Experiences That Drive Sales

More than two decades into a new century, it’s become clear that retailers in this fast-moving age must strive to become experience providers as well as merchandise vendors. The good news they received from panelists at the SPECS “Top Retail Center

Experiences” session is that center operators are prepared and eager to help them attain that designation in countless ways. Some of them almost unbelievable.

Every summer at Atlantic Station in Atlanta, Starr Cumming, the retail director of specialty leasing at global real estate company Hines, helps the property host the Atlanta Open, a men’s ATP professional tennis event. Come fall, Cirque du Soleil appears at the at the downtown mixed-use center for a two-month run.

When winter arrives, serious basketball fans flock to the site to watch the nation’s top high school hoopsters display their talents in a 103,000-sq.-ft. temporary arena in an Atlantic Station parking lot rented by the NBA-approved league Overtime Elite.

Together, the three events draw nearly 300,000 attendees, plus scads of media attention. They also draw heavily on the talents of nearly every department of the center.

“The property management, engineering, and specialty leasing departments at Atlantic Station are all involved in creating a top-level experience,” Cumming told attendees during the SPECS session.

“Thirty days before any event we have an all-hands- on-deck logistics meeting with the event’s team and our team to review all the components of an events, then another meeting seven days out from the event to triple-check everything,” Cumming added. “We create a run-of-show plan for the team to operate efficiently and ensure a successful event.”

Easton Town Center

Expanded luxury shopping is the latest addition to the experiential aura at Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio, according to panelist Spencer Jordan, the senior VP of leasing at Easton’s operator, Steiner + Associates. (Easton top the top spot in Chain Store Age’s annual Top Retail Center Experiences report.)

Tiffany & Co. opened a flagship at the massive 1,300-acre center 15 years ago and the luxury jeweler has since been joined by the likes of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and RH Gallery. Easton has now undertaken a luxury corridor transformation with the addition of a complementary district that it hopes will make it the Rodeo Drive of the Midwest.

“A key factor that defines the luxury shopping experience is relationship-building,” Jordan said. ”In a space where a comparatively small number of shoppers can support most of a store’s sales, building strong relationships between sales associates and repeat shoppers is critical.”

To give itself room for such retail expansions, Easton intentionally “overbuilds” its parking garages out to typical store dimensions so that they can be converted into retail space when the need arises.

“As Easton’s walkability expands with new development, and the center slowly becomes a community hub in and of itself, we may not require as many parking spaces as we do today,” Jordan commented.

PRCP

Pacific Capital Retail Partners is aggressively expanding its mall and shopping center portfolio using demographic research and community involvement to renovate properties and re-install tenants and events that connect with their markets.

“We delve into consumer behavior and community interests to see voids we have and then try to develop a perfect recipe of events and programs that engage and excite our audiences,” said panelist Najla Kayyem, senior VP of marketing at PRCP.

At six of its centers, PRCP produced an event with a two pronged purpose of generating community excitement and discovering what the developer hoped could be a local chef-driven restaurant tenant.

At each venue, “Taste for the Space” welcomed as many as a dozen restaurants scouted by PRCP staff. The community is invited to attend the food festival and vote for their favorite dishes. The winner of the competition gets a turn-key dining space with six months of free rent and a $50,000 investment stake. PRCP staff, it should be noted, vet top vote-getters to ensure the winner is ready to make the leap to a center.

Last fall, PRCP’s Paseo Nuevo center in Santa Barbara invited returning college students to “College Night Out” for free food and refreshments, games, giveaways, and silent disco. The more than 1,200 students who showed up did some shopping, as well. Sephora topped its usual daily sales by $8,000.

ANNMARIE PLENGE

on the in-house architectural team

Annmarie Plenge is the executive VP of design at Pacific Retail Capital Partners, a Los Angeles-based owner-operator of more than 20 regional and super-regional centers nationwide.

Real Estate development is a delicate process. Done correctly--with clear and concise master plans that show how a development ties into a local community and will serve its needs for years to come--it can build trust and goodwill with customers and city officials. Done incorrectly, with constantly changing designs and specifications, it can fly red flags in the community, build mistrust ,and jeopardize a project’s chances of making it past the conceptualization stage.

There is no in-between.

As the former co-leader of the mixed use and retail centers practice at Gensler, one of the world’s largest architectural firms, I saw many projects die on the vine. While their intentions were good, real estate developers were oftentimes forced into presenting master plans that needed more thought and input. Yet, because the design part of development often relies upon third party architects and design professionals who work on their own timelines, the process is frustrating. Developers have to wait days, sometimes weeks, on updated design plans and renderings. Such delays are costly and can lead to developers making their plans public before they should.

This is why I decided to leave Gensler and accept the opportunity to form an architectural design studio at Pacific Retail Capital Partners, one of the most innovative companies in retail development. I wanted to use the 27 years’ experience I gained working with developers such as GGP, Westfield, and Brookfield to help PCRP speed up their efforts to evolve real estate for the next generation. I felt that having the ability to operate under the same roof as all the decision-makers involved in the development process – design, finance, asset management, and leasing to name a few – would allow me to benefit from a stream of efficiencies while designing master plans that will transform retail as we know it.

The studio’s entire focus is on helping PRCP move projects from conceptualization to construction more quickly. Our team works behind the scenes to ensure our master plans are thoughtfully designed and anticipates any potential obstacles before they happen. Our work allows those presenting our vision to public or city officials to be better informed and more prepared. That means fewer changes made in the initial design and quicker start times for construction.

An excellent example of our team’s impact played out at Yorktown Center, a 1.4 million-sq.-ft. mall that we own in the western suburbs of Chicago. With all the teams involved in the redevelopment process working out of the same office, we were able to work swiftly to come up with a master plan for the former Carson’s anchor box that incorporated the feedback of all parties. Our inclusion of 600 multifamily units and a public park addressed two of the biggest issues plaguing the Village of Lombard: the need for housing and green space. Approvals came quickly.

PRCP’s core values include pushing the envelope and trying something new. We design innovative and tailored master plans to meet the needs of a specific community or market. Our team has the creative freedom to be bold and visionary, and if what we conceive is too much or too little, we can easily consult with our development, asset management, and leasing counterparts – all located just down the hall from us.

Going in-house with PRCP has helped me see design from a different perspective and understand how I can use my knowledge as both a third-party and in-house design consultant to benefit the entire real estate industry. Our architectural design studio is a resource for all developers and retailers, and we encourage anyone in development to reach out to us to see how we can help expedite their projects while saving costs and delivering financially viable designs that meet their goals and objectives.