University employees use the garage during the day, while grocery store patrons and moviegoers park there in the evening.
Misunderstanding the principles of shared parking or rote application of the default values and factors provided in Shared Parking, absent professional judgment and knowledge regarding specific local conditions, can result in unrealistic projections. The methodology and recommendations should be considered simply a starting point for the analysis of shared parking by experienced and knowledgeable professionals.
Forest City Commercial Development recognized the need to differentiate Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga from nearby retail competition. Montclair Plaza, a well-established enclosed regional shopping center, is located 12 miles (19 kilometers) west of the site, and Ontario Mills, a large enclosed outlet mall, lies only three miles (4.8 kilometers) south. Accordingly, plans evolved into a pedestrian-friendly, open-air, mixed-use design.
The vast parking lots necessary to support Victoria Gardens were incongruous with the pedestrian-oriented streetscape of a true downtown. To address this situation, three parking garages were built in addition to parking fields during the first phase. As the project expands, many of the first-phase parking fields will be occupied by buildings, and additional parking structures will be built.
Structured Parking. Parking structures are often built when surface parking is not, or is no longer, the highest and best use of the land. Other uses such as apartments, condominiums, office buildings, hotels, additional stores, or commercial recreational facilities may replace surface parking, making it necessary to provide structures for existing and any additional parking. The addition of parking structures to a mixed-use project should be seen as an opportunity to increase the project’s possibilities. For example, the ground level of a structure can accommodate service and retail tenants in reasonable minimum depths. Single-sided residential or office uses that will further enhance a project’s streetscape can also be used as a “veneer” on parking structures.
Parking structures can also alleviate excessive walking distances between parked cars and the stores in centers and solve space problems that may be created by a shopping center’s development or its later expansion. At many centers, adjacent land for expansion of the parking area is not available or has become so costly that building a parking structure or deck may be the most economical means of providing additional parking spaces. A parking structure can be built closer to the stores, and it can be depreciated, whereas land cannot.
A parking garage requires a ramp system, overhead clearances, column spacing, and ventilation for those parts of the structure that are below grade. The most common ramp system in North America is the single-helix or scissors ramp—a continuous ramp whereby sloping floors with aisles and parking spaces along both sides of the aisle provide access to the parking spaces themselves and the facility’s circulation route. The slope of the ramps should be carefully considered. Ramps with parking spaces and a maximum slope of 5 to 6 percent are acceptable. For nonrepetitive short segments or in hilly areas where people are accustomed to steep grades, parking floor grades up to 7 percent are acceptable. In any event, the needs of persons with disabilities must be considered in establishing parking floor grades. Greater slopes of up to 12.5 percent grade should be used only for speed ramps (nonparking ramps).11
Structural solutions that provide for the most open, column-free parking areas are the most desirable. The height or number of floors constructed in a garage should also be carefully considered. Too many levels and turns in a garage are confusing to customers. Parking structures with large areas of flat open parking closest to the retail center and fewer levels are the most desirable.
The interior environments of structured parking should be carefully considered to provide an open, clean, bright, and inviting atmosphere with clear signage for customers. The sense of security makes all customers willing to park in spaces farther away from entrances, while uninviting environments cause customers to leave the project with an undesirable memory of their shopping experience. Misfortunes to patrons range from vandalism and car theft to muggings. Although these same crimes can and do occur on surface parking areas, particularly in those areas most isolated from the shopping center, customers tend to perceive structured parking as potentially riskier than surface parking. Closed-circuit television cameras, communications systems, windowed stairwells, adequate lighting, and the visibility of security personnel can help improve safety.
Parking Lot Design and Layout. Certain key factors must be considered when planning a new or redesigned parking lot to make the most effective use of available area:
No standard formula exists for taking all factors into account. The approach varies from case to case and requires special expertise.
Convenience should be the guiding criterion for the actual parking layout at any center. Parking must be simple, trouble-free, and safe. Shoppers should be able to move confidently through the parking area without ever having been there or knowing the layout in advance. Landscaping can break up the amount of paved surface as well as provide shade and reduce heat gain— considerations that should be seen as an opportunity to enhance the shopping experience. As a rule, achieving smooth traffic circulation at a shopping center requires the advice of a qualified parking or traffic consultant.
How far the parking fields are from a center’s entrance contributes greatly to the notion of convenience. Generally, walking distances should be kept to a minimum. Based on the level-of-service (LOS) approach similar to the traffic engineering profession’s classification system to gauge acceptable congestion, LOS A for the distance that shoppers must walk is no more than 350 feet (105 meters) within a surface parking lot and 300 feet (90 meters) in a parking structure. LOS A for the distance from parking to destination is no more than 400 feet (120 meters) if both the parking and the destination are uncovered, 500 feet (150 meters) if parking is outdoors but the destination is covered, and 1,000 feet (305 meters) if both are climate controlled. These distances can be doubled and still be considered good (LOS B).12
Limited on-street parking serves as a buffer between pedestrians on the sidewalk and the vehicular traffic in the street. Wide sidewalks and narrow streets aid in the creation of a pedestrian environment at Clayton Lane in Denver, Colorado.
Clear signage provides not only directions to parking but also information about the availability of parking, allowing visitors to make quicker and more efficient entrance to Bayshore Town Center in Glendale, Wisconsin.
Circulation for cars in the parking fields should be as continuous as possible, preferably one way and counterclockwise. Drivers should be able to maneuver in the site without entering a public roadway. In a regional center, parking area circulation requires a dedicated roadway (a “ring road”) around the edge of the site and another around the building cluster. The inner ring allows for fire and emergency access, deliveries, and dropoff and pickup of customers.
Few outside the parking industry understand the magnitude of the cost of parking for a development. Even developers who have only dealt with surface parking in the past are often surprised if not shocked by the cost of structured parking.
The accompanying table presents a comparison of the typical costs to own and operate surface-lot and structured parking spaces in the United States. This analysis is based largely on a more detailed discussion of the topic in the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Transportation Planning Handbook, with cost figures updated to 2004 dollars.1 The assumed operating expenses also reflect a more recent survey of parking facility owners.2 Obviously, numerous factors can significantly alter the costs of owning and operating parking; these figures are simply typical, illustrating the incremental costs for structured parking.
Where land is inexpensive, it is clearly more economical to build surface parking. In more urban settings, development is often actually redevelopment, and land values will reflect the buildings that are already present on the site and the potential future return on an investment to redevelop it. Of course, the developer’s overall decision regarding redeveloping land in such circumstances will hinge on the overall rental/lease opportunities and return on investment. But a decision to use structured parking instead of surface parking will be driven primarily by the availability of land. And if it costs $300 per space per year to collect parking fees for a 500-space facility, at least $25 per space must be collected each month to make it worthwhile to charge for parking before one even begins to recover the increased capital costs of structured parking. When a developer can purchase land in an undeveloped area for less than $50,000 per acre ($1 per square foot), it is obvious why free surface parking is the norm in suburban development. It does not reflect a conscious philosophy by the development community to design for automobiles rather than people, but rather simple economics.
FIGURE 4–1
Assumptions:
Underground structure is short-span (30 x 30-ft. column grid) owing to construction above. Above-grade structure is long-span (20–45 ft. x 50-60 ft.).
Surface lot size increased by 10% for landscaping, setbacks, access, etc., typical of suburban location; above-grade structure site increased by 5%; underground structure not increased.
Construction cost based on average design costs across United States in 2004.
Project costs increased 15% for design and other miscellaneous soft costs.
Term for financing: 20 years. Cost of funds: 5%. (These figures used to determine annualized cost to own the facility.)
Basic operating costs include utilities, insurance, supplies, routine and structural maintenance, snow removal, etc.
Surface lot has lower utilities but six times the snow removal cost of above-grade structure. Below-grade structure has no snow removal but higher utilities for lighting and ventilation.
Surface lot assumed to be in suburban location with free parking and no security. Underground structure will have higher security than above-grade parking structure.
