As Shopping Parking Lots Get Emptier, Owners Are Replacing Them With Condos

[M II A II R II K]

Home Sweet Mall


January 25th, 2018

By JOHN LORINC

Read More: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real...ticle37704089/

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Thanks to the e-commerce-induced demise of major retail chains, such as Sears and Toys "R" Us, the closing of hundreds of malls across North America has triggered a push by municipal planners to find ways to recycle these forlorn asphalt islands.

- While malls in the Greater Toronto Area haven't faced the same kind of pressure, owners are nonetheless thinking hard about future shopping trends. Across Toronto, the owners of at several large shopping centres, including Yorkdale, are pressing ahead with transformative rezoning/development applications that aim to add high-rise residential, office and entertainment projects onto the edges of malls that have functioned for years as parking lots.

- Over the next several years, thousands of Toronto condo owners and tenants will begin calling the mall home. This move marks a significant shift in residential development patterns for Toronto – one that poses new planning and traffic challenges about how to create genuinely complete neighbourhoods equipped with public spaces and community amenities, such as day care centres or even schools, on land that's long been zoned and operated exclusively for shopping.

- Some are simply tabula rasa undertakings that involve the total demolition of older shopping malls. With the Galleria Mall, at Dufferin and Dupont, developer Elad Canada is rebuilding the entire property and will then sell the apartments. — With others, the owners, typically the property management divisions of large pension funds, want to intensify their holdings with non-retail uses as a hedge against shifts in the way people shop and travel.

- The dynamics at Yorkdale are far more complicated. According to mall general manager Claire Santamaria, Oxford Properties envisions a 20-year transformation that will involve high-rise condos, a hotel and office buildings. — It is expected to become one of major nodes of new high-density development in Toronto over the next two decades, city planners say.

- The condo and office towers proposed for the internal portions of Yorkdale require street addresses and public spaces that meet the city's standards for public realm design, as well as emergency and municipal services. — Yorkdale's plan envisions the creation of so-called "privately owned public spaces," landscaping and bike paths and potentially shuttle bus loops within an intensified remake of Yorkdale.

- In the past, Ontario cities have lost such showdowns with the institutional owners of other major malls, including Square One Mississauga and Scarborough Town Centre, a suburban Toronto mall also managed by Oxford. Efforts to put public realm [improvements] through Square One have been going on for 40 years.

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Galleria






Bayview Village

[downtownpdx]

This is happening at Lloyd Center mall, fairly centrally located in Portland - Sears is closing, and being replaced with a movie theater, while the parking lot will become apartments. The original movie theater across the street will be demolished, and along with its acres of parking be redeveloped into ... apartments! It's nice too see the infill, although I don't know how readily this kind of redevelopment would happen in more suburban settings.

[shadowbat2]

Same thing is being proposed for the King of Prussia mall outside Philadelphia, replacing the recently closed JC Penney and its immediate parking lots:
http://www.phillyvoice.com/king-of-p...-to-call-home/

Despite the entrenchment of online shopping, the King of Prussia Mall figures to remain a shopping destination throughout the Delaware Valley for years to come. Still, rather than replace JCPenney with another distressed retailer, Simon president and COO Rick Sokolov told Bloomberg believes the property can be utilized as a suburban version of Manhattan's Hudson Yards:

Sokolov declined to divulge details of the proposed plan for the mall. On a conference call with analysts in October, CEO Simon said the project could include a hotel, apartments and office space, and had the potential to increase the property’s value from $2 billion to more than $3 billion.

....and just yesterday news broke of the JC Penney at Garden State Plaza (outside NYC) will be closing:
https://www.northjersey.com/story/mo...10/1068178001/

J.C. Penney has been closing stores and trying to reinvent itself in recent years. It previously announced it was closing 140 stores this year, but the Paramus store was not on that list. The store closing at Garden State Plaza is believed by real estate insiders to have been prompted by redevelopment plans at the mall, rather than Penney's ongoing cutbacks.

Mall officials could not immediately be reached for comment. They have hinted in recent months, however, that they will be announcing major redevelopment plans this year.

Nearby Paramus Park mall may also feature housing etc. around it:

https://www.northjersey.com/story/ne...ive/823407001/

Because Paramus Park has stayed much the same for 43 years, it could be the first Paramus mall to undergo radical change that would position it for the live-work-play future predicted for shopping centers. The Paramus master plan now allows the mall to propose multi-family housing or other new uses for the property. Some mall watchers expect Paramus Park to reinvent the suburban mall the same way it did when it first opened.

[hauntedheadnc]

Coming soon to a mall near you!

This sort of thing has filtered out into the hinterlands, because they're planning to redevelop my own city's mall in the same way:


Source.

The plan right now is to demolish the Sears store, leave the rest of the mall intact, and replace Sears with more shops, a movie theater, and about 200 apartments.

[suburbanite]

It`s pretty much a must for institutional investors who are sitting on a ticking time bomb of retail assets. I think it`s going to be a pretty common theme (at least in Toronto where I`m most familiar with) over the next decade.

Tesco has already started a similar process in London where they essentially sell the air rights above some of their more desirable locations for residential development. It has the double benefit of not only generating cash from unused retail space, but it adds a significant customer base on top of your asset that may end up doing upwards of 40% of their miscellaneous shopping downstairs.

[M II A II R II K]

And with more people living by the mall, the more people are likely to shop there.

[mhays]

Another 1,000 residents (for example) is infinitesimal compared to a regional mall's customer base.

The thinking is more about taking advantage of land values. And it's about the allure of mixed-use spaces. And it's about ensuring that even if the mall goes, the location remains highly valuable.

[dave8721]

There is a proposal to demolish half of Sunset Place south of Miami (down the street from UM) and replace it with a apartment tower and hotel. This was an "urban" mall to begin with and had no surface lots. Notoriously NIMBY South Miami has been reluctant due to the height of the towers:

http://somimag.com/sunset-place-on-the-horizon/

[dave8721]

And today Dadeland Mall, SW of Miami just proposed putting a hotel on one its last remaining surface lots.
https://www.bizjournals.com/southflo...-dadeland.html

[M II A II R II K]

This also has the added benefit of being subjected to less seas of asphalt.

[Urban Zombie]

Perhaps these are the answer to saving the shopping mall crisis in Bari!

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

And with more people living by the mall, the more people are likely to shop there.

Yep, I live next to an urban mall in downtown Norfolk and I visit the mall way more than I would if I didnt live two blocks away. I bought a book on the run two days ago, some shoes about three weeks ago. If it wasnt so close, Id just buy online.

[chris08876]

It's always satisfying when a parking lot parcel is slated for a high rise condo/rental tower. Office is even better, with limited parking.

One city that I'd like to highlight that has made tremendous gains in the OP's respect is Houston. Check out 1970/80's aerial shots of the CBD compared to now. Big gains in removing those parking lot eyesores, and replacing them with gleaming new towers.

Out in the burbs, and speaking in general, townhouses are a nice alternative to decaying and bankrupt strip-malls. In the range of 3-4 floors, but at times, you may see 5-6 floor structures, wide in their nature.

Parking lots really do damage to the aesthetics of a city street. The horrible setbacks, and general non-conformity with the surroundings. Its especially a sad case when that parking lot is in a zoning section that supports over a mil-sq ft. Miami has a few of those, but fortunately, some of those parcels are in the works to be developed.