Wheelingman04
Dec 30, 2006, 5:36 AM
Downtown Columbus
Population increase hasn't translated into retail growth
http://www.thisweeknews.com/?story=s...ws-284708.html
Thursday, December 28, 2006
By KEVIN PARKS
ThisWeek Staff Writer Now troubled, City Center Mall reversed a trend when it opened
Around 1950, downtown Columbus boasted 90 retailers and a dozen sit-down restaurants along High Street alone.
In 1989, just prior to the opening of the City Center mall, only 25 retailers and five sit-down eateries remained along High Street, local retail analyst Christopher D. Boring said in a June 2004 report to the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
The opening of an urban shopping mall represented, at least temporarily, a complete reversal of a trend to suburban shopping centers that may well have been started, curiously enough, right here in Columbus.
On the Web site of the local real estate development company Casto, founder Don Monroe Casto Sr. is cheerfully given credit for opening the nation's first regional shopping center.
According to the history section of the firm's Web site, Casto began developing single-family homes in Upper Arlington in the mid-1920s, but had trouble selling them "because there was nowhere nearby to shop ... "
"In 1928 he opened Grandview Avenue Shopping Center, the first shopping center built to serve a trade area beyond its immediate neighborhood," the site states.
Spurred by the success of that more-modest development, Don Casto Sr. went on to open Town and Country in Whitehall in 1949.
'"Immediately after the opening of the first section of Town and Country, we knew that a great industry had been born,' said Casto, who moved swiftly to secure other sites before land values soared. He then constructed and opened 16 more shopping centers in the Midwest during the 1950s.
City Center, a "smash success" when it opened, according to Boring's Metropolitan Club presentation, was utterly unlike its shopping mall brothers and sisters, in that it was in the heart of downtown and not in the suburbs.
City Center today is a far cry from its "smash success" era.
Retail analysts are more than a little disappointed with the performance of the mall's current owner, the Maryland-based Mills Corp., according to Boring. The company had a reputation for innovation, Boring said, and many expected great things when City Center joined the Mills Corp. portfolio of shopping centers.
That hasn't happened, in large part, Boring said, because of an accounting scandal at the firm.
"The bottom line is, nothing is happening at City Center," Boring said. "It's just sitting there."
To some extent, he said, City Center was a "quick fix" that hasn't worked over the long term.
"City Center was built as a suburban mall," Boring said. "It just happened to be downtown."
As longtime downtown resident Michael Wilkos put it, City Center was "downtown in location, not in spirit."
Boring predicted, however, that perhaps some mixed-use development of offices and retail may yet keep City Center alive.
-- Kevin Parks
It seems a peculiar contradiction: At a time when unprecedented numbers of relatively affluent people are setting up residence in downtown Columbus, retail stores in the central business district are fading and fleeing and folding. Or are long gone.
City Center, once the crown jewel of downtown retail, is but a shadow of itself, more meeting space and charter school than merchandising and charge-card shopping.
With Macy's down to a single anchor store from three in its heyday, and with an occupancy rate perhaps below 50 percent, many feel the handwriting is on the wall for the urban mall.
This is in spite of a tax abatement-fueled spate of loft and condo conversion projects that have created about 4,000 new dwelling units, some of them going for handsome prices, in the past four years.
What's up with that?
"We believe that retail is among the most nimble of industries, and that it follows people," offered Michael S. Brown, press secretary to Mayor Michael B. Coleman. "Thus our focus on bringing people back to downtown as a priority of the business plan. In just three years, we've seen the construction or development of 4,000 housing units, and are bringing more than 2,300 jobs downtown. This is a great start and we believe, as the population density and jobs increase, retail will stabilize and grow again.
"That said, we don't necessarily see downtown ever being a retail giant around City Center as it was many years ago."
That's a conclusion with which Christopher D. Boring agrees wholeheartedly.
Boring is the president of Boulevard Strategies. His economic development consulting firm, based in Columbus, specializes in retail development.
"You're just going to have to be patient," Boring said in a recent interview.
He pointed out that 4,000 new dwelling units in downtown hardly represents "critical mass" in terms of attracting shop owners to the area.
If the trend of more and more loft, condo and apartment development continues, Boring anticipates some degree of turnaround for downtown, but doubts it will ever be the "retail giant" it once was.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, the retail analyst indicated.
Michael Wilkos concurred.
"It's only one of multiple reasons people live downtown," said Wilkos, a one-time urban planner who is now director of neighborhood development for United Way of Central Ohio.
Wilkos moved to downtown Columbus 11 years ago and as such, can remember a time when the urban streetscape was dotted with shoe retailers, clothing stores, bookshops and jewelers.
"It is odd that we had so much more thriving retail 10 years ago than we do today," he admitted.
Still, for downtown dwellers, places such as dry cleaning establishments, coffee shops and a full-service grocery store are much more important than the kind of spending opportunities represented by a thriving mall, according to Wilkos.
If having a shopping mall within walking distance is a major reason for deciding where to live, Wilkos pointed out, then hundreds would have taken up residence in downtown Columbus when City Center opened in 1989, and that certainly didn't happen.
However, he added, if the rate of growth in downtown housing continues over the next decade, that's almost bound to bring about some rebirth of retail trade.
Likewise, retail analyst Boring predicted that down the road, there will be more stores opening in downtown Columbus, possibly "off-price fashion retail" outlets. Boring expressed some surprise that no office-supply chain has taken the plunge to open a downtown store and predicted that the Macy's department store in City Center could remain "viable."
"I think it still has a chance, especially during the holiday season, to attract the office workers," Boring said.
