ICSC Panel On Retail's Future

The centers of the future will be open-air, mixed-use, social hubs with public spaces as anchors and major leisure components, such as bars, nightclubs and theaters, said Steiner, who is known for his open-air, New Urbanist projects such as Easton Town Center in Columbus. "Instead of being about the tenants, now it's about people and communities," he said. Department stores will still be, in some cases, vital retail components, but shopping centers will no longer be built around them as a focal point, Steiner predicted.

John Gosling, a SVP with international architecture firm RTKL, said urban sprawl has cause growth into rural areas. "You're getting situations today where you have two-hour commutes both ways being quite normal for people seeking affordable housing," he said. To combat sprawl, developers and communities are looking at infill development, residential and retail components by transit stations, the re-tooling of suburbs into live-work environments and other mixed-use solutions.

Some of the components Gosling pointed out that are needed to make a mixed-use center work include a critical mass of people inside a small area, a variety of housing and office uses and a managed parking system. Examples of some developments that have fit these criteria include Addison (TX) Circle and Legacy Town Center, in Plano, TX, he said.

To make mixed-use projects work, they don't need to have particular architectural styles, said RTKL VP Randy Shortridge. The ways areas are utilized, such as the locations of windows and storefronts, are more important, he said. ICSC's Leading Edge Conference ends today.