Town Centers Are Not The Answer To Dying Malls
Why Good On Paper is Not the Same as Good in Place.
In the summer of 2018, the Canadian Asset Management behemoth Brookfield acquired GGP for $15 billion. This move was significant, even for a firm that owns the second most real estate of any company in the world. The need to grow in the eyes of Wall Street investors was clear, as markets demand growth above all other considerations. But the assets? Why acquire 125 malls? As the most derided real estate class of the last decade, their future looked even worse than its troubled past.
Brookfield’s answer turned many heads. Some, in admiration of their ambitious bet that an out of favor portfolio at a relatively low valuation could yield significant upside. Others, myself included, struggled to understand what projections they were looking at. The Canadians proposed redeveloping nearly 100 of their new malls, to varying extents. While I imagine motions of approval were nodded in the direction of malls receiving cosmetic renovations, the furious excitement was reserved for the words on the tip of every onlooker’s tongue: Town Center. It was said with a self-satisfied air from those developers, managers & investors who had spent the past decades overseeing the demise of the retail landscape. It was, if you will, a new hope. If this Medium post isn’t yet conveying the assuredness of those backing these proposals, allow me one more chance. ~Town Centers~. Did you feel the power of the word the second time?
Brookfield’s move signaled the largest mainstream adoption of the Town Center concept, one that promised to bring vibrancy to a world that sorely needed it. In the past several years, they have become de rigeur for mall redevelopment proposals. Ellen Dunham-Jones estimates that of the 1,500 enclosed malls that have been built in the US since 1956, 131 have already been, or are in the process of being converted into Town Centers. In the broader “Lifestyle Center” category which includes Town Centers (doesn’t the name just inspire livelihood!), ICSC estimated that as of January 2017 491 existed across nearly 165,000,000 sf, for an average center size of 335,852 sf. Much as I defer to Dunham-Jones on nearly all matters sprawl redevelopment, a cursory google search proves not-so-empirically that approximately every mall is pursuing a town center model, not just 131.
On paper, they make sense. Mixed-use, multi-family, internally walkable, experiential. Millennial. All of the buzzwords are there. But good on paper must translate to good in place.
On its surface, Boca Raton’s Mizner Park looks like an urbanist’s dream. Opened in 1989, it was one of the country’s first modern Lifestyle Centers; a redevelopment of the 1974 Boca Mall that closed in 1982. With gradual improvements made over the last 30 years, the result looks like it has been there for over a century.
But zoom out from what from what in one well-angled photograph looks to be the epitome of urbanity, and Mizner Park reveals itself as being as reliant on cars as the mall it replaced. Similarly to other lauded redevelopments, it doesn’t address the fundamental geographic issue of the malls they replaced: these sites were designed to only be accessible by car.
This is theme park urbanism. There is no sense of place, nor connection to its surroundings. Mizner Park is bordered by 5 parking garages, two highways, and a maze of single family homes. I’m a bit surprised to not see a gate charging admission. Visitors or residents have to get into a car to go to Mizner, or leave to go anywhere outside of the development. That signals what type of person can live here. Namely, one who can afford a car and prefers shopping at Kendra Scott & LF. To hit the nail more on the head, the Google Image that pops up beneath ECJ Luxe Collection features two Bugatti’s outside of the store’s front door.
True town centers have the affordability and flexibility in transportation options that allow for people from any walk of life to live, work or enjoy all that it has to offer. While Mizner Park has movie theaters, art museums, shops, restaurants and some apartments, there is no grocery store. This is a development geared towards luxury consumption and entertainment, not every day life, for every day people. If the supposed center of a town cannot even provide for daily provisions, can it truly be called a center of anything? Shame on us if we are fooled into thinking this is an appropriate heart of a community.
A critical reader may point out that I’m being overly harsh on an 80’s vintage redevelopment. We’ve learned much since then, and even if there isn’t a grocery store and a car is requisite, it’s still better than the former use. Fair enough, let’s look to a newer precedent.
Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado is less than 10 miles from downtown Denver. It’s widely regarded as one of the best town centers in the country and it has a grocery store (Whole Foods, for those hungry or curious). There’s housing, space dedicated for programming and community events, and pretty much anything else a discerning resident or visitor could hope for in a town center. On paper.
In place, however, Belmar fares only slightly better than Mizner Park. Yes, there’s more than one street to walk along. Yes, there’s far more housing and retail options for a broad range of income groups. Yes, the materiality is better than the faux-stone and plaster found adorning most Lifestyle Centers, movie theaters and malls. In this town center, one can experience A Touch of Colorado (the store, located at 7287 W Alaska Dr, Lakewood, CO 80226).
