Alderwood mall the latest to become "lifestyle center"
They also buy ground beef and Febreeze.
Welcome to the "lifestyle center," a one-stop-shopping destination planned to feel more like a town square, with its collection of high-end stores, sit-down restaurants and personal services accessible from the sidewalk.
"All day long, I see girlfriends meeting up in the parking lot and having dinner and strolling through the center," said Susie Plummer, general manager for University Village. "It's an enjoyable place to be."
Tomorrow, Alderwood mall in Lynnwood becomes the latest regional mall to embrace the "lifestyle center" concept when it opens The Village and The Terraces.
The additions, totaling 270,000 square feet, include 35 newly opened stores such as REI, Borders Books, Pottery Barn and Eddie Bauer Home. By next year, 15 more stores will open. A Lowes cineplex with 16 screens and 3,800 stadium-style seats is to open in March.
While more lifestyle centers are built across the country — University Village and Redmond Town Center are the two regional examples — many traditional mall developers have added lifestyle components as a way to differentiate themselves from competitors.
In 2000, the region's largest shopping mall, Bellevue Square, added street-front retail with a 110,000-square-foot development anchored by Crate & Barrel.
Westfield Shoppingtown Southcenter plans to break ground on a hybrid lifestyle center in the spring.
Eugene Fram, a marketing-research professor at Rochester Institute of Technology's College of Business, said differentiation is an important way to stay relevant in an era of increasing competition.
In 1970, 5 square feet of retail space existed for every U.S. man, woman and child. That figure has quadrupled to 20 square feet today, Fram said.
"We are clearly overstored and overmalled in the U.S.," he said.
While the lifestyle mall has been around for decades, particularly in warmer climates, centers began to crop up nationwide in the mid-1990s.
Most tend to be under 500,000 square feet, include a grocery store, minianchors instead of large department stores, and feature a mix of more healthful fast food and sit-down restaurants instead of the traditional food court.
They also tend to be near affluent residential neighborhoods and carry a strong mix of high-end apparel, home-goods retailers, and books-and-music stores.
Retail consultants Richard Outcalt and Patricia Johnson said the trend has occurred as aging baby boomers are discovering "real" downtowns, with their eclectic mix of shops, dining, retail and entertainment.
Regional shopping malls have tried to copy that urban vitality to win those customers' dollars. Lifestyle centers have become the "in" malls, shopping centers that residents will happily drive by other malls to reach.
The Corner at Bellevue Square, for instance, was designed to be reminiscent of urban-retail centers such as Newbury Street in Boston, with a bookstore, cafe and restaurants, all accessible from the sidewalk.
Jennifer Leavitt, who heads marketing for Bellevue Square, said the addition has been so well-received that mall owner Kemper Development plans to extend the street-front retail concept to Lincoln Square. The adjacent hotel, condo, office and retail development is scheduled to open next fall.
"One way we know it works is we see people on the sidewalks," Leavitt said. "That's not something you used to see in Bellevue."
Alderwood, Outcalt and Johnson say, has bet millions on the idea of becoming the next "in" mall.
"That prestige and that glow is like anything else that's fashionable: It lasts for a while, and you've got to keep reinventing," Outcalt said.
At 1.4 million square feet, Alderwood, which is owned and operated by Chicago-based General Growth Properties, is now the largest mall in the state. It's also the third-busiest mall in King and Snohomish counties, according to data from Scarborough Research.
Nearly a third of the 1.86 million adults in King and Snohomish counties shopped at Bellevue Square in the past two months, with Northgate and Alderwood malls coming in a close second and third, the data show.
In addition to its open-air retail, Alderwood has added The Terraces, a courtyard complex designed to make people stop while they shop. The winding walkway is lined with shrubs, boulders and a small stream. A 16-screen cineplex is The Terraces' showpiece.
The original mall area has new skylights, fountains and wide walkways.
General manager Jerry Alder said what sets Alderwood apart from other area shopping malls is its combination of restaurants, parking garages, a movie theater, and indoor and outdoor sections. He expects it to become a template for other shopping centers.
"It creates a true hybrid," Alder said. "It's the collection of every possible component you can have in a shopping center."
If lifestyle centers have one natural deterrent in the Northwest, it should be the weather.
Redmond Town Center provides purple umbrellas at every entrance. University Village also provides umbrellas, and it added covered walking areas and awnings to most of the stores.
But both centers say inclement weather does not deter shoppers.
"We like to say that none of us (in Seattle) own umbrellas, which may not be true," Plummer, the UVillage general manager, said on a particularly rainy day. "I'm looking at my windows right now. There's plenty of shoppers, and the parking lot is full."
Monica Soto Ouchi: 206-515-5632 or msoto@seattletimes.com
Times reporter Mike Burnham contributed to this report.
