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The Dispatch wrote
Retailers shunning Downtown
Monday, April 7, 2008
BY MIKE PRAMIK
During a forum last week presented by the local chapter of the Urban Land Institute, developers Don Casto and Frank Kass painted a bleak picture of Downtown’s retail fortunes.
What has happened to the city’s Downtown retail base is apparent but not easily fixed, the developers say. As the city ponders what to do with its retail crypt called Columbus City Center, those whose job is to recruit retailers say they can’t bring them Downtown.
Traditional retailers long ago fled to the suburbs, first to strip centers, then to malls and power centers, and most recently to lifestyle centers. They’re there for the foreseeable future.
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They could make City Center so awesome……there are mor people living in close proximity to the city center than ever before. Anchor it with Target, indoor skate park, climbing gym, indoor driving range, other cool shops like LULULEMON, Quicksilver, Lucy, Gart Brothers. Alot of the problem had to do with the mall management and marketing. They probably had a reduced budget with so few tenants and went down the slippery slope.
SERIOUSLY, if all of these developer guys would donate money and or tenants for one year to get it back on its feet, it would be awesome again. Casto has a relationship with DSW and Filene’s, why not put that into City Center.
They could definitely make it awesome, I just don’t think of Quicksilver when I think of cool. I think their run ended around the same time as stussy, mossimo, hobe, and all those other surf type brands, which was 1994. Or it could be I am just severely out of touch with what is cool. :lol:
I thought the comment in the article that it’s going to take 40 years was a very interesting one. I’m not quite sure if I agree with that timeline, but it’s a good perspective on what everyone wants to be a quick and easy fix for our downtown woes.
I’d like to see something a bit more organic and localized come out of a revamped downtown. Not to say that it won’t take the help of the city or development dollars, but I don’t just want the City Center to become Easton II. I’d rather see it become The Short North II.
There’s actually quite a bit of cheap retail space available downtown compared to what people pay for at Easton or Polaris. Is a large anchor what’s needed to attract people back downtown, or will people return if we give them a lot of little reasons (a la the Short North)? If the latter will work, how can the city encourage and assist small businesses and entrepreneurs to set up shop downtown?
Was anyone suprised to read that they are trying to find new tenants instead of a full-scale redevelopment? That’s disappointing. On the timeline of 40 years– if gas prices rise to insane levels– 5 years! :D
+1
I think it would HAVE to be another sort of Short North. There’s already a target down the road. They aren’t going to open another up that closely. Best Buy would be great, but Nationwide’s trying to get them to be their largest anchor-type store for Grandview Yard. And Wal-Mart? No way in hell.
I just don’t see any large retailers taking the risk of a) cannibalizing their own store sales by opening up another location so close to their other stores or b) shutting down a proven, successful store and reopening it in a shaky area.
The only retail we could have there, in my mind, would be a mix of:
1. Local shops
2. Destination restaurants/venues/stores not seen anywhere in central Ohio
3. Convenience stores for office workers and residents
And by doing that, they’d be competing with Grandview Yard.
1. Local shops
2. Destination restaurants/venues/stores not seen anywhere in central Ohio
3. Convenience stores for office workers and residents
And by doing that, they’d be competing with Grandview Yard.
I think there’s also room for destination chains stores not found in central Ohio that have a very targeted draw. The American Apparel store in the Short North or the new Puma store at Easton come to mind as examples. I think a Diesel store could do well as one of those types of shops downtown with a younger demographic willing to venture downtown to shop there.
As for Grandview Yard though, it’s going to be just as much competition for retailers downtown as Easton or Polaris or the next big suburban shopping center.
What we need to do is tap into the osu community with shopping as they are a huge community presence not far from downtown, and with a streetcar they would be even more likely to venture downtown to shop. College students, however, traditionally dont have much money. So what needs to be done is provide affordable shopping that would cater to students as well as the rest of the metro area. I would propose any of these major anchors:
1. off 5th ave. by saks
2. neimans last call
3. nordstrom off the rack
4. filenes
5. tj maxx
Three of those we have nowhere in the city, and I do not believe we have a nordstoms nor a neimans outlet in the entire state with the closest being detroit.
While I never expected there to be a quick fix to the city center problem, this article does raise some concerns. I found it a bit troubling to read that Nationwide Realty was no longer working on a master plan for redevelopment.
One of the key factors that made me optomistic about City Center’s future is that they seemed to be going into it with the idea that something major and coordinated needed to happen with the property. Now this news makes it sound like more of the same.
Perhaps in the last few years Simon didn’t do a great job of attracting stores and shoppers, but I don’t see that having a more active ownership pursing the same strategy, no matter how much more aggressively, is going to change things.
