Retail/Entertainment
Downtown Atlanta is experiencing nothing short of a major renaissance. Now, one of its most iconic addresses is being remade into a modern classic, thanks to the transformation of the former CNN Center.
Once a sprawling expanse of uncharted land, Las Vegas, Nevada, has evolved into the entertainment capital of the world, a gaming super-hub, and a premier destination for sports. This remarkable transformation didn’t happen overnight; it stemmed from decades of strategic planning, investment, and visionary zoning recommendations.
Companies including Macy’s, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, and IKEA are rolling out small-format stores around the country, often in suburban areas, as they try other ways to connect with their customers.
Industry experts speaking at the ULI Fall Meeting said pickleball is just one of the ways developers are taking a fresh look at the retail space as malls seek to rework their tenant mix: by including more outdoor spaces.
After 75 years in operation, Bellevue Square in Bellevue, Washington, is an example of a living organic retail center for the community it serves.
ULI Chicago, with support from the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development, is in the process of conducting two Technical Assistance Panels as part of the City of Chicago’s Central City recovery planning efforts. In partnership with DPD and The Magnificent Mile Association, ULI Chicago convened a multi-disciplinary panel of real estate development experts to develop recommendations for redevelopment in the City of Chicago’s downtown.
Much discussion has taken place in recent years about the do’s and don’ts of design for development of mixed-use projects, but the global pandemic has changed the ballgame. In a concurrent session at the 2021 ULI Virtual Spring Meeting, experts at CallisonRTKL and industry-leading voices explored the rules to break when designing for a new consumer mind-set.
ULI MEMBER–ONLY CONTENT: Owning retail space has been challenging since the Great Recession. You likely know the reasons why: overbuilding, the internet, rapacious private equity, too many lackluster tenants. You also know that every move you make—every breath you take—is recorded by your mobile phone. This latter circumstance has allowed a clever company to develop possibly the most useful tool for commercial real estate since Hewlett Packard introduced the HP-12C financial calculator in 1981.
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Well-prepared food of practically any cuisine you can imagine, delivered to you with the help of busy drones and robots. In the not-too-distant future, this could be an everyday reality for people in cities all over the world, said a speaker at the the ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium.
The COVID-19 lockdown imposed by San Francisco in late February devastated the city’s small, independent businesses, and especially its restaurant scene. But creative city policies could help nimble retailers survive, panelists said at the ULI Virtual Fall Meeting session titled “Vibrant Retail Streets in the Age of E-tail and COVID-19: Is It Time for ‘Retail First’ City Policies?”
Christina Contreras, principal and founder of Living Ecology Studio in Denver, has been selected as the ULI/Martin Bucksbaum Senior Visiting Fellow. During her one-year fellowship, Contreras will explore how privately owned and managed “third places” can better contribute to individual and community health and well-being, and will develop a “pattern book” for designers and developers to create welcoming and thriving privately owned “third places.”
ULI MEMBER–ONLY CONTENT: Despite the challenges facing the retail sector in 2020, South Florida’s Aventura Mall has continued to reinvent itself as a retail destination.
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In a discussion of the ongoing transformation of U.S. retail, panelists participating in the 2020 ULI Spring Meeting Webinar Series agreed that the authenticity, differentiation, and transparency creating a sense of place in mixed-use retail spaces are likely to be what consumers seek in the future. Single-use spaces are about convenience, but that is only half of what consumers say they are looking for.
A timely report by ULI Europe sets out the potential triggers for the required restructuring of Europe’s retail real estate sector.
At a ULI Central Florida event, panelists discussed their strategies for turning around a underperforming retail districts in nearby St. Petersburg, largely through the curation of a more specific tenant mix.
When e-commerce first became entrenched in China, it seemed to sound the death knell for traditional retail. Sporting venues and other cultural attractions are helping bring foot traffic to the experiential retail of the future, said panelists at a ULI event in Shanghai.
We are long past the point of discussing how technology has interrupted our lives and changed our perspective of the world. We are now in the post-disruption era, and in many sectors including retail, a new normal is emerging. At the same time, we are finally at a place where we can connect the dots to understand how retail is evolving—more efficient through technology and more engagement-focused through experience. The biggest idea driving the newest and most successful retail strategies is wrapped around how we value things—especially time.
A lot of thought and hard work go into making a place look like it could not have appeared anywhere else.
With the convenience and increasingly experiential process of shopping online, how can retail stores and malls compete? Thriving brands are combining their online and brick-and-mortar experiences to keep foot traffic high and regenerating communities.
At the ULI Japan Spring Conference 2018, panelists discussed how Japan’s malls can reinvigorate themselves with culture and content. Retail in Japan has not suffered as badly as elsewhere from the effects of online shopping, but the industry is concerned that malls need to offer more to retain customers.
As Demographics Shift, Placemaking Becomes an Increasingly Important Component of Retail Development
Retail developers who gathered at the 2018 ULI Florida Summit talked about what is working and what isn’t, as they shift their focus to more entertainment and dining amenities combined with mixed use from the traditional strip centers of the recent past.
Berlin’s landmark luxury shopping center is being refreshed at a price in the hundreds of millions and with Rem Koolhaas at the helm.
Restaurants and coffee-shop chains increased their lead as the most active retail category for international expansion, capitalizing on a global effort by landlords to make their shopping centers more inviting by adding more experiential, internet-proof uses, according to a new report from CBRE.
The focus for mall owners and retailers should be on extending their brand “beyond the four walls of brick and mortar,” said panelists speaking at the ULI Spring Meeting.
Today’s young professionals with discretionary income are asking for deeper engagement with their surroundings, a greater sense of ownership, and fewer barriers between work and play, connecting on a personal and emotional level with their environment. Panelists speaking at ULI’s 2018 Carolinas Meeting in February discussed what that might mean for the marketing and design of retail, office, and residential projects.
E-commerce has finally arrived in Singapore in a big way. Amazon has appeared on the island’s shores, joining local etailers like Zalora and RedMart, and with meal delivery apps such as Deliveroo, FoodPanda, and UberEats, restaurant-grade food can come straight to your door. Nonetheless, the pipeline for brick-and-mortar retail remains strong, with a total of 509,000 square meters (5.5 million sq ft) of retail space of projects in the pipeline.
James Rouse’s visionary development is 50 years old. The process of urbanizing its town center may create a model for other suburban developments.
Speaking at a ULI Minnesota event, Kevin Cavenaugh, owner of Portland-based Guerrilla Development, said bigger is not necessarily better, and oftentimes it is worse, in terms of the complexity and risk.
Since 2004, over $1 billion has been invested in redevelopment and new construction in downtown Cincinnati and the adjacent Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Representatives from Erie, Pennsylvania; St. Louis; and Atlanta have visited the city in the last year to see how a combination of nonprofit redevelopment, historic preservation, land banking, and strategic acquisitions, funded by tax credits and corporate investments, have turned things around.
The highly coveted second corporate headquarters of e-commerce giant Amazon.com would be a welcome addition to Austin, but the $5 billion project undoubtedly would produce more housing and transportation woes in one of the fastest-growing regions of the United States, said panelists at a ULI Austin event.
