If you’ve read any article about retail development in Central Ohio in the past decade, then Chris Boring is a name already familiar to you. Chris is the President of Boulevard Strategies, a local market research company that focuses on retail development in the Columbus region.

We recently sat down with Chris to talk about the the history of retail development in Columbus, his thoughts on current projects and proposals, and what he thinks the future can hold for retail development throughout the region.

Walker Evans: Hi, Chris. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us a bit. Can you first give us a little bit of the history of your company and why you got started?

Chris Boring: Sure, I think it really goes back to when I worked at Retail Planning Associates. I joined them in 1987. At the time they were one of the world’s largest store design and retail consulting firms. They have since been swallowed up by other companies, most notably, Fitch.

But for whatever reason, Columbus has always been a hot bed of retail consulting. You can start with several professors from Ohio State that were doing consulting in their free time and their practice grew so much that they decided to do it full time. They started a company called Management Horizons back in the 1960s. Roger Blackwell was one of the founders. That spawned several other spin-offs and the largest one was Retail Planning Associates. I worked there for about seven years. Most of my projects were doing consulting for shopping center owners. Either doing market feasibility studies for new shopping centers, or repositioning strategies for existing shopping centers.

About 1992 or 93, our company received an RFP from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to put together a retail master plan for the Port Authority Bus Terminal. They later told me they had forty responses to their RFP, and they thought ours was the best one. But we didn’t have any government work on our resume, which we thought was an advantage actually. They decided to go with a company based out of Washington DC that focused on the public sector, but they asked us to be on the team, and specifically myself.

The reason I tell you about this is because that’s really what gave me the idea to start Boulevard Strategies. I saw a wide open field in terms of consultants that had retail consulting experience working in the public sector. There’s really a lot of work out there when you think about all of the downtown planning that goes on, commercial corridor planning, economic development strategies… all that sort of thing was still fairly new back in the early 90s.

WE: Are you still doing the same type of work today?

CB: Yeah, pretty much. One thing that’s a little different about my business now-a-days verses the 90s, was about half of my income was really non-Boulevard Strategies work. It was freelance consulting with the bigger outlets, like Retail Planning Associates. I made some really good contacts over in Europe from people I used to work with. I used to travel a lot internationally, and it was always kind of bizarre because I was either working over in Australia or Europe or I was working right here in Columbus, not really much in between. So that’s one thing that’s kind of changed… that work has kind of gone away. And today, I’d have to say the mix of work within Boulevard Strategies has been pretty consistent. It’s about 70% public sector and non-profits and about 30% private developers.

WE: Well, I’ve really wanted to sit down with you to chat for awhile because your name comes up so often. In almost every Dispatch or Business First article - whenever anyone seems to have any kind of development plan for a neighborhood or corridor, you’ve got a few quotes in there. It’s always been on my radar that you were one of the people out there leading the local area in this type of work.

CB: As a small business, it’s free advertising. I do enjoy my relationship with the media. And it’s something I enjoy doing, regardless of the business aspect of it.

WE: Well, I don’t know how much you’ve used twitter, or read about it…

CB: I don’t use it but I’ve read about it. I think everybody’s read about it!

WE: Ha! Well, one of the things I recently noticed is that Tuttle Mall has a twitter account and it kind of made me laugh a little bit when I first spotted it. I mean, Easton has one too, but I didn’t really think too much of it when I saw theirs. But I haven’t been out to Tuttle Mall in years, and I started thinking back to when it opened… I grew up in Marysville and it was a big deal when it opened… I think it was ‘97?

CB: Yes, yes it was.

WE: So it got me thinking… I don’t know too much about national trends, but looking at some other local examples, it seems that the average lifespan of an unrefurbished mall is maybe in the 20-25 year range. Of course, there’s a lot of other factors that can affect that… but in 2009, Tuttle Mall is 12 years old.

CB: Right.

WE: So I’m wondering if you think Tuttle Mall is about to have a mid-life crisis? And I’m curious in another 10-12 years, what Tuttle Mall is going to look like.

CB: I think you’re very observant. I’ve been telling people that Tuttle could be the next mall that lands in trouble. It’s really the last… well, as Les Wexner himself described it, it’s a “garden-variety” mall. They didn’t have to make it anything special back in 1997 because the suburbs were just starved for a retail mall. You didn’t have Polaris or Easton back then.