Where land is expensive and property must be more densely developed to make a project economically viable, above-grade structured parking is the norm. When developers own and operate structured parking, which in Figure 4–1 involve more than five times the costs of owning and operating surface parking, they have a much greater incentive to more carefully scrutinize how they plan, design, and manage the parking resource. In turn, those with structured parking are more likely to charge users for some or all of the costs of parking.
Underground parking is significantly more expensive, to the point where there is little economic incentive to choose it except in the most densely developed areas of the largest cities. These urban areas are strongly served by public transit, and thus there are natural market forces setting the price of parking, which in turn affect both commuter and consumer travel-mode decisions. That said, if underground parking is the only viable option, there is strong incentive to minimize its capacity while maximizing its use and revenues, all of which can be accomplished by shared parking analysis.
Numerous factors other than cost affect parking development decisions, not the least of which is how much property can be acquired and what lease rates can be obtained for the occupied space. Even where land costs are lower, sites of restricted size or shape may dictate structured parking. Ultimately, the potential return on investment in a project as a whole is what drives developers to choose to develop or not develop a particular site. For retail, restaurants, and service businesses, the potential return on investment also drives tenant decisions to locate in a particular project, whether or not parking will be surface or structured and paid or free to their employees and customers.
Notes
1. Mary S. Smith, “Parking,” in Transportation Planning Handbook, 2nd ed., ed. John D. Edwards, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1999).
2. Jon Martens, “The Art of Maximizing Your Profits,” The Parking Professional (September 2004), pp. 22–25.
Source: Excerpted and adapted from Mary S. Smith, Shared Parking, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: ULI-the Urban Land Institute and the International Council of Shopping Centers, 2005), 139-141.
Patterns. Surface parking can be laid out in one of two basic patterns: perpendicular or angular. Perpendicular or 90-degree parking economizes on space and facilitates circulation. It also offers the advantage of two-way traffic through the aisle as well as the safety of better sight lines, greater parking capacity, and shorter cruising distances. In contrast, angular parking spaces, at 45 degrees or 60 degrees, are easier for drivers to turn into with one motion. Diagonal parking requires one-way circulation—perhaps less convenient than two-way traffic— and allows use of a narrower parking module.
The dilemma over perpendicular or diagonal parking is best solved by using the pattern that generally prevails in the community and is best adapted to the particular site. Each surface parking layout must be evaluated for pedestrian circulation between the parked cars and the stores, for drivers’ ability to move in and out of the parking area or look for a vacant space, and for use of space.
For perpendicular parking, the standard module for full-size cars is 60 feet (18 meters) deep with two stalls, each 18 feet (5.5 meters) deep, and a center aisle of 24 feet (7 meters) that allows for one-way circulation. The standard stall is eight feet, nine inches to nine feet (2.6 to 2.7 meters) wide for moderate to high turnover visitor parking. The parking module at a 45-degree angle should be 48 feet (14.5 meters) deep with two stalls of 17.7 feet (5.4 meters) each and a center aisle of 12.7 feet (3.9 meters) for one-way circulation.13 Some tenants (supermarkets, for example) prefer perpendicular parking over angle parking.
Appearance and Construction. Surface parking areas must have a substantial subbase (five and one-half to six inches [14.1 to 15.4 centimeters]) and be well drained and paved. Blacktop is the most common paving material, though some developers are beginning to explore more sustainable porous surfaces that do not generate as much rainwater runoff. Parking areas need such amenities as screening, landscaping, and lighting. They must be maintained to prevent potholes from developing and to keep litter from accumulating. Stalls must be clearly marked.
Trees and shrubs can be planted in wells to avoid an otherwise barren appearance, but trees must be protected from cars and from accumulations of salt and snow in colder climates. Landscaping intermediate spots in the parking area not only requires an expenditure up front but also adds extra maintenance costs and thus increases common area charges for tenants. The aesthetic benefits, however, can be immeasurable.
Employee Parking. Because employees park at the center all day, they may be allotted parking spaces eight feet, six inches (2.6 meters) wide.14 They should not be allowed to occupy prime spaces needed for customers. Employee parking is hard to control. Regulations are usually covered in leases, which should provide that the landlord has the right to:
One-way parking maintains the movement of vehicular traffic at Crestview Hill Town Center in Crestview Hills, Kentucky, while the landscaping breaks up the parking field without affecting distance to the stores.
Commuter Parking. As mass transit reaches more shopping centers, thus reducing parking demand, the strong possibility arises for commuters to park in shopping center spaces. Such a situation is more likely to develop when routes serving the center also serve employment centers. The figures for the value of a parking space clearly spell out the economic issues. But employee parking is difficult to police and requires the cooperation of the community.
If local laws allow police to issue parking tickets, parking lots in centers can post time limits, and tickets can be issued to offenders. When this solution is not possible, private policing or closing the lots during the morning rush hour may be the only answer. At the same time, the shopping center developer needs to be perceived as a good neighbor in the community, and hard-line control of commuter parking may result in negative feelings in the community toward the center in general, which could result in less business for the center. If excess land is available and a conflict over parking arises, it may be possible to lease a designated portion of the site to the transit authority for parking for commuters for at least the cost of maintenance and repair.
Environmental concerns have grown rapidly in our society, and sophisticated shopping center developers have become equally attuned to protecting the environment and incorporating sustainable or “green” techniques into their development programs. Choosing a site with limited environmental concerns can reduce direct construction and operating costs as well as development time frames.
Environmental Assessment. Before acquiring or redeveloping a piece of property, a potential buyer should conduct a study to determine whether it is environmentally suited for the proposed development or tainted to a degree that could make construction costs prohibitively high or cause future liability and, if so, what the nature, extent, and costs of cleanup would be. The list of contaminating activities that may have environmentally tainted a site is a long one: battery recycling; chemical processing and manufacturing; commercial, industrial, or municipal landfills; storage or recycling of drums and other containers; electroplating; disposal or detonation of explosives; incinerators; farmland; laun dry or dry cleaning facilities; manufacturing (other than chemical); military ordnance; open burning; ore processing and refining; sand and gravel pits; sinkholes; gasoline stations with tanks above and below ground; tire storage and recycling; and wood preserving.
A professional testing company hired to perform a Phase I environmental assessment (required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) can determine possible problems with the site. The assessment involves looking at the property’s history, including reviewing available data such as aerial photographs, inquiries of persons familiar with the site, chain-of-title history, city directories, fire insurance maps, and so forth to identify uses that may have created environmental problems; determining from local, state, and federal regulatory agencies whether citations for noncompliance or violation have been issued in the past; visiting the site and neighboring sites, observing all operations, identifying potential polluting activities, looking for dead or stressed vegetation and foliage, and taking samples to assess asbestos-containing materials; and identifying floodplains and wetlands. The testing company should look for evidence of:
Landscaping should be used to meet design objectives and not simply to cover the site. Creative landscaping can help produce the type of memorable environment that will draw customers again and again. Pictured: Market Street at The Woodlands, Texas.
A Phase II analysis, a more extensive study, includes more extensive soil and materials testing and normally involves some destruction to gain access to enclosed areas. It identifies the needed corrective actions. Depending on what further testing reveals, several approaches can be used to handle the problem or problems. Removal or abatement along with proper storage will eliminate the problem completely, but this solution may be prohibitively expensive. An operations and maintenance program such as a formulated plan for training, cleaning, work practices, and surveillance to maintain asbestos-containing materials in good condition can be much less expensive and still very effective. Aerating contaminated soil and removing petroleum products that have leaked into subsurfaces are effective in some cases. Professional assistance is necessary to determine the available alternatives, but the money spent for study and advice could be minor compared with the cost of solving a problem a purchaser has unknowingly bought.
Green screens, alternate facades, trellises, and articulated massing gives human scale to large and medium retail formats at Bella Terra in Huntington Beach, California. Together, they encourage pedestrian circulation throughout the center.
