Colorado Real Estate Journal -
The Park Meadows mall is sweet 16. Not only is Park Meadows the largest shopping center in the Denver metro area that is 16 years old, but it recently made 16 tenant announcements, including new stores and major renovations, which together represent about 75,500 square feet of space. The 1.6 million-sf mall opened in 1996 in Douglas County and 11 years later was annexed into Lone Tree. “Park Meadows is a fortress mall for Denver because of its size and its total retail sales,” said Mary Beth Jenkins, president of The Laramie Co., a retail consulting and commercial real estate brokerage firm in Denver. “Every major retailer continues to look at this mall,” Jenkins said. “It has a number of first-to-market retailers, including American Girl and Madewell, which is J.Crew’s newest concept and is a wonderful store.” Park Meadows now boasts the largest Forever 21 store in the metro area, taking the 32,000-sf space formerly occupied by Border’s after the bookstore chain went out of business. In turn, the Disney store, which previously vacated space in Park Meadows, returned to backfill the 6,500-sf space vacated by Forever 21, said Pamela J. Kelly, the general manager of Park Meadows. Other tenants that have opened or have remodeled include: • House of Hoops, 5,144 sf; • Pandora, 973 sf; • L'Occitane, 1,499 sf; • Ann Taylor, 4,391 sf (remodel); • Nordstrom (remodel of same square footage); • Guess, 3,453 sf (remodel); • The Children's Place, 3,000 sf (remodel); • The Yard House, 8,453 sf; • Athleta, 4,165 sf; • Lush, 1,148 sf; • Auntie Anne's, 624 sf; and • LoveSac, 1,350 sf. Kelly has been with the center since it opened near County Line Road and Interstate 25. “Time has gone by very fast,” Kelly said. “Being with a shopping center for such a long time is almost how you watch your children grow.” Park Meadows has had three owners since its inception. The mall is now owned by Chicago-based General Growth Properties Inc., which acquired Park Meadows in 2004 when it bought the Rouse Co. for $12.6 billion. It was developed by TrizecHahn Centers Inc., which sold it to Rouse two years after opening the mall. General Growth, with a market cap of about $18 billion and an ownership interest in about 200 malls across the country, filed for bankruptcy in 2009 but emerged from bankruptcy about a year ago. Kelly estimated that foot traffic and sales probably fell by 10 percent to 12 percent during the dark days of 2009 and 2010. “No mall in the country was unaffected,” Kelly said. “Foot traffic and sales are both up significantly.” Although General Growth, like most major shopping center real estate investment trusts, does not release data on individual malls, the occupancy at Park Meadows is clearly high. “If you came to visit us, you might find four empty storefronts,” Kelly said. Although this is a challenging time for shopping centers, given the rise of buying goods online, “Challenging times in shopping centers happen in our industry time and time again,” Kelly said. “The key is to always keep them relevant and to stay competitive in an ever-changing and highly competitive world.” TrizecHahn did that from the outset, she said, by branding Park Meadows as a “Colorado resort mall,” making sure its architecture and design reflected its Western location and was not a cookie-cutter design that could be found in any city in the U.S. “One of the big focuses at Park Meadows is to be experiential,” Kelly said. For example, she said, early on Park Meadows provided comfortable, overstuffed chairs and lounges to provide a respite for weary shoppers. The mall today is populated by what Kelly calls GLMs – good-looking moms. “They are all about health and fitness,” she said. “It used to be they were all decked out in Juicy Couture, but now they shop in yoga pants. So, of course, we brought in Athleta,” which sells yoga clothes. She said it is important to listen to shoppers when figuring out the right retail mix. For example, in 2007, Disney scaled back on its stores and pulled out of Park Meadows and many other malls. “We got a lot of customer feedback, and they really wanted Disney, so we brought Disney back and they have been really successful.” In 2008, Lord and Taylor shut down, and Park Meadows razed the building and created an indoor-outdoor space called Vistas as Park Meadows. The mall continues to tinker with the Vistas to better “activate” it within the overall mall. For example, it now has fewer restaurants than when it first opened. She said she received some criticism at first because some of the retailers initially struggled in the Vistas and some of the store space wasn’t initially filled. Kelly said she easily could have rented the space to some tenants that would have provided the wrong mix for the mall, but she resisted taking the easy route. Patience has paid off because the retailers and restaurants in the Vistas are doing better than ever, she said. “And Nordstrom has done in incredible job of renovating its space,” she said. “It has the feel of a fine European hotel. It is really welcoming and comfortable.” Kelly said when she compares Park Meadows with other top-tier malls in the Denver area and across the country, “I think one thing sets us apart is that we create a true sense of space.” That is important, Jenkins said. “General Growth is a great owner that continues to invest in Park Meadows,” Jenkins said. “Shoppers might not notice that they have installed new wood floors, but at some level they will simply feel the impact of a mall that is not becoming rundown.” Of course, in retail, the old saw is that only three things matter – location, location, location. “We are blessed with a great location at I-25 and C-470,” Kelly said. “Having dual freeway access” along the southeast corridor, near some of the greatest concentrations of household wealth in the metro area, is something any mall in the country would love, she said. “But you know, it is all about the stores,” Kelly said. “Whether you are talking about Park Meadows, or Cherry Creek or FlatIron Crossing, it is about the stores. We are as true today as we were 16 years ago in providing an experiential shopping experience at Park Meadows.”