As I look at it today, malls everywhere are a dying breed. And they are starting to show some vacancy at Tuttle. I think where they are vulnerable is in the lifestyle categories. Easton is probably the best example of a lifestyle center in the whole country, let alone Columbus. Polaris finally admitted that they got it completely wrong - they put in a lifestyle wing in Polaris Fashion Place. There has been some talk of some sites in Union County that may end up being a large-scale lifestyle center, that I think could really steal a lot of thunder from Tuttle. Tuttle is a little bit of an orphan in terms of its ownership. It was one of the malls that Mills sold to Simon. And of course everybody knows what happened to Simon and City Center downtown… well, they still own Tuttle. But it’s their only mall in this market. And I watched Jacobs fall asleep at the wheel back in the 1980s when they needed to respond to new competition, and I just hope Simon doesn’t do the same thing.

WE: It was a very interesting shift in Columbus retail 10 years ago when Tuttle, Easton and Polaris all started opening back to back to back.

CB: Right. We were the only market in the United States to have three malls open in four years. That had a huge impact on all retail development in Columbus - especially City Center.

WE: Yeah, even in the mid-to late 90s, City Center still had a lot of stores…

CB: Absolutely.

WE: Similarly, Northland Mall was still around back then.

CB: Northland was the strongest mall in Columbus, as late as 1989.

WE: Well, I don’t want to sound alarmist or anything, but there’s always a fear of history repeating itself…

CB: Right.

WE: …and I can’t help but wonder what we’re going to see happen with Easton, Polaris and Tuttle in another ten to fifteen, maybe twenty years out. You mentioned the potential Union County development, and there was the Metrovia Project project last year…

CB: Yeah, that was ridiculous.

WE: It was canceled, but I could see something similar happening maybe on the south side of Grove City. Maybe down around Stringtown Road, or maybe even further south than that. Or maybe around Canal Winchester.

CB: Right. I think, had City Center survived, that would have been one of the strategies that I would have pursued: look southward. There are really no large retail concentrations south. Although Stringtown Road is certainly getting there.

WE: Yeah, we drive down there sometimes since it’s so close to Downtown. Anne and I refer to it as “Polaris South” because so much has sprung up there in the last two or three years. What do you think as far as Downtown development goes? There was a public forum presented by the Urban Land Institute last year…

CB: Yes, I was a speaker at it.

WE: Ah, great! I wasn’t able to attend, but a friend of mine went and gave me the rundown and there was a Dispatch article the next day about it that focused on the fact that Frank Kass and Don Casto had spoken a lot about how Downtown redevelopment is still forty years down the road, which upset a lot of people on Columbus Underground.

CB: Yeah.

WE: There was a big debate about it. So I kind of wondered what your thoughts were on it, where you think things stand right now, and what needs to be addressed by city leaders.

CB: Well, I thought that they had a chance to redevelop and reposition City Center in the market to be more of a local shopping center rather than a regional shopping center… but I think the opportunity disappeared when we saw the plans for Grandview Yard. I think that’s going to end up being the retail vehicle that serves the central part of the city.

I think the future for downtown retail, not only in Columbus but in a lot of downtowns across the country, is going to be entrepreneurship. I think we are going to see a surge of retail start up businesses for a number of reasons.

I attended the MORPC luncheon yesterday and the speaker there made a really great point. He said, “the last time that the economy was this bad was back in the 1970s” and if you look back in the 70s, that was a golden age of entrepreneurialism. You know, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Federal Express, Michael Dell, etc. I just see kind of a perfect storm coming up that’s going to encourage a lot of people to start businesses.

One thing that’s happening is that big box stores are getting smaller and more focused in terms of merchandising. They’re not going to carry 27 brands of ketchup anymore, they’re going to carry three. And on the one hand, I think a lot of consumers are going to welcome that. But I also think it’s going to leave a little bit more room for the little guy. You know that little guy that sells that weird type of ketchup… some specialty type of ketchup.

The other thing that’s happening demographically, is that baby boomers are starting to hit their fifties and sixties. For a lot of them, once they lose their jobs, it is really hard to find another job. I saw a statistic the other day that said that for folks who are forty-five and over who lose their job, it takes them twice as long to find a job as it does someone under forty-five. So I think some of them are going to say “You know, I always wanted to start this restaurant”. Or maybe they have a hobby that they’re passionate about and they’re going to go out and do it as a business. The other thing is, the twenty-somethings are more entrepreneurial than they’ve ever been. They actually teach entrepreneurship now at colleges.

So, I think that’s going to have to be the answer to Downtown. I know that they have a number of programs in place to help small businesses get started.

