Sundance Team Begins Re-Merchandising Hunt

FORT WORTH-Taking advantage of a rare opportunity, Sundance Square's president is lobbying women's apparel retailers for six upcoming openings in the historically filled, 20-block walk of the Downtown. Whether the move-outs are tenant or owner driven, the door is now open to re-merchandising the city's centerpiece.

"We don't get that opportunity too often," Johnny Campbell, president of Sundance Square, tells GlobeSt.com from the floor of the International Council of Shopping Centers' spring convention in Las Vegas. He's not saying which retailers are packing their bags or why, but there is a sales performance bar that must be met to stay in the destination location. The gist of the decision is the Bass family and its team wants to add more top-draw shopping to a heavily weighted mix of entertainment and restaurant space.

Campbell says this year's ICSC pilgrimage is different because he has space to show to the crowd. The 20,000 sf will open up before the year ends: scattered sites ranging from 1,500 sf to 6,000 sf. "We are making a strategic shift," he says. "This year, we're on the hunt specifically for women's apparel retail."

Campbell says the ICSC network is paying particular attention to the rare openings in the 375,819 sf of street-level retail area, which already includes apparel retailers, Leddy's Ranch, Jos. A. Bank and Moonstruck. Operators of upscale boutiques and leading edge brands are high on the courtship list. "It's about the product and the merchandise," he says. "We learned how to filter through the years and look at the right names that are going to be successful. We need successes. It's been very well received." And, he says Moody's Investors Service's recent ranking of Fort Worth as the top commercial property market in the nation is stoking interest.

The Bass family began Sundance Square's revitalization in the late 1980s. Today, the streets produce not only some of the highest retail rents in the region, but reel in roughly 10 million visitors per year in a comfort-zone setting with a privately funded security force. Sundance Square has 20 AMC screens, 24 restaurants, three live theaters, Bass Performance Hall, two museums, a trio of art galleries, shops and boutiques, two residential towers--all tucked into a traditional downtown setting of office and hospitality space.

"We are prepared to make the right retailers offers they can't refuse," Campbell says in a press release. "When we started this project more than two decades ago, we had a vision to mold Sundance Square into an entertainment and restaurant destination and we made that happen. Now, our vision is to create a must-see shopping experience."

The sweet spot to the destination location is the owner has another 20 blocks of undeveloped space to tap if the right major anchor comes along. "We are always quietly talking about those 20 blocks," Campbell says.