Lifestyle Retail Centers
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Lifestyle centers have risen in popularity with consumers as an antidote to the sameness they see had seen in their local retail offerings.
Lifestyle centers emerged after, but as part of, a resurgance of interest among consumers towards "main street" style retailing as well as a major effort to develop "urban entertainment centers" (Universal Studios, SONY, Disney, among others). These trends were supported by general industry acceptance of "placemaking" and "gathering place" sensibilities. As well, retailers that preferred "main street" type locations found lifestyle shopping centers to be similar in terms of their store siting criteria.
The lifestyle retail center product is also popular with developers as this essentially anchor-less type of retail depends as much on creating pleasant strolling walkways and gather-and-stare plazas, as on the leading retailers included. Lifestyle centers are typically open-air.
Prominent lifestyle centers developed in the U.S. include Eastwood Town Center in Lansing, Michigan (2002); Denver Pavilions (1998); The Shops at Sunset Place in South Miami, Florida (1999); and the Commons at Calabasas in California (1998). Since these early protoypes, developers throughout the U.S. have been borrowing best-practices from many excellent examples of this retail center type, and have applied "lessons learned" to many hundreds of new lifestyle center developments.
Over the last couple of years, lifestyle retail centers have been impacted by the demise of many long-established "national credit" retailers.
The term "lifestyle center" is generally considered to have been first used with regard to The Shops of Saddle Creek in Germantown, Tennessee (1987), although retail destinations with lifestyle-center attributes pre-date Saddle Creek.
Developers who have created successful lifestyle retail centers include:
- RED Development (HQ Kansas City, MO) - Village Pointe (Omaha, NE), The Shops at Norterra (Phoenix, AZ), among others
- Caruso Affiliated Holdings (HQ Los Angeles, CA) - The Grove (Los Angeles), The Promenade at Westlake Village (California), among others
- Related Companies (HQ New York, NY) - CityPlace West Palm Beach, among others
Related Topics
About Category Killer Stores
About Great Streets
About Placemaking (Place Making)
About Gathering Places
About Retail Power Centers
About Theme Restaurants and Clubs
About Mall Entertainment
About Festival Marketplaces
About Tenant Deal Letters
About Retail Tenant Sign Criteria
About Tenant Store Window Displays
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Stonecreek Partners Resource pages are provided freely and without limitation for personal, private, non-commercial use, and may be linked to as a source page. All resource page information is based on 30 years of practitioner's experience of Stonecreek Partners' principals, in the retail, entertainment, hotel, residential, and commercial real estate industries.