Interesting article, I do see this will take a long time. I’m sure you’ve seen my two cents on City Center already and if not here it is, tear it down. The physical City Center building is dead and should be let go. Build mix use retail/apartment/condo, etc, etc. Maybe tie it in with the Scioto Mile. They could integrate parkspace with all of this. A space for art or a large scale art installation. Simple Studios could set up shop in one of those buildings across the street on High. Maybe Artspace can buy that building they’re looking at across the street and, combined, these two organizations can bring some much-needed creativity. Maybe the Columbus Museum of Art could open a new division, the Columbus Museum of Modern/Industrial Art and put it down there. This large blank hole in the middle of our downtown has so much potential, it’s a blank canvas.
Quicksilver is making a huge comeback. Downtown Seattle has a very cool shop where they sell clothing for 7 year olds up to adult. A very cool shop. Track and Trail would be cool to have and an REI downtown would just rock my entire world!!!
I’m also in favor of City Center being torn down and something new put up on its site, but if they do decide to try to renovate and “repurpose” the existing structure, here’s something cool they could do with part of it…an indoor park/public garden like Devonian Gardens in Calgary:
http://www.calgary.ca/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_0_780_237_0_43/http%3B/content.calgary.ca/CCA/City+Hall/Business+Units/Parks/Special+Spaces/Devonian+Gardens/Devonian+Gardens.htm
Granted, Calgary has a much harsher climate than Central Ohio, so there might not be as much need for an indoor park, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea when I saw it last month. I meant to post about it sooner, but forgot until I saw this thread.
Tearing a big building like that down costs a lot of money, especially if something else is going to replace it.
The structure is only 20 years old. It’s not in bad shape and could be easily converted for a new use.
Uh… We already have one of those. :oops:
Quicksilver is making a huge comeback. Downtown Seattle has a very cool shop where they sell clothing for 7 year olds up to adult. A very cool shop. Track and Trail would be cool to have and an REI downtown would just rock my entire world!!!
What about a Patagonia then?
The big money development playerz in the article forgot to include the effects of peak oil in thier analysis turning that 40 years into an ASAP. Good luck to Easton. Well it still has a future in some multi-nucleaic urban model.
I work in a building connected to City Center. I use this mall to walk through on my way to work and when there were stores there, I use to love to shop there on my lunch break. I can also remember having so many choices for lunch like Max & Ermas, Spinickers, Steak Escape, Wendys, etc. So I want some kind of developement or redevelopment more than most people do.
But the reality of it all is any plan for redevelopement right now is a victim of bad timing. We have such a terrible economy, not just locally but on a national scale. The big retail store chains are too nervous and probably see it as too risky to move a new store in a mall most people think is already closed.
I don’t agree that it would take 40 years to redevelop downtown. I think if the economy were to take off like it did in the 90′s, I can see it taking 5-10 years. I remember reading that Denver’s downtown redevelopment was helped along considerably because of the economic boom of the 90s. The same could happen here.
Tearing a big building like that down costs a lot of money, especially if something else is going to replace it.
The structure is only 20 years old. It’s not in bad shape and could be easily converted for a new use.
True, it will be expensive to tear it down, but I think it’s worth it. Just start with a clean slate.
We don’t want another Dixie Square Mall on our hands. This mall, near my hometown outside of Chicago, was only open 13 years, and has been sitting empty since 1979. I doubt City Center will ever come to this, though. http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/dixie_square_mall.html
I’ve got it: open up the whole thing for a paintball war zone. Sort of a real-life Rainbow Six game.
j/k… sort of. But, if stores aren’t willing to come in, would it be worthwhile to think of the space for something other than retail?
Just off the top of my head, but what if we were able to turn it into a film studio, for example? Not only could mall shots be done without having to worry about stores’ permissions, but it would be easy to turn places like Macy’s and Jacobsen’s into sound stages. Or, for smaller/local TV spots and the like, there are plenty of large enough – and different enough – spaces.
Yeah, that would never happen, but, again, is there anything else the space could be used for besides trying to lure big box stores that have no interest in coming?
Sticking with retail, what if there was a smaller big box store we could use as an anchor?
Like… CB2? Or West End?
I love me some CB2… I will travel to Chicago just to go to one of their only three stores (2 in Chicago, 1 in SoHo. I think they’re opening one in San Fran soon.)
And what if we totally went the opposite spectrum of “low cost, attract everyone” mentality and did nothing but very high end (more than Polaris) shops? Think Caesar’s Forum Shops in Vegas or the Ventian’s shops… Those always attract buyers and gawkers.
How about a giant flea market, or perhaps an indoor drive-in theater and waterpark!