Topography. If a site has a slope that corresponds to grades on surrounding roads, an opportunity may exist for a two-level arrangement of buildings and parking, particularly for larger projects. Smaller neighborhood and community centers and power centers are better arranged on a single level.
Shops on both levels must be equally accessible, but concentrating the “best” stores on either level is a disadvantage for both merchants and customers. In fact, chain stores usually have very strong opinions about the level and placement of their stores in shopping centers, and some prefer the second level. With two levels of merchandising, parking must be divided to provide equal accessibility to the upper and lower levels. Neither level should dominate the center; both should be equally important.
Sensitive use of a site’s topography can make the shopping center and the site’s natural characteristics compatible. A sloping site with specimen trees that need to be preserved can be skillfully reshaped to accommodate a stepped but single-level center. The ideal slope in a parking lot is 3 percent, which allows for sufficient drainage but helps to prevent runaway shopping carts and any difficulties with hard-to-open, heavy car doors. A slope of 7 to 8 percent is allowable in limited areas, such as at entry drives. In steeply sloped areas, a parking lot can effectively be broken into terraced pads separated by landscaped strips running perpendicular to storefronts.
Landscaping. Creative landscaping can help produce the type of memorable environment that will draw customers back again and again, while inappropriate landscaping can hurt a shopping center’s image. Landscaping should be used to meet design objectives and not simply to cover the site. Performance standards allow creative design, whereas a requirement to spend a certain amount on landscaping could result in ill-conceived landscaping. Zoning requirements typically call for landscaped parking lot boundaries and buffer strips at the property line. A total landscaping budget of 2 to 4 percent of total building costs, depending on the size and character of the center, is reasonable. Although the initial cost of landscaping may seem insignificant, the developer must also consider the long-term maintenance costs of any landscaped areas.
The most egregious example of bad landscaping is exposure of a barren expanse of parking lot to the public’s view, creating a sea of asphalt that is hot in the summer and cold and windswept in winter or inclement weather. A surface parking lot must be treated as the shopping center’s frontyard, where customers get their first all-important impression of the center. Properly designed and landscaped, it can become one of the center’s amenities.
Interior landscaping and its installation and maintenance are also part of the operating expenses for some shopping centers. Lighting plays an important role in the selection of plants for interior landscaping. Plants and seasonal floral displays appropriately placed inside the center make it much more appealing to customers, and plantings, water displays, and sculptures can transform an interior pedestrian space.
Whimsical landscaping adorns Mediterranean-style architecture at Waterside at Marina del Rey, California. Architecture and landscaping complement the fabric of the surrounding community and its proximity to the ocean.
In addition to the plantings throughout Bridgeport Village, in Tigard, Oregon, more than 200 mature conifer trees were preserved around the perimeter of the site to uphold the community’s commitment to greenbelt preservation.
Stormwater Management. The proper handling of stormwater runoff has become a major issue in the design of shopping centers. Any strategy used to handle storm-water runoff should be developed in the preliminary stage of development planning. Peak stormwater flows and total runoff increase dramatically after a site has been partly covered by buildings and parking areas. Reducing or delaying this runoff is an important issue with significant cost implications. Communities not having excess storm system capacity—and few do—should examine such concepts as rooftop ponding, temporary detention basins (in portions of the parking area, for example), detention or retention ponds, and other mechanisms for reducing the runoff rate and total runoff after development. Likewise, potential water pollution is another problem that should be addressed.
It is therefore important that the developer investigate the methods of managing stormwater runoff in the community where the shopping center is to be developed. The stormwater management system for a center should be based on the following principles:
Just as the tenant mix must reflect an appropriate relationship between anchors or between national brands and local shops, building materials must be appropriate to the market. Exterior materials strongly contribute to the center’s visual image and special identity. The image created should be one of harmony tempered by tasteful variation in selected details, although it need not exclude the use of more than one major material to create a distinct image. Materials should be locally available if possible, capable of being assembled and erected quickly, durable, and easily maintained. They should provide waterproofing and insulation and an attractive appearance.
Exterior materials strongly contribute to the center’s visual image and special identity. The choice of materials is influenced by overall design considerations, costs, durability, and local conditions. In the same center, materials may vary to replicate the vitality of an urban streetscape. And one retailer may look very different in two different settings, such as at Zona Rosa in Kansas City, Missouri, and Market Street at The Woodlands near Houston, Texas.
Five primary factors influence the selection of materials:
Many new centers, especially those involving open-air components, have tried to replicate the organic growth and messy vitality of an urban streetscape, something that typically takes diverse materials and styles to achieve. The consistency and control of many centers built in the 1990s have given way to a more discordant rhythm that is typically played out with changing materials and eclectic storefronts. Here, the inconsistency of the materials is absolutely the point.
A distinct set of rules applies to shopping centers with streetfront retailing. Streetfront retail centers should blend in with the surrounding retail street, and entrances should not appear to be different from other adjacent entrances. In most cases, customers do not even realize that the stores constitute a shopping center, and, as a result, the center’s success depends on the entirety of the retail shopping district rather than the design of the shopping center itself.
Entrances to the retail component of a mixed-use development should be distinctive and inviting, though care must be given to creating an appropriate (and separate) identity for nonretail uses. Hotels, for example, have specific operational requirements for their dropoff areas, and many office tenants need a clear and distinct address and entry that do not commingle with retail spaces. As a rule, shoppers should be aware that they are leaving an office environment or the hotel lobby and entering an exciting retail area. The change can be achieved through floor coverings, wall coverings, color, and ceiling treatments.
In an enclosed mall, entrances to the center should be prominent design features. A change of material or roof height or a wall extension or indentation may be introduced to identify the entrances and to give them a certain distinction. Attractive exterior lighting can also highlight entrances. The peak hours for shopping occur at dusk and early evening. If an entrance has a wonderful architectural form but is not sufficiently illuminated, customers will head for department store entrances, not the main mall entrances, reducing the possibility of visiting smaller tenants. With sufficient illumination to make it bright and attractive, a center can convey a compelling sense of arrival.
For open centers, a colonnaded walk or arcade is the traditional means of sheltering customers and protecting storefronts from the weather. Covered walkways are essential for protection from inclement weather as well as for enjoyable shopping in any kind of weather. Twelve to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.6 meters) is a good width for the walkway.
Canopies may be cantilevered from the building wall or supported by freestanding columns or pillars. Their width and height are determined by proportions appropriate to the architectural style. With a canopy higher than 12 feet (3.6 meters), the building wall below provides an ideal surface on which to place signs that support the center’s architectural quality. The style and materials of the canopy can be dictated or influenced by the region— for instance, roofing tiles in the Southwest, slate in New England, and cedar shake in the Northwest.
Buildings along SouthSide Works’s southern edge, East Carson Street, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were designed to complement the existing scale and materials of the late 19th-century low-rise mercantile buildings along that street. Offices sit above ground-floor retail.
Buildings closer to the river incorporate more glass and steel and provide opportunities for two-story retailers at SouthSide Works.
When canopies are placed along building facades in open centers, window displays become important inducements for window shopping and impulse buying while allowing shoppers to compare prices. Customers are free to view the merchandise without having to explain that they are “just looking.” Canopies increase the attractiveness of wide window displays, adding a degree of detail and scale to a merchandised facade. Windows also may be scaled to feature spot displays suited to certain kinds of shops.
Good signage should be an integral part of the building design, not only providing orientation and basic practical information such as the location of restrooms but also contributing to a sense of place. Today’s most successful retail spaces incorporate signage and way-finding into a seamless environment that energizes shoppers as much as it expresses the individual identity of tenants and the larger brand of the center.
Clear and imaginative signage visible from a distance helps direct shoppers to the site, increases visibility, and heightens awareness that a shopping center is near.
The entrance to Boulevard at the Capital Centre, a main-street shopping center in Landover, Maryland, welcomes shoppers with a festive arch.
