[RTWAP]

Originally Posted by OTSkyline

Personally, I think they did a great job at the SAWGRASS MILLS OUTLETS in Sunrise, Florida (Fort-Lauderdale).. For anyone who's been there, yes they have that enormous jumbo-mall with the great lands of parking but I love how they added the whole outlet stores around! Great architecture, nicely executed and it really has a nice pedestrian feel where you park your car and walk all around the little pedestrian streets and shop and have coffee/lunch/dinner on outside patios. Hopefully they can do something like this with the Tanger Outlets.. Unfortunetly, trainyards was lost and def. does not have this field since they included the parking right in the center of it all and the stores around (so you have to walk 10min through a sea of parking to reach anything), or be a lazy a** and actually drive from store-2-store...

Yup. I hate the Trainyards. I drove around there once for 5 minutes trying to find a Walmart that I knew was there.

There are more than a few of those new 'town center' style malls in the states. They really started popping up regularly about 10 years ago. Have a sea of parking around a few blocks of stores, with an open space in the middle.

https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ll...06394&t=h&z=18

It's so comfortable to just park and then walk around. I remember reading that sales/sqft were much higher. In conventional big box strip malls each additional store you visit is taking you that much farther from your car. In a this newer format you can walk by 20 or 30 stores and still be a few minutes from your car.

EDIT: Here's another one I'm familiar with, in Huntsville AL. They built two large ponds and a bridge, and a pedestrian street. And they built multi-level parking to hide the size of the parking lots. It's a very comfortable place to go walking.

https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ll...06394&t=h&z=18

p.s. I miss PF Chang's.