LAGUNA HILLS, CA—As GlobeSt.com reported recently, Nadel has completed the $17-million expansion of the Village at Nellie Gail Ranch, a shopping center located at the intersection of Moulton Pkwy. and La Paz Rd. here. The extensive remodel and expansion project incorporated 28,000 additional square feet of retail space. We spoke with Greg Lyon, principal and design director for Nadel, about how architect and design firms are approaching shopping-center repositioning and how bricks-and-mortar stores have made peace with online shopping.

GlobeSt.com: It seems that repositioning is making up a huge percentage of shopping-center development. How are architecture and planning firms like yours approaching these projects?

Lyon: Nadel survived because of clients repositioning assets. Fortunately, we are also seeing a swell of more ground-up projects happening because of all the retail space that was absorbed by food and athletic concepts during the recession. At first, we said redevelopment was simply a reimaging job, but we soon realized it was more of a real estate challenge than a design challenge. There were three main categories of redevelopment: 1. some clients had a big box that was empty and were trying to divide it up if they couldn't get a single tenant; 2. some clients had empty shop space within a center; and 3. others had underperforming assets. They all wanted to do everything as economically as possible. With the big box, it was like a jigsaw puzzle that we could reduce to reasonable-sized shop space. For empty shop space within a center, the strategy was to come up with a creative concept that the brokers could take to market and the tenants could wrap their brains around, like a Kid Zone where the tenants were all kid or family focused. That districting created a story that would allow brokers to go to market and sell something with a critical mass of visitation. The third issue of underperforming assets was more expensive and challenging—it might be a 30-year-old center across the street from brand-new one that had to be aggressively repositioned for a lifestyle feel. It's an expensive endeavor, and we're still following that now.

GlobeSt.com: What issues come up in designing for repositioning that don't come up for ground-up retail design?

Lyon: You don't always have complete drawings of what's going on in repositioning. You have to look at what's going on structurally, but when you go into the repositioning, invariably you find increased costs. There's also a cost involved in doing a more complete forensic of the building, so you can't always do that. Some buildings built 30 years ago don't have drawings at all. Another big issue is the cost of ADA upgrades. All of a sudden, you find yourself in a situation where you have to meet all the current standards. And, of course, there is the downtime; no matter what you do you will disrupt existing tenants or shop-space parking and there may be scaffolding customers are walking under to get to the shops.

GlobeSt.com: What other retail design trends are you noticing, particularly in Orange County?

Lyon: In Southern California in general, but particularly in Orange County, with the emerging food culture, restaurants are now a viable retail anchor. This is the critical mass of the right dining offering, so restaurants can function as a weekend and evening anchor for a center. That culture is so pervasive, and ironically it came out of the recession with food trucks offering gourmet food. It introduced Americans to the concept of building their own gourmet burger or pizza, organic and sustainable foods and renewed the importance of the Food Network channel.

There's s shift in ground-up retail now. What was going to be a war between bricks-and-mortar stores and the Internet has evolved into a sophisticated relationship between social media and the physical environment. Developers and retail destinations understand it's a continuum and that a vertical brand has to have a social-media program that's connected with their shoppers and guests in a much more ubiquitous way than ever before. There isn't a battle, but a relationship now. It's all about market share.

Another trend is sustainability. Millennials have come of age and are very conscious about green issues and sustainability. It's not just the right thing to do but it will create brand loyalty. It's good business now. Over the past five years, people grew up in this country and now have an income. There's this amazing food trend and a real integration of media and bricks-and-mortars.