Signs are the retailer’s lifeblood. If the architecture of the center provides the unity, then the signage for tenants provides identity. The trend today is toward vitality and freedom of expression in graphics. Each center should have well-developed criteria for tenants’ signs that control the type of signs allowed, mounting system, maximum scale, and allowable locations. With the rise in popularity of plasma screens and LCD (liquid crystal display) monitors, similar criteria are typically developed for the integration of these elements along streetfronts, common areas, and storefronts.
In today’s value- and entertainment-oriented centers, the trend is toward more variable wall surfaces or sign fields where ever-larger signs can be mounted. It is not unusual for a national tenant of a 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot (280- to 370-square-meter) space to want a sign with four-foot (1.2-meter)-high letters. In today’s specialty centers and town centers, more discrete signage is typically preferred.
Sign control is an important part of the shopping center management’s responsibility. In fact, the shopping center industry has led the way in this area. Approval of signs is one of the conditions typically included in a tenant’s lease, and the developer’s control of the style and size of signs is often more rigorous than municipal regulations. Insisting on uniform scale, size, and placement may be a worthwhile practice for a conservative, high-end shopping center. In other types of centers, particularly those that cater to younger, mass-market tastes and those focused on entertainment, tenants are given more freedom to design signs that help energize the center and highlight the brand images of individual tenants.
Exterior signs at shopping centers typically are subject to a municipality’s ordinance, which may also govern conventional business and commercial districts. Unfortunately, such regulations—geared primarily toward individual business properties—are rarely suitable for shopping centers. Regulations for signs are among the most controversial aspects of zoning law, and some would argue that the legal basis for such regulation is debatable, as design has to do with aesthetics. Nevertheless, regulations covering signage that include design as well as size and locational criteria have been upheld in the courts and must be taken into account when establishing a center’s program of graphic design.
When signage has been developed as a special element of the architectural design, the developer may find zoning authorities receptive to a carefully prepared program that deviates from the sign control ordinance—especially if the ordinance was written to control the signage for single-purpose structures rather than shopping centers. The city can assist the developer by enforcing the approved program, thus relieving the developer of the need to negotiate with tenants whose ideas about signage may be inconsistent with the developer’s overall concept.
Improperly handled signage can negate an otherwise carefully developed image, and many developers thus elect to control all signs, permanent or temporary, that are visible through show windows or through store entrances. Developers are increasingly aware, however, that a diverse and stylish collection of signs that enhance the center’s image and appeal to its psychographic customer base strengthens the center’s public realm and contributes to the center’s performance.
Because a greater percentage of retail business is now conducted during the evening and more open-air centers are being developed, exterior night lighting has become an important safety and design feature. It helps to protect the public and at the same time it can be used to create an image and character for the center.
Today’s designs tend to rely on a hierarchy of lighting solutions. The most important tasks of a comprehensive lighting system are to illuminate building facades and entrances; spotlight architectural features and landscaping; highlight shop windows and signage; define walkways, roadways, and parking; create illuminated images on walls and sidewalks; and ensure safety.
An effective lighting program involves decisions about light sources, mounting height, spacing, and light control. Light sources should be evaluated based on their efficiency, durability, and color; they vary in light output (lumens), depending on the characteristics of the light. Higher-wattage lamps are more efficient than lower-wattage lights, but it may sometimes be more efficient to use a number of smaller units to light an area without wasting energy.
The level of intensity of outside lighting is a concern of the center’s management, not of zoning specifications, although the developer could reasonably be required to ensure that the height of the standards and the direction of the lighting prevent light pollution on adjacent properties. The latest available nonglare and high-intensity lighting should be used to provide adequate illumination, to reduce spillover lighting, and to avoid excessive costs for electricity. Lighting levels can be reduced half an hour after closing time, except in areas where employees’ security and safety are a problem.
Street-level signs allow tenants to use their own style and design to advertise their stores. Upper-level banners conform to the design scheme at Crocker Park in Westlake, Ohio, and contribute to a sense of continuity in the town center.
The median illumination used in parking lots of all types of shopping centers is three to four foot-candles.15 Strong lighting—approximately five foot-candles—should be provided in structured parking to ensure safety. In parking areas, poles should be placed in islands at the ends of parking bays.
The delivery court—a dedicated area that can accommodate multiple trucks, minimal storage, and trash compaction—has become the principal service facility for loading and unloading goods. It must be screened and placed out of customers’ view, a more complex challenge in pedestrian-oriented, main-street formats.
Small shops selling soft goods can be served by rear corridors leading from a service court. In a neighborhood or community center, occasional box deliveries from light express or parcel post vehicles can be made across the walkway without distracting shoppers. Other larger-format open-air centers can also successfully use over-the-sidewalk delivery by regulating delivery hours. Major anchors generally have separate control of their deliveries at their own service docks and, through masonry screening, at their truck service entries.
Early regional centers were designed with truck tunnels under the mall to serve all tenants. Though tunnels offered the great advantage of completely separating truck delivery traffic from pedestrian and customer traffic, tunnels were expensive to build, operate, and manage. The costs involved now have made truck service tunnels infeasible in most shopping centers, with the possible exception of mixed-use or multiuse centers or on constricted sites where land costs are high.
Traditional Mall Diagram. The most basic and traditional mall diagram is a simple “dumbbell” configuration— two anchor department stores connected by a double-loaded corridor of inline shops. Its clarity and simplicity have made it a successful engine of the industry since its birth. Over time, however, this basic diagram has evolved steadily, and it has been adapted in countless variations, including open-air configurations that closely resemble traditional main streets. In an enclosed and weather-protected environment, the mall is heated and cooled according to the season and the climate.
Whether an indoor or outdoor configuration, however, the mall widths, lengths, and heights must be carefully considered. If an enclosed mall is too wide, it is expensive to maintain and discourages the back-and-forth movement created by impulse buying. If it is too narrow, it becomes crowded, hard to keep clean, and difficult to use for promotional activities.
In a multilevel configuration, the mall section is also a critical component of success. Generally, a “keyhole section,” in which the lease line of the lower-level stores is in front of the lease line of the upper-level stores, has proved to be the most viable because of sight lines and visibility, but many designers have used other configurations and asymmetrical sections to great effect.
In either case, those designs that embody a sense of clarity and simplicity as well as observe unobstructed sight lines and basic anchoring strategies tend to be successful.
Night lighting should be designed with the pedestrian—not the automobile—in mind. Lighting should be bright enough to make the visitor feel safe but not so bright that it creates a harsh and glaring effect.
In multiblock pedestrian-oriented centers, such as SouthSide Works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, location of the service area—for dumpsters and deliveries— is a complex challenge. It must be carefully screened from customers’ view but provide for these retailers’ critical needs.
The Linear Center and Variations. The linear layout is basically a straight line of stores, sometimes tied together by a canopy over a pedestrian walkway in front of stores. The linear building is normally set back from the access street, and most of the parking is placed between the street and the building. Often referred to as a “strip center,” it is most commonly applied to neighborhood centers, community centers, and power centers. The most common configuration places two of the larger units at the ends of the center. Big-box retailers are also spaced regularly throughout a power center. A linear center is generally the least expensive structure to build and is easily adapted to most site conditions. With strong control over signage and good architectural treatment, the linear center can be an attractive and successful merchandising unit.
“L,” “U,” and “T” footprints are all variations designed to fit restricted sites and special locations with respect to access, visibility, and site ownership.
The Cluster and Racetrack Configurations. The cluster and racetrack are variations of the same basic configuration. Tenants are arranged around pedestrian walkways or streets that may meander through the center or be straight or offset. In traditional regional centers, the cluster may be in an “X,” “Y,” or dumbbell shape, with anchors at the ends of each mall and in the middle. This configuration draws customers from anchor to anchor past all the smaller tenants. In some configurations, the cluster has evolved into a racetrack, with anchors or entrances at the four corners. Customers can circle the shopping center and finish where they started.
