Panelists Dissect Lifestyle Centers

Poag and others spoke yesterday on a panel titled "Lifestyle Centers - Past, Present and Future," during the International Council of Shopping Centers' Spring Convention here. He and other developers discussed the trends that influence the projects, as well as what works and what doesn't.

The traditional lifestyle center as defined by ICSC is between 150,000 sf and 500,000 sf. They are open-air, usually in upscale locations and have many of the same fashion and restaurant tenants, such as J. Crew, Gymboree, and P.F. Chang's. But the definition and parameters are becoming more fluid as developers build more of these centers and shoppers get to know them, panelists say.

"You need to be as authentic as you can when you put these things together," says J. Thomas Porter, principal of Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Assoc., of Atlanta. "Customers are more particular today."

When putting them together, developers also need to keep in mind what tenants go where, Poag says. "The biggest flaws we see are in the site plans," he says. "You can't put a Cheesecake Factory in the middle of a street. As much parking as we can provide them, they'll eat it all up."

Some of the more innovative, earlier lifestyle centers introduced larger sidewalks than a typical strip center, allowing more people to congregate. However, that can also be overdone, says James Goggan, VP of architecture and engineering at Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group. "A sea of concrete is really not very friendly," he says.

Panelists agree that adding other real estate components to lifestyle centers and making them mixed-use is the wave of the future for these developments, but that might not always be a good thing, Poag says. "There's a lot of talk about mixed-use, but very few of them are successful," he says. "To get it right is nearly impossible."

One challenge that developers are no longer facing, as they were when the lifestyle center concept emerged in the 1990s, is attracting retail tenants. At that time, they say, retailers were very strict about wanting to replicate their mall-format stores in the open-air venues. "The retailers are coming around; they're finally getting it," Goggan says. "You're really partnering up with retailers now and they're stepping up to the plate."