Like it’s east coast cousin, however, Belmar is flanked by parking garages and parking lots, which create massive voids of dead space that are inadvisable to walk by in the light of day, to say nothing of the lack of security one feels at night. What’s worse, the vestiges of the mall it replaced in 2004 (Villa Italia) lend more identity to the area than its neatly lined street trees and 3-over-one apartments. Big Boxes litter the site with erstwhile mall tenants: Target, Nordstrom Rack, Bath & Body Works, Best Buy, P.F. Changs, DSW, Sephora, etc., etc., etc. No amount of Danish string street lights can change its DNA, despite the pleas from insufferable marketing materials to make one think otherwise.
Below, I’ve blocked out the land uses of Belmar. Most of the site is dominated by red, yellow and green: parking, parking, and big boxes. While residential takes up its fair share of land, and is tactfully shielded from major roadways by parking and boxes, all one needs to do is walk out their front door to realize they’re living on the undead remains of Villa Italia. Doubtless, Belmar accomplishes what many other Lifestyle Centers do not: the park in the south central portion of the site looks downright delightful. But, we should’t accept compromises in the places we live. We cannot celebrate places that on their surface appear better than what they replaced, but in reality operate on the same level.
Town Centers are malls of a different name. They’re dominated by national chains, and relegated to a Stockholm Syndrome-like dependence on the highways that border them. They feed off of the primacy of funneled cars that hold them back from becoming truly special places. Through decades of policy decisions that shaped our current development patterns, we have chosen pollution, danger, fractured social landscapes, and general segregation of use & class over meaningful people-oriented places. These outcomes are pre-determined. Malls were the downtowns of their day for many suburban communities, because there was no other option. If we continue to build in this pattern, we will be failing to learn from the lessons malls taught in the latter half of the 20th century. Instead of driving to a sea of parking to experience life inside of an enclosed alternate reality. we’ll be removing the roof of the structure in exchange for living in the parking lots we used to drive to.
Top down, several hundred million dollar developments can never replicate the magic and opportunity of a proper downtown. A proper center is one created by many hands over decades of organic and incremental growth, responding to the intimate needs of their neighbors and newcomers in a way that only those who have a vested interest in their place beyond financial returns can do. In so doing, they come together to create a community. It builds upon its history and traditions. Community cannot be contrived. Authenticity, while often employed as a crude marketing device or adjective by travel vloggers, is the result of this hard and meandering work.
Troublingly, Town Centers decide who can participate in a community, and who cannot. This extends beyond the type of product that gets built, which pre-screens what kind of person can live or shop there. One must never forget that these developments are private places, subject to the whims of their often out-of-town, institutional ownership teams. In proper downtowns, communities can organize a protest without fear of retribution, backed by a constitutionally endowed right to freedom of assembly. If the singular ownership entity of a Town Center does not agree with the message of a given protest, they can easily hire private security to usher people off of their well manicured parks & squares. Is this the type of place we want?
Brookfield signaled to a notoriously slow-footed industry that it was okay to think outside the (big) box they had placed themselves into decades before. Mall operators, in a spirit unique to their institution, have copy & pasted this concept without concern of context, care of detail, or awareness of the damage their developments further; precisely what they did 60 years ago.
There will of course be some centers that do succeed, but this should not be confused with the overall success of the asset class. Town Centers located in affluent communities or proximate to robust public transportation (or likely both), will succeed in spite of the business model, just as select malls succeed today. For less well located mall redevelopments, the apartment buildings will struggle to have lasting occupancy, the retail spaces will struggle to gain footholds, and many Town Centers in a generation to two will resemble the dying malls of today. If the 21st century has thus far proven anything to us urbanists, it is that place matters. Ignoring this fact will lead to disastrous investment decisions (both those made and unmade), environmental degradation, and increasing fragility in our social ecosystems.
Let the ill sited malls return to the Earth. We must learn from our mistakes. We must create places alongside other community members that privilege access, affordability, and opportunity to as broad a group of people as possible. Not only is this the ethical choice, but in the long run it’s proven to be the more profitable choice as well. Whether they’re the malls of yesteryear or the Town Centers of today, top down developments reliant on one form of transportation for a specific group of people are doomed to short lives. And, for what it’s worth, these short lives are not particularly well lived.