The Town Center. The town center is typically an outdoor community or neighborhood variation of the cluster. Instead of a department store, the town center may be anchored by a public, recreational, or entertainment feature such as a park, ice-skating rink, cinema complex, restaurant cluster, or civic building. Housing is often integrated vertically or horizontally, and the retail streets typically lead to other nonretail anchors around the town center such as hotels, office buildings, and transit stations.16
Linear
A line of stores sometimes tied together by a canopy over the sidewalk, which runs along the fronts of the stores. Economical for small centers but must be kept within a reasonable length to avoid excessive walking distances and difficult merchandising.
L
Basically a linear layout but with one end turned. Good for corner locations.
U
Basically a linear layout with both ends turned in the same direction. Good for full blocks.
Mall
A pedestrian way, enclosed or unenclosed, between two facing linear buildings. May take many shapes.
Cluster/Racetrack/Town Center
A group of retail buildings separated by pedestrian walkways or streets. (“A” represents possibe anchor location.)
Other Considerations about Configuration. Although the tendency is to classify building configurations according to easily identifiable shapes, a center’s building configuration actually is determined by the characteristics of the particular site and by market and economic considerations. A particular site for a neighborhood center, for example, might be better suited to a bent linear configuration rather than a full “L” shape. Larger and therefore more complex centers have many more variations, particularly when they are used to create a special image or character. And when shopping centers are located in existing buildings through adaptive use or are integral elements of mixed-use developments, the adaptation of basic configurations can be substantial.
With the growing shortage of developable sites and a renewed interest in urban areas, hybrid centers and multiuse development have been gaining favor among retail developers. They are not without challenges, however. Multiuse development reduces walking distances and creates a more compact shopping area through stacking, though it adds the challenge of vertical circulation and integration. When certain site limitations call for two or three levels of retail, these issues must be dealt with appropriately and creatively to ensure economic success.
Some common design errors are found in all building patterns: unvarying widths or depths of all stores, no matter their type; smaller stores positioned so that they are difficult to service without interfering with pedestrian or auto traffic; and dead spaces that are hard to lease because of their indirect pedestrian access or lack of visibility. Multiple corners, setbacks, odd angles, and the like should be avoided in most small centers. In larger centers, however, these special treatments may be used to avoid a tunnel effect in the mall and to spark interest and visual excitement.
Anchor Stores. The necessity for a flexible design to facilitate the future replacement of one anchor tenant with another cannot be overstated, particularly at a time when the retail industry has been so volatile and marked by consolidation, bankruptcies, withdrawal from market areas, and formation of major new companies. Clean rectangular shapes for anchors are most flexible. Natural, integral docks are preferable to truck wells and added docks. And a flatter site or an existing center in which floor slab elevations change relatively few times is most advantageous.
Outparcels. Outparcels, outlots, or pad sites are very important to the economics of a shopping center. The placement of freestanding restaurants or retail buildings on pad sites is influenced by line of sight and parking distribution. No pad site should encroach on the field of parking influence radiated from each anchor tenant. Placing freestanding buildings as near the street as possible and in front of small shops or smaller anchors rather than large stores satisfies the criteria of parking distribution and line of sight.
Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, California, is configured as a town center. As part of a 175-acre (70-hectare) master plan, Victoria Gardens includes 1.4 million square feet (130,000 square meters) of retail with some office, civic, and cultural space and, upon completion, 500 residential units adjacent to the commercial area. The anchors are clean rectangular shapes, a flexible design that facilitates the future replacement of one anchor tenant with another. The need for flexibility cannot be overstated, particularly when the retail industry has been so volatile.
New pad sites in existing centers should be used efficiently to fill gaps in parking fields. Small interrupted segments of parking around pad sites should be avoided. Instead, parking for the pad site should be an extension of the long, efficient parking aisles radiating from buildings in the main shopping center.
The space a tenant has leased typically contains a certain frontage on the mall or exterior walkway, unfinished party walls separating the space from that of retail neighbors, an unfinished floor, and exposed joists for roof support. A rear door and utilities are usually indicated in the space.
Most developers use an allowance for tenants to finish such space. Developers/landlords typically list a maximum amount per square foot of GLA that they will provide for specific tenant work such as storefronts; finished floors, walls, and ceilings; primary electrical conduits, secondary wiring, and so on. Interior finishes and fixtures are not included except as part of a specially negotiated turnkey agreement. The allowance may include floors and floor coverings, but tenants pay for all light fixtures, counters, shelves, painting, and other custom fixtures and finishing. The work that the landlord is to do and the work that is the tenant’s responsibility are plainly shown on working drawings and specifications and are spelled out in the lease. After the stipulated amount for an item has been reached, it is up to the tenant to pay for the rest. This system protects developers against excessive demands from tenants that can upset construction cost estimates.
Some developers, recognizing the importance of reasonably harmonious store interiors in creating a pleasing and exciting retail image for the center as a whole, assist tenants in certain phases of planning, particularly in storefront design, signs, and even color coordination of sales areas. Some developers provide an “improved shell” rather than a “bare shell” in certain situations. Conversely, other developers make tenant spaces more barren (with dirt floors and no demising walls, for example) and offer no finishing allowances. Tenant allowances depend primarily on the type of center, type of tenant, and level of local competition. Allowances can range from nothing to a full turnkey job. In small centers, developers may have to provide fully finished tenant spaces. Highly desirable tenants will likely demand concessions on the allowance.
The Avenue Viera, a regional center in Merritt Island, Florida, developed by Cousins Properties, is set in a circular configuration with a park in the center.
Whatever the structural column spacing used in any type of center, the design should allow for a measure of flexibility in partitioning stores. Except for intervening fire walls, the spacing of which is governed by local fire protection codes, partitions between tenant spaces should not be used as bearing walls. Partitions between tenants should be built of materials and by methods that allow for their easy removal. The design should provide for future reallocation of store space and for readjustments in fixtures needed as tenants expand or shift their locations in the center. To allow for flexible operations, structural elements such as plumbing and heating stacks, air-conditioning ducts, toilets, and stairways should be placed on end walls or on the walls least likely to be removed in enlarging a store or redividing spaces rather than on partitions between tenants.
After construction begins, changes in tenancy may require altering the arrangement of tenants to improve the groupings of related shops, to accommodate tenants’ needs, or to free highly desirable locations for shops that provide higher rental income or allow more intensive use. Flexible design and non-load-bearing walls allow tenant spaces to be enlarged or decreased. Good locations can be created and a plan devised that will remain workable throughout the full leasing program.
Heavy masonry piers between storefronts should be avoided in one-story neighborhood and other small centers. Such piers are expensive to install and difficult to remove, and they reduce window frontage (although such advice is impractical if the center is to have a traditional exterior architectural treatment). Small steel columns with curtain walls of gypsum wallboard or exposed concrete block should be used for interior partitions. To build the center quickly, save labor costs, and provide an incombustible structure, developers of one-story buildings can use steel beam-and-column construction with steel trusses or bar joists carrying an insulated steel roof deck and monolithic concrete floor. Often, the tenant must provide the concrete floor slab.
After construction begins, changes in tenancy may require altering the arrangement of tenants to improve the groupings of related shops, to accommodate tenants’ needs, or to free highly desirable locations for shops that provide higher rental income or allow more intensive use. Flexible design allows tenant spaces to be enlarged or decreased. Good locations can be created and a plan devised that will remain workable throughout the full leasing program. Legacy Village in Lyndhurst, Ohio, includes 550,000 square feet (51,000 square meters) of retail space in seven separate buildings. The one multistory building has targeted retail on the second floor (salon/spa, bridalwear store, restaurants) and 20,000 square feet (1,860 square meters) of office space on the third floor.