WE: Last year Mayor Coleman announced the Mile on High Initiative. Which I don’t think has been completely finalized, but my understanding is that it’s supposed to be some sort of tool-kit to help people start specific businesses along that stretch of High Street and encourage entrepreneurial growth. But you see some of that type of development happening now, especially along Gay Street… there’s new restaurants opening, a couple of specialty shops.

So I agree with you that it could be the way to go… it’s just a matter of figuring out a way assist and speed up that process. The Arena District is a good example of one giant company coming in and building a massive new urban neighborhood in ten years, but when you look at an area like the Short North, which is more entrepreneurial, it’s taken thirty years to get where it is today.

CB: Right. That is a disadvantage of not having one master developer.

WE: But you do get a more “organic” feeling neighborhood.

CB: That’s true too. That’s kind of the trade off.

WE: Do you see any specific areas, either Downtown or in the region that are under-served? I think there was an article last year you had a quote in about the Hilltop. I know there is a meeting coming up May 6 about it too. What do you think is missing from the Hilltop?

CB: The Hilltop residents, according to a market study I did, spend 55 million dollars a year on dining and entertainment. And they don’t have a single neighborhood restaurant. Not one. Their sister neighborhood to the east, Franklinton, has four sit down restaurants. So, without a doubt I think they could at least support a restaurant if not several. I think that’s true of a lot of the central city neighborhoods. Other than the Short North, I think a lot of them are very under served. What pains me about that, is that you end up with the lowest income people paying the highest prices, because they have a lack of choices. That doesn’t seem right to me.

WE: It’s definitely a difficult situation that seems tricky to remedy. You’d figure that if the demand was there, someone would step up and meet that demand.

CB: Yeah, and a lot of times it is a matter of educating the retailers that there is that kind of demand. They are looking at things like median household income, but for the basics of life, everybody has to eat and buy necessities. There are certain basics out there that need to be served, regardless of the income levels.

WE: Personally, I’ve always thought that the area on the east side of Downtown around Franklin University, Columbus State Community College and the Columbus College of Art and Design has been under served.

CB: That’s another good example. I entirely agree. I think part of the problem is trying to get all of those academic and educational institutions to work with each other. You also have the library, the museum, the hospital, which also has nursing school, there’s Capital Law School there. I agree with you. I think the East Side of downtown is very under served. If you could do something that would appeal to young adults, that would draw from all of those institutions.

WE: You mentioned the other day in an email that you have an event coming up to showcase Columbus to Clevelanders. Could you tell us a bit about that?

CB: Cleveland, like Columbus has more than one special improvement district in their downtown. And Cleve Ricksecker, the Executive Director of the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District and the Discovery Special Improvement District, is hosting a seminar. I think something like 15 or 20 people are coming down from Cleveland. Cleve has arranged a whole day of tours and different speakers to talk about what we’ve done in Columbus and how it might apply to their downtown. I imagine that there will be a followup program to see what we can learn from Cleveland.

WE: What do you think we can learn from our neighboring cities like Cleveland? I know Indianapolis is always looked to as being a peer of Columbus.

CB: Well, one thing that Indianapolis did do, was they came over here and studied City Center before they built their downtown mall and they learned from our mistakes. They didn’t build theirs like a fortress. One of the problems with City Center was when it opened, in 1989, Downtown needed City Center. In 1997, when Tuttle opened, City Center really needed Downtown, but it really couldn’t connect to Downtown because it had these giant walls built up. It wasn’t integrated with the rest of downtown. Indianapolis made their mall a lot of open air and it has a lot better relationship to its surroundings.

WE: I read recently that you would have liked to see City Center retrofitted or some how reintegrated into the cityscape, which I would have liked to see as well. But it sounds like it was either too cost prohibitive, or they didn’t have the right developers lined for it.

CB: I think the biggest reason it couldn’t happen was Grandview Yard. I really do. I was really bullish on the potential to redevelop City Center, up until I heard those plans. I thought the one thing that could work for the central city would be to put in some smaller box retail - Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, things like that. But now those types of uses are going to go over to Grandview Yard.

And as long as we’re talking about it, I actually like the plan they came up with for City Center. What I like about it is that it doesn’t involve the ‘next big thing.’ Everybody uses me as their sounding board for ideas for the City Center and it always reflects some big idea. I never saw that as the answer… giant outlet mall… casino.. take off the roof, fill it with water and put the Santa Maria there…

WE: Ha!

