Imagine a double-decker merry-go-round revolving in the center of a large shopping mall. Calliope music fills the air, and shoppers are invigorated by the carnival atmosphere.
That`s one of the ways developer Ken Tucker envisions shopping in the year 2000. Tucker, president of the Northbrook-based Tucker Cos., predicts that developers will need to become increasingly creative to attract shoppers. Combining theme parks and shopping centers under one roof represents one such strategy.
A life-long resident of the Chicago area, Tucker has been a commercial real estate developer for 34 years, specializing in shopping centers for the last 12 years. He is a past president of the International Council of Shopping Centers.
High land costs will encourage developers of future shopping centers to use land more intensively, Tucker predicted: ”You`re going to see more vertical development in the suburbs-multi-level buildings and parking decks.” As the year 2000 approaches, older shopping centers will need to be redesigned both inside and out to keep pace with the newer competition, he said.
One of the Tucker Cos.` shopping centers, the Shops on Elm Place in north suburban Highland Park, illustrates how suburban shopping centers are evolving.
While most Chicago area markets are saturated with large regional malls, there remains much opportunity for smaller projects serving individual neighbohoods or communities, he said.
The Shops on Elm Place features mixed-use development and the vertical growth trend. Its two-story structures differ from the one-level strip center that might have been built a decade or two ago.
The 35,000-square-foot center, completed by the Tucker Cos. last spring and sold in July, includes 12 specialty stores, a restaurant and movie theater as well as office space. The center, designed by a residential architect, blends in with the surrounding area.
The Crossroads Center, on Skokie Boulevard just north of Lake Cook Road, which Tucker can see from the window of his Northbrook office, is an example of the way shopping centers can be renovated to bring them into the 21st Century.
Five years ago the Tucker Cos. contracted to rehab the strip center. As part of the facelift, a building was removed so that parking was increased and the architecture was upgraded to a high-tech, black-white-and-red look, and Tucker advised the owners how to change the tenant mix.
”The renovation made Crossroads into a healthy, vibrant shopping center,” Tucker said.
Lawrence Martin, vice president for the MacArthur Foundation, which owns Crossroads, said his firm`s return on investment increased by 50 percent after the renovation.
”It was like night and day,” Martin said. ”Before, Crossroads was just a rundown strip shopping center. But after renovation we were able to attract more shoppers and better merchants, as well as take advantage of the spillover from nearby Northbrook Court.”
Americans are a people who spend a lot of time shopping. The International Council of Shopping Centers reports that next to the home and the workplace, an adult spends more time on the average in shopping centers than anywhere else.
Fifty-four percent of all nonautomotive shopping in 1987 was done at shopping centers, for a total sales bill of $584 billion, according to the shopping center council.
But the competition between shopping centers is getting fiercer each year as more centers are popping up along the urban and suburban landscapes and as new lifestyles leave individuals with less time to shop.
When the first large regional shopping malls opened in the Chicago area in the 1970s, it was not uncommon for women and teenagers to spend the day at the mall, Tucker noted.
But by the close of the 1980s and the increase of working women, shoppers no longer stay all day at a single center.
”People have more demands on their time these days, so we have to find ways of drawing shoppers to the centers, and of keeping them there longer,”
Tucker said.
Combining shopping malls with amusement parks is one such strategy, according to Tucker, whose firm is looking into developing such a combination in the northwest suburbs.
While declining to give the specific location, Tucker said he hopes to announce the project within 60 days. The mixed-use development could feature high-tech style architecture and pedestrian walkways connecting the mall and amusement center with a 400-room hotel and a large office building. The amusement park might include a miniature golf course, bumper car rides and a merry-go-round, he said.
”It would be a little like taking Old Orchard Shopping Center (in north suburban Skokie) and dropping an amusement park in the middle of it.”
A spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers supported Tucker`s prediction about amusement-shopping malls.
”You`re going to see more entertainment components at shopping centers in the future,” said Don Pendley, director of public relations for the shopping center council.
Because of the proliferation of regional shopping malls, developers of new large-scale projects are eager to establish an identity for their particular mall, Pendley said.
In 1975, an amusement-shopping mall known as Old Chicago opened in southwest suburban Bolingbrook. Numerous stores surrounded the roller-coaster and other amusement park rides.
One Chicagoan commented: ”You had to walk through the stores to get to the rides, but I never stopped to buy anything.”
The venture underwent a court-approved financial reorganization in 1976, reopened in `78, closed in `80, was boarded up in `81 and wrecked in `86.