Approximately 70,000 square feet (21,300 meters) of heated sidewalks keep walkways clear year round. First Interstate, the developers of Legacy Village, tested several different systems and eventually came up with a design of its own that required the cooperation of several different contractors. The original site plan went a long way toward moderating the area’s windy conditions with curved roads and varied building heights. First Interstate also hired a wind consultant who suggested shifting one building to block the main street from prevailing winds. Valet parking and the limited amount of on-street parking also help attract people during less-than-perfect weather.
Continuity in the alignment of storefronts, from anchor to anchor or from anchor to small shop, promotes cross-shopping and helps to prevent one store from casting a “visibility shadow” on the next. Continuity also makes traffic circulation smoother and is highly preferred as a flexible configuration for future changes in tenanting a center. Many developers today are incorporating some slight variations in setbacks as a means of individual expression, while still maintaining the benefits of stricter continuity.
Kiosks, or freestanding booths, are a retailing innovation first used in enclosed malls and now found in large open-air centers. They encourage impulse buying and allow the flexibility of including very small tenant spaces of about 100 to 200 square feet (9.3 to 18.6 square meters).17 Kiosks must be low enough so as not to interfere with the view across the mall or open space or with the view of tenants’ signs or lighting.
The addition of carefully selected kiosks placed in areas of heavy traffic greatly helps to create the atmosphere of a marketplace. Counter-height kiosks are suitable for a variety of retail and service uses such as candy, cards and gifts, fine jewelry and costume jewelry, telephones/telecommunications, sunglasses, cosmetics/beauty supplies, clocks/watches, and ATMs.18
Although some major tenants may seek to restrict the number of kiosks during lease negotiations, some smaller tenants might wish to augment sales by operating kiosks in front of or near their stores. Owners or developers can receive substantial additional rental income from kiosks at little extra cost. Developers must use discretion in introducing kiosks, making certain they meet established design guidelines. Food service outlets that require on-site cooking or emit odors of any kind should probably not be permitted outside a food court.
Often, particularly when older malls are being renovated, lean-to or similar kiosks can be used to cover blank masonry walls or unused store windows. They can add excitement to previously dull and dark areas of the mall and generate substantial new income at a minimum investment for the developer.
Multilevel malls reduce site coverage and walking distances between stores and between parking areas and stores. Multilevel malls also allow a center to include a mix of uses in buildings on restricted-area, high-cost sites.
Carefully selected kiosks placed in areas of heavy traffic greatly help to create the atmosphere of a marketplace. They encourage impulse buying and allow the flexibility of including very small tenant spaces of about 100 to 200 square feet (9.3 to 18.6 square meters). Otay Ranch Town Center is an open-air regional center in Chula Vista, California.
Multilevel centers challenge architects, as their design requires a complex evaluation of site use, traffic movement, graphics, and amenities. This complexity is increased by the need to provide escalators, elevators, and stairways for circulation. Still, the savings in required site area can help balance the greater capital costs of multilevel design.
Multilevel centers have distinct benefits in cross-shopping, provided tenants are distributed to the best advantage for interplay among the shopping levels. The developer must maintain careful control over tenants’ locations when leasing these centers. Most mall tenants believe their customer drawing power depends on a well-designed connection between smaller tenants and the major stores. Therefore, the anchor stores should have entrances from each level. Access to parking facilities from each level is also desirable and is especially easy to accomplish on a site with a natural or artificial slope or in a center with structured parking.
Pinnacle Hills Promenade, a 980,000-square-foot (91,100-square-meter) open-air regional center in Rogers, Arkansas, incorporates an indoor food court that provides a place to rest and relax away from the weather.
Visibility of the various levels is a major aspect of designing multilevel centers. The use of dramatic two-story design elements, including shops floating between levels, is a technique that has been used to prevent isolation of one level from another. The placement and prominence of vertical transportation must also be carefully considered. End courts or central courts can feature stairways, elevators, or escalators that lead to a second gallery on the upper level and provide additional visual exposure for stores in the gallery area. Bridges may be used to connect both sides of the upper level and to offer dramatic views of activity on both levels.
Areas of vertical circulation between levels can be integrated into the overall design of a multilevel center. Necessities such as escalators and stairs can be designed to serve as attractive amenities. The space under stairways can be turned into a strong design feature, with recessed seating and carpeting installed to create an attractive rest area. The stairs, the landing, the space underneath, and even the railings can be designed as an articulated amenity, creating a design element rather than just a way to get from one level to another. If they are not designed carefully, however, escalators and stairs can obscure tenants from view and create difficult areas to lease, especially in anchor store courts.
Food courts, consisting of a cluster of quick-service food stands grouped around a common or public seating area, are a major component of many regional and specialty centers, though their design and character have certainly evolved with the tastes and eating habits of shoppers. What began as a clever way of keeping shoppers in the mall for longer periods has developed into a fairly sophisticated understanding of how retail, food, and typically entertainment work together. To be sure, a food culture has emerged in the United States, and clustering several pizza and ethnic food outlets in a themed environment no longer stirs the soul.
Today’s food courts tend to offer a fairly sophisticated dining experience, whether they comprise multiple small venues operated by a single tenant with a master lease or multiple tenants. In either case, shoppers have come to expect a certain level of quality from the food offered as well as the environment. A high-quality design together with a proper tenant mix can often allow a food court to function as an anchor for the center.
To create the desired setting, the designer of the food court should pay close attention to features like natural lighting, the decor of public areas, design criteria for tenants, and the configuration and design of seating areas. Amenities such as terraces, water features, and landscaping are important, particularly to temper the visual impact of the seating area in a large food court. In the most successful food courts, seating encourages the pleasure of seeing and being seen. Thus, seating often borders circulation routes or overlooks a multilevel public environment. Some newer food courts feature light-menu cafés with open kitchens, creating additional opportunities for seeing and being seen.
The location of the food court is vital. If the food court is an anchor, then it should be a destination sited in a location designed to draw people past other shops. If, however, it is a convenience or an “oasis,” it should be located to attract the greatest number of people going from anchor to anchor—that is, in the most heavily trafficked area. Another important consideration is whether the food court’s location will allow it to remain open beyond the center’s normal hours of operation and be accessible to customers at various late-night entertainment spots in the center (such as cinemas) without creating a security problem for the center.
Whether a food court will have fixed or movable tables and seats is an important choice. Fixing them to the floor avoids the need for continually restraightening tables and chairs and reduces the risk of loss. But fixing the distance between tables and chairs means that those who are either very small or obese can never be completely comfortable. A frequent compromise is to fix the tables and leave the chairs movable. The amount of space that should be allotted to seating is debatable, but as a rule, one square foot (0.1 square meter) of seating area should be allowed for each square foot (0.1 square meter) of food court GLA—or approximately 35 seats for each tenant of the food court.
The food court uses a central air-conditioning system, and, in a way, it is treated like a major tenant. Each individual tenant is in a stall, usually predesigned, with its own exhaust system and plumbing. A variable-air-volume (VAV) system lends itself very well to this type of operation. Central systems for trash and garbage removal and for deliveries are essential. Sometimes, if the developer supplies trays, a common tray-washing area is necessary, and in most cases, a refrigerated trash facility is needed. Normally, rest-rooms and telephones are centrally located for the use of employees and customers.
Storefronts must be architecturally integrated with the shopping center and reflect the store’s merchandise and image. Developers of many recent projects have encouraged or mandated tenants to be involved in the design of their storefronts, which contributes to the messy vitality developers seek today in their retail projects. Chapter 6, Tenants, discusses the provision of design criteria and guidelines. Design guidelines for storefronts are an excellent tool to help developers accomplish their goals and tenants anticipate requirements and costs while also being creative.
In enclosed centers, storefronts may be completely or partially open, with merchandise placed before the public without the barrier of glass. With no exterior doors to open, customers can enter the sales area under the most favorable circumstances, and the full width of a store becomes the entrance. Shoplifting can become a problem, however, if the store’s layout is not designed so that personnel at front sales locations can control them.