<b>kparks@thisweeknews.com
Population increase hasn't translated into retail growth
http://www.thisweeknews.com/?story=s...ws-284708.html
Thursday, December 28, 2006
By KEVIN PARKS
ThisWeek Staff Writer Now troubled, City Center Mall reversed a trend when it opened
Around 1950, downtown Columbus boasted 90 retailers and a dozen sit-down restaurants along High Street alone.
In 1989, just prior to the opening of the City Center mall, only 25 retailers and five sit-down eateries remained along High Street, local retail analyst Christopher D. Boring said in a June 2004 report to the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
The opening of an urban shopping mall represented, at least temporarily, a complete reversal of a trend to suburban shopping centers that may well have been started, curiously enough, right here in Columbus.
On the Web site of the local real estate development company Casto, founder Don Monroe Casto Sr. is cheerfully given credit for opening the nation's first regional shopping center.
According to the history section of the firm's Web site, Casto began developing single-family homes in Upper Arlington in the mid-1920s, but had trouble selling them "because there was nowhere nearby to shop ... "
"In 1928 he opened Grandview Avenue Shopping Center, the first shopping center built to serve a trade area beyond its immediate neighborhood," the site states.
Spurred by the success of that more-modest development, Don Casto Sr. went on to open Town and Country in Whitehall in 1949.
'"Immediately after the opening of the first section of Town and Country, we knew that a great industry had been born,' said Casto, who moved swiftly to secure other sites before land values soared. He then constructed and opened 16 more shopping centers in the Midwest during the 1950s.
City Center, a "smash success" when it opened, according to Boring's Metropolitan Club presentation, was utterly unlike its shopping mall brothers and sisters, in that it was in the heart of downtown and not in the suburbs.
City Center today is a far cry from its "smash success" era.
Retail analysts are more than a little disappointed with the performance of the mall's current owner, the Maryland-based Mills Corp., according to Boring. The company had a reputation for innovation, Boring said, and many expected great things when City Center joined the Mills Corp. portfolio of shopping centers.
That hasn't happened, in large part, Boring said, because of an accounting scandal at the firm.
"The bottom line is, nothing is happening at City Center," Boring said. "It's just sitting there."
To some extent, he said, City Center was a "quick fix" that hasn't worked over the long term.
"City Center was built as a suburban mall," Boring said. "It just happened to be downtown."
As longtime downtown resident Michael Wilkos put it, City Center was "downtown in location, not in spirit."
Boring predicted, however, that perhaps some mixed-use development of offices and retail may yet keep City Center alive.
-- Kevin Parks
It seems a peculiar contradiction: At a time when unprecedented numbers of relatively affluent people are setting up residence in downtown Columbus, retail stores in the central business district are fading and fleeing and folding. Or are long gone.
City Center, once the crown jewel of downtown retail, is but a shadow of itself, more meeting space and charter school than merchandising and charge-card shopping.
With Macy's down to a single anchor store from three in its heyday, and with an occupancy rate perhaps below 50 percent, many feel the handwriting is on the wall for the urban mall.
This is in spite of a tax abatement-fueled spate of loft and condo conversion projects that have created about 4,000 new dwelling units, some of them going for handsome prices, in the past four years.
What's up with that?
"We believe that retail is among the most nimble of industries, and that it follows people," offered Michael S. Brown, press secretary to Mayor Michael B. Coleman. "Thus our focus on bringing people back to downtown as a priority of the business plan. In just three years, we've seen the construction or development of 4,000 housing units, and are bringing more than 2,300 jobs downtown. This is a great start and we believe, as the population density and jobs increase, retail will stabilize and grow again.
"That said, we don't necessarily see downtown ever being a retail giant around City Center as it was many years ago."
That's a conclusion with which Christopher D. Boring agrees wholeheartedly.
Boring is the president of Boulevard Strategies. His economic development consulting firm, based in Columbus, specializes in retail development.
"You're just going to have to be patient," Boring said in a recent interview.
He pointed out that 4,000 new dwelling units in downtown hardly represents "critical mass" in terms of attracting shop owners to the area.
If the trend of more and more loft, condo and apartment development continues, Boring anticipates some degree of turnaround for downtown, but doubts it will ever be the "retail giant" it once was.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, the retail analyst indicated.
Michael Wilkos concurred.
"It's only one of multiple reasons people live downtown," said Wilkos, a one-time urban planner who is now director of neighborhood development for United Way of Central Ohio.
Wilkos moved to downtown Columbus 11 years ago and as such, can remember a time when the urban streetscape was dotted with shoe retailers, clothing stores, bookshops and jewelers.
"It is odd that we had so much more thriving retail 10 years ago than we do today," he admitted.
Still, for downtown dwellers, places such as dry cleaning establishments, coffee shops and a full-service grocery store are much more important than the kind of spending opportunities represented by a thriving mall, according to Wilkos.
If having a shopping mall within walking distance is a major reason for deciding where to live, Wilkos pointed out, then hundreds would have taken up residence in downtown Columbus when City Center opened in 1989, and that certainly didn't happen.
However, he added, if the rate of growth in downtown housing continues over the next decade, that's almost bound to bring about some rebirth of retail trade.
Likewise, retail analyst Boring predicted that down the road, there will be more stores opening in downtown Columbus, possibly "off-price fashion retail" outlets. Boring expressed some surprise that no office-supply chain has taken the plunge to open a downtown store and predicted that the Macy's department store in City Center could remain "viable."
"I think it still has a chance, especially during the holiday season, to attract the office workers," Boring said.
<b>kparks@thisweeknews.com