CB: I think what the new plan does is treat that block of downtown like any other block of downtown and it’s going to allow for a whole mosaic of different developers and different ideas. I like the fact that it’s anchored by a park. I think green space is good and we don’t have enough downtown.

WE: Yeah. I was a little skeptical at first when I heard the plan, because I would have liked to have seen the buildings retrofitted somehow. My idea was to take the roof off of the middle, and make it more of an open air walk-through. Then resurface the interior frontage of the building, keep the ground floor retail and the other floors office and residential.

CB: Those were the kinds of plans that were being kicked around before they decided just to tear the whole thing down. That did kind of catch me by surprise because I was always told that it wasn’t an option. Every meeting that I’ve ever been in in talking about it, someone always says, “Why don’t we just tear it down?” and everyone just kind of laughs like, “Don’t we wish we could”!

WE: Yeah it’s still a fairly young building. It’s only 20 years old.

CB: That’s where I part ways with some folks, I don’t have any sentiment for that building. I think it is ugly.

WE: Oh, I agree. I was talking in terms of the materials. There is a lot that could be salvageable there.

CB: Oh, and hopefully they are going to salvage and recycle those materials.

WE: But you do like the new plan? Building the park for now and then waiting for the infill down the road.

CB: I do. I know it is a lot easier to redevelop something once you demolish all of the structure on the site. A lot of times, that can be a big deterrent to people’s vision, to relate to. They can relate to an empty piece of land more than they can to something that is already built.

WE: I was talking to someone the other day who said that they hope the park is really nice and it attracts people downtown. But I’m actually hoping the park isn’t too nice, because if the plan is for developers to come along and build things on top of it, we really don’t need people going out there and chaining themselves to bulldozers to keep the full park intact.

CB: Right.

WE: You could imagine the kind of response we’d see if someone wanted to go and rip up some of Goodale Park…

CB: Or Central Park in New York.

WE: Right.

CB: I think the park is going to be smaller at some point than it is originally. In other words, they are going to chip off pieces of it. That would almost be a good problem to have, if people were that anxious to develop more things downtown.

WE: Exactly.

CB: If we could go back to an earlier topic… I just had another thought.

WE: Sure.

CB: We were talking about the lack of basic retail needs and services in inner city neighborhoods. One thing that I’m very excited about is the local foods movement. There’s a number of initiatives going on where community organizations are putting together their community gardens, bringing in farmer’s markets… I think that could be a way to get good food into the lower income neighborhoods.

WE: Yeah, it’s definitely a huge growing trend.

CB: I would say it is the trend that has surprised me the most. It’s been bigger than I had imagined. For instance, gardening supply sales are up 18% at Home Depot. We’re not talking about 18% of a small number, Home Depot is huge. And it’s not flower gardening, it’s vegetable gardening. It ties together so many different trends. Consumers trying to take control over their lives again. It’s about food safety, they want to know where their food is grown. All part of the whole sustainability movement.

WE: Yes. I stopped in Zettler Hardware downtown to get some vegetables to plant in our backyard last week and they were sold out of a few things. Granted, they order a smaller quantity than Home Depot, but I was still impressed.

CB: I’m not much of a gardener, but I was at a luncheon the other day where Liz Lessner made a good point: you don’t have to be a gardener to be part of the local foods movement. Really all you have to do is eat local foods and you can be a part of it. Or just cook! There’s a lot of different ways to get involved in it.

WE: On a final note, I’ve got one last pressing question that I’m sure is on everyone’s mind: Where does Chris Boring shop?

CB: Ha! Well, I can tell you where I don’t shop… I don’t shop at Walmart. Although I follow Walmart very closely - they are very important. But I’m a dispassionate observer of Walmart. A lot of people expect me to be very anti-Walmart. I’m not. I’m not pro-Walmart either, but you can’t help but admire them in terms of understanding retail fundamentals. They’re actually doing some good things in terms of environmental causes.

WE: Yeah, I read in one of your recent trend reports about some of the green initiatives they are taking and some of the store redevelopments they’ve been doing.

CB: Yeah, and Walmart’s such a leader that everyone else follows them. But where do I shop? My favorite store is Target.

WE: I’m a fan of them as well. I know the idea of a downtown urban Target store has been floated off and on as part of the City Center redevelopment. Personally, I would have loved to see that.

CB: Yeah, that would have been nice.

WE: Well, thanks again for taking the time to talk to us today!

CB: Sure!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:25 am and is filed under Development, Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Related Tags: chris boring • city center • columbus commons • Development • downtown • easton • grandview yard • interviews • polaris fashion place • retail • tuttle mall

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