Devices for closing storefronts in enclosed malls range from sliding glass doors to roll-up grilles. The variety of attractive display possibilities for storefronts is virtually limitless. Storefronts in an enclosed mall are often less expensive to merchandise because tenants are able to do away with window backs and other expensive display materials.
The leasing program includes plans for the sizes of stores. Store size is a product of a well-conceived merchandising strategy; the balance between anchors/junior anchors and in-line tenants is based on critical mass requirements and strategy.
Whatever the mix of store sizes ultimately chosen, each tenant should be held to the minimum space needed, because it is better for the tenant to be a little tight on space than to rattle around in too much room with insufficient sales to justify the rent. This advice is especially relevant in light of today’s higher building and operating costs, which are ultimately reflected in higher rents. Most tenants recognize the prudence of gauging their space to the projected volume of sales.
A merchant on a long-term lease may want the biggest store possible to accommodate possible expansion in the future. The developer/owner should have the flexibility in the lease agreements, if possible, to move tenants if they need larger (or smaller) spaces.
Small stores add character to the center and are a great way of introducing local retailers to the mix. Plans for small stores must provide suitable depths, which usually entails overlapping a large, “L”-shaped store behind the small store, a configuration that is not without complications.
If possible, frontages for major tenants should be limited to permit exposure of as many different merchants as possible to pedestrian traffic, though this point is always open to negotiation. Variety in the mix of retail tenants is more important than the size of any one store. Evidence suggests that centers with a variety of retail tenants are considerably more successful than those with only a few large stores. Shopping center development today is much more receptive to a broader spectrum of store sizes, and the best brokers, developers, owners, managers, architects, and lenders bring this understanding to the table during planning and design.
Understanding the most common sizes for various categories of stores can facilitate efficient planning and increase the likelihood that multiple anchors can be marketed for the same spot in a center.
Width. A standard width cannot be designated for any particular type of tenant. Retailers have studied the matter for years, employing the best store planners in the field to ascertain the most efficient dimension. Tenants generally have their own ideas about store size based on their experience and study and usually advise the developer of their needs. Unfortunately, retailers’ ideas often do not coincide with the developer’s need to restrict the width of inline stores to keep the center a reasonable length and to allow frontage for as many tenants as possible.
Developers should keep in mind that they have only so much frontage “for sale.” The developer should prevent a tenant from using too much of this valuable commodity for a wide but shallow store if the tenant can achieve as high a sales volume in the same square footage with a deeper store.
Depth. The ability to provide stores of varying depths is an asset to any center. A range of depths from 60 to 100 feet (18 to 30 meters) is often required—and feasible—with special circumstances calling for somewhat greater or smaller depths. When stores in the center must be of uniform depth, small stores can be carved out of deeper space, leaving rear overlap areas for the neighboring larger stores. But developers must avoid creating excessive depths for which neither they nor their tenants can obtain an adequate return. If shoppers can reach a store from either end, if delivery is at the back of the store and ground-level storage facilities have to be provided, or if the center has no basement, stores need to be deeper. Less depth is necessary if storage and service facilities are in the basement and if pedestrian traffic passes on only one side of the store. Deeper stores in regional centers are generally a product of specifically planned uses such as large, high-quality stores and multiscreen theaters. In small stores that may be enlarged later, electric panels and equipment should be placed on side walls so they will not have to be relocated if the rear wall is moved or on the rear wall if the tenant is more likely to expand by leasing an adjacent space.
Ceiling Height. The appropriate ceiling height for a store depends somewhat on the exterior architectural treatment and certainly on the total area of the store. The distance from the floor slab to the underside of the bar joists holding the roof typically varies from ten to 14 feet (3 to 4.3 meters) but could go much higher, depending on the architectural style of the building, the depth of the stores, and the type of tenants. The air space between the finished ceiling and the roof usually contains air-conditioning ducts, electrical wires, recessed lighting boxes and panels, telephone wires, plumbing lines, and other utility hardware; such equipment requires two to three feet (0.6 to 0.9 meter) of space between the finished ceiling and the structure.
Although many stores have 11-foot (3.3-meter) finished ceilings, ceilings in some small stores may be lower. Certain specialized tenants that use more space, such as variety stores and supermarkets, require higher finished ceilings. Ceilings in storage areas out of customers’ view need not be finished, but many fire codes require that they have lay-in panels or other materials with a two-hour fire-resistant rating. Mezzanines used for sales or storage space require different ceiling heights.
At one time, large regional centers needed basements to accommodate their truck service tunnels. Basements were fairly easy to provide because they could be scooped out at the same time the tunnel was dug. Today, however, with truck service courts and service delivery areas built level with main building, basements are no longer needed and are generally considered too costly to construct when they do not provide income-producing space.
Although they are not required, basements have been used in some areas for storage and heating equipment, office space, and expansion of stores. Some stores such as furniture and variety chains specifically request basement areas for merchandising and may require elevators. Even so, a basement is an added capital cost and generally produces little income. Where subsurface conditions permit and with transverse beams providing support for the first floor, concrete block foundations can save construction costs for a basement. This method of construction eliminates the need for basement stair headers and permits basement stairs to be relocated and widened without undue expense when store spaces and tenant arrangements are revised.
Developers should keep in mind that they have only so much frontage “for sale” and should prevent a single tenant from using too much of this valuable commodity for a wide but shallow store if the tenant can achieve an equally high sales volume in the same square footage with a deeper store. Retail shops line streets laid out in a traditional downtown pattern at Bowie Town Center in Bowie, Maryland.
Stairways leading to a basement should be constructed of concrete or steel, and if the basement is to be used for merchandising, the stairways should be five feet (1.5 meters) wide.
Party walls between retail stores, both in enclosed and open-air centers, can be constructed of any of a variety of materials, depending on local building and fire codes. Some codes require fire walls that extend to the underside of the roof. Sometimes concrete block is used; sometimes metal stud partitions with gypsum wall-board are used. The latter option provides maximum flexibility for future changes in store sizes.
Partitioning between the sales and storage areas of a store generally consists of stud-and-gypsum wallboard construction. The wall may be finished with anything from paint to wallpaper to painted decorations to a vinyl cover. Most fire codes require that this partitioning extend to the underside of the roof.
Because plumbing lines often must run under the floor slab, they are best installed while subfloors are exposed during construction. Stores that do not require special plumbing usually confine plumbing fixtures to small toilet areas and washbasins, but restaurants, beauty and barber shops, and other stores with more complex needs find plumbing a major cost of the improvements.
Part of the larger reuse of a former airport site, the 1.2 million-square-foot (111,525-square-meter) Northfield Stapleton shopping center received a LEED-CS Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for the core and shell. Cleveland-based developer Forest City also encourages tenants to adopt sustainable strategies, providing a handbook outlining green strategies and offering cash incentives for following them. The project incorporated 120,000 tons (109,000 metric tons) of recycled airport tarmac. It also uses low-toxicity finishes and for lower energy use relies on evaporator cooling systems, energy management and monitoring, and reflective roofing. High-tech irrigation systems and waterless urinals conserve water; stormwater detention ponds supply the irrigation system. Forest City estimates that two-thirds of the higher upfront construction costs will be paid back in eight to nine years. Denver-based architect of record Mulhern Group, Boston-based Elkus Manfredi Architects, and San Francisco-based Field Paoli contributed to the center, which opened in October 2006.
Forest City’s CS certification applies to Northfield’s public spaces, common areas, landscaping, parking facilities, public restrooms, exteriors, and management offices that make up Main Street—about 25 percent of the 1.2 million-square-foot (111,525-square-meter) development. Tenants’ participation makes the program work, and the higher upfront cost of sustainable design can be a hurdle when an owner is trying to sign a deal. Forest City’s approach is to lower those hurdles.
Brian Levitt, project developer of Northfield for Forest City, emphasizes three steps to help tenants get into a green frame of mind:
Forest City’s carrot-and-stick approach is its North-field Sustainability Tenant Incentive Program (NSTIP), a points-based system. All tenants are required to fulfill a minimum of 17 points on the 51-point list of criteria, but financial incentives are available based on graduated levels of achieving green.
The detailed Northfield tenant handbook and NSTIP guidebook spell out how points can be gathered through elements that tenants already often have in their interior design and buildout practices. Points add up for installation of awnings, daylighting design, energy-efficient heating/ventilating/air-conditioning systems, natural air ventilation, recycled flooring material, and flow sensors on all plumbing fixtures. If store design includes a no-smoking area and a designated recycling area and if nontoxic cleaning products are required for store operations, then three more points are easily allotted.
Some criteria are more creative. For example, providing bicycle racks at the storefront delivers one point. Reserving 10 percent of parking spaces for hybrid or carpool cars earns another. Providing lockers and showers for employees who bike to work garners yet another. And to make the process accessible to and attainable for tenants, the NSTIP guidebook offers product recommendations and lists of manufacturers for everything from solar shading to low-E glazing systems.
All NSTIP participants get storefront window identification for participating in the program, but additional levels of attainment are rewarded with advertising support in local and regional newspapers. And for superior achievement, Forest City offers a $2 per square foot ($21.50 per square meter) tenant allowance account credit.
The regional utility provider, Xcel Energy, offers added incentives. Xcel has a specialized Design Assistance Program (XDAP) with cash incentives ranging from 25 cents to $2 per square foot ($2.70 to $21.50 per square meter) for retail and commercial tenants that implement energy-saving recommendations from XDAP’s engineers and designers. Northfield is the largest retail partner Xcel has had to date, and Forest City has agreed to split Xcel’s reimbursement down the middle with tenants that follow their XDAP report and Northfield tenant handbook.
“The business owner is usually tentative, because it is often unfamiliar ground,” Levitt says. “Interestingly, once we can get in touch with their architects and interior designers—the people who are really into the details and the components of this approach, and they understand it—they are often the biggest help in getting the tenant to embrace it.”
Once the tenants’ doors open for business, implementing the CS and CI (commercial interiors) standards can provide a competitive advantage in the retail marketplace. Some retail studies indicate that better lighting and ventilation create a more comfortable shopping environment—which spurs customers to spend more time in the store browsing (and buying). Employees enjoy better working conditions that can result in more productivity, decreased absenteeism, and less staff turnover.
Source: Excerpted from Ron Nyren, “ULX Greener Retail,” Urban Land, January 2007, p. 50; and Ben Kelly, “Retail Goes Green at Stapleton,” Urban Land, September 2006, p. 204.
Plumbing requirements for shopping center tenants are essentially the same as those for freestanding stores. Tenants customarily provide any water-heating equipment needed. Restaurants and major stores provide restrooms for customers. Where permitted, a group of small tenants can be served by shared rest-rooms provided by the developer and maintained by the group through common area charges.
Leases should specify the developer’s responsibility for providing vents and drains for tenants such as supermarkets, restaurants, and dry cleaners that require large plumbing installations. If a center has no basement, floor installations should be deferred until tenant spaces are leased, because formulation of the tenants’ under-floor requirements lags behind the developer’s construction schedule. Because of this lag, the slab for the tenant space is often part of the tenant’s responsibility, which can create a problem with regard to plumbing stacks and vent locations in a multilevel mall and must be taken into account.
The particular sprinkler system required depends on local fire insurance rates and building codes and on available water supplies. In many instances, a sprinkler connection is brought to the tenant’s lease line, and the tenant hooks up the sprinkler and does any other work within the space needed for the system to conform to the layout. Even if a center is allowed by code to go without a sprinkler system (common in one-level centers), it is not recommended, and, in any case, obtaining insurance without fire protection is virtually impossible.
Generally, a developer provides a source of electricity at a panel, and each tenant is required to provide its own lighting and other electrical needs, all of which require the landlord’s approval. Because ceilings are also usually a tenant’s responsibility, the tenant, not the developer, must coordinate ceiling work with the installation of lighting.
Skylights are frequently incorporated into common area ceilings in enclosed malls. Clerestories allow natural daylight to filter in, thus benefiting both the atmosphere in the mall and any specimen plants. Lighting enclosed mall areas is usually designed not to detract from the light intensity of the store windows while providing a pleasing, natural overall effect.
The central pedestrian alley at South Campus Gateway in Columbus, Ohio, provides a popular place for visitors to linger. A theater, restaurants, and shops line the alley on both sides, and a parking garage is situated at one end.
Tenants are almost always responsible for the flooring in their spaces, which must be in accordance with criteria established by the owner and incorporated into the lease. Special floor coverings are usually put over the concrete slab in tenant sales areas and often omitted in storage areas. Floor coverings range from various tile materials to carpeting. Wood flooring is not recommended for stores unless the whole decorative scheme calls for it. Stores often vary floor coverings in different parts of the sales area, depending on the character of the merchandise and the way in which the merchandise is displayed.
Floor surfaces of interior common areas of enclosed centers consist of a wide variety of materials—marble; polished, stained, or stamped concrete; carpets; various kinds of tile pavers; treated wood parquet (particularly on upper floors); terrazzo; and poured-in-place or precast tiles. The surface material must be durable and easy to clean and maintain. The floor must not be slippery, yet it must not be so rough that it interferes with cleaning. Flooring with repeated small designs is easier to replace if cracks appear in some heavily used sections.
A shopping center can be heated and cooled by individual units for each store or by a central plant for the entire center. Tenants are responsible for their own individual units, and the shopping center’s management is responsible for a central plant, which offers the greatest convenience for the entire center. Hybrid systems employing large rooftop units serving several tenants are also available. One such system—the VAV system—increases or decreases the amount or volume of air to each space according to the demands of the space. A thermostat controls a VAV terminal, which controls the amount of air—usually cooling air—admitted into the space. Either a central plant or a rooftop unit senses pressure required for the system and maintains a constant temperature and pressure while varying the volume. In a conventional system, the volume is constant and the temperature varies.
With energy savings an essential criterion of HVAC systems, the mechanical engineer must evaluate all possible systems and the availability of various fuels. Good judgment based on a thorough analysis is necessary not only in the development of new projects but also in the improvement of operating centers. Solutions are complicated by the different requirements of various classifications of tenants.
1. Michael Baker, John Chapman, and Eugene Laxer, “Lifestyle Centers: A Defining Moment,” ICSC Research Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Winter 2001-02), p. 2.
2. ULI-the Urban Land Institute and International Council of Shopping Centers, Parking Requirements for Shopping Centers, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: ULI-the Urban Land Institute, 1999), p. 3.
3. Ibid., p. 7.
4. Ibid., p. 4.
5. Ibid., p. 19.
6. Mary Smith, Shared Parking, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: ULI-the Urban Land Institute and International Council of Shopping Centers, 2005).
7. Ibid., p. 1.
8. Ibid., p. 140.
9. Ibid., pp. 16 and 17.
10. Ibid., p. 8.
11. ULI-the Urban Land Institute and NPA-the National Parking Association, The Dimensions of Parking, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: ULI-the Urban Land Institute, 2000), pp. 59-60.
12. Smith, Shared Parking, p. 137.
13. ULI-the Urban Land Institute and NPA-the National Parking Association, Dimensions of Parking, p. 46.
14. Ibid., p. 45.
15. ULI-the Urban Land Institute and International Council of Shopping Centers, Dollars & Cents of Shopping Centers®/The SCORE® 2006 (Washington, D.C.: Authors, 2006), p. 526.
16. For further discussion of town centers, see Michael D. Beyard, Anita Kramer, Bruce Leonard, Michael Pawlukiewicz, Dean Schwanke, and Nora Yoo, Ten Principles for Developing Successful Town Centers (Washington, D.C.: ULI-the Urban Land Institute, 2007).
17. ULI-the Urban Land Institute and International Council of Shopping Centers, Dollars & Cents of Shopping Centers®/The SCORE® 2006, pp. 59 and 121.
18. Ibid.