Tucker said it is important that a theme park/shopping center have the right location and mix of stores as well as proper management.
”If it serves the community, it can be successful.”
Tucker admitted, however, that the relationship between amusements and retail sales is not a sure thing.
”We don`t know for sure that people who come to the amusement park will go shopping afterwards. But if people see stores they like, it`s likely they`ll return to shop at a later date.”
According to Tucker, ”The Old Chicago project was primarily an amusement park, with the stores being secondary. The merchandise was cutesy, not substantial department-store quality.
”The West Edmonton Mall (in Alberta, Canada), on the other hand, is a very fine shopping mall,” Tucker said. ”If you took the amusement away, the shopping mall could stand on its own.”
The Canadian mall, opened in 1981, was the first successful combination of amusement park and shopping mall, Pendley said. It has more than 5 million square feet and features 838 stores, several hotels and a Disneyland-like theme park, all under one roof.
”It`s the largest shopping mall on the North American continent, and possibly the world,” Pendley said. ”It includes a full-size zoo, a manmade lake, a large swimming pool and a life-size model of Columbus` ship, the Santa Maria.”
The West Edmonton Mall developer, the Triple Five Corp., in December announced plans to build an even bigger amusement mall in the Soviet Union. A joint venture with the city of Moscow, the proposed $1.5 billion, 9 million-square-foot indoor development would include stores, amusements, hotels and offices.
In the United States, Triple Five Corp. is planning a joint venture with the Indianapolis-based company of Melvin Simon & Associates Inc. to build a 2.7 million-square-foot mall in Bloomington, Minn., a southwest suburb of Minneapolis. Groundbreaking on the project, the Mall of America, is scheduled for the spring, with opening set for spring of 1992.
At the core of the mall will be a family entertainment center, designed by Knott`s Berry Farm of California, which uses the Peanuts cartoon characters in its amusement parks.
Rimming the entertainment center will be 16 movie theaters, 70,000 square feet devoted to restaurants and nightclubs, plus more than 800 stores, including a 219,000-square-foot Bloomingdale`s, a 200,000-square-foot Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store and a 250,000-square-foot Nordstrom`s, a department store chain based in Seattle, Washington.
”We call this concept the megamall,” said Mark Craft, spokesman for Melvin Simon & Associates.
”Whereas the regional malls draw shoppers from a 20- or 30-mile radius, the megamall will have a trade area reaching 200 miles in every direction.
The two-income family is creating much of the demand for such megamalls, Craft said.
”There`s a refocus on the family, and the public wants to buy experiences as well as goods and services. At a megamall the parents might shop while the children are cared for by babysitters, and then the whole family might reunite to enjoy the rides.”
But even without amusement parks, shopping centers of the future are likely to offer more than shopping. Sit-down restaurants, food courts and movie theaters have become increasingly popular in the last few years, according to both Tucker and Pendley.
”Fifteen years ago, when so many regional shopping malls were being built, the idea was to make them as stark as possible so people could get in and out quickly, and parking spaces would turn over rapidly,” Pendley said.
”Today that thinking has done a 180-degree turn. Shopping malls have benches and places to eat so that when shoppers tire, they will stay in the mall and continue shopping after they`ve rested.”
”With malls and smaller strip centers,” Tucker said, ”it`s good to set them up so that you can have dinner, see a movie and maybe window shop afterwards, and only have to park your car once.”
One Schaumburg Place, one of Tucker`s planned developments in the northwest suburbs, is designed to be a one-stop mixed-use project. Scheduled to open in 1990, it will include an office building and hotel as well as stores.
”You could stay there for several days without leaving,” Tucker said, laughing.
”If you worked there, you could shop, dine and see a movie after work. Then you could check into the hotel and go back to work the next morning.
”You`re going to see much more intensive use of land especially with large shopping centers,” Tucker said.
”For one thing, there`s less available land to build on, and for another, it`s more efficient to build one set of sewer and water lines for retail, office and hotel use.”
While the big centers make headlines, most of the new construction is in smaller centers. Pendley said that 85 percent of new shopping centers built in the last two years have been the smaller variety.
”As the market becomes saturated with regional malls, there remains an opportunity for smaller centers to carve out their own niches,” Pendley said. The new smaller centers often feature stores that present a consistent image, such as fashion, upscale or discount, he said.
One type of newer small-scale center is a ”power center,” designed to appeal to the shopper looking for value, low price and convenience by offering discount or off-price merchandise in each store.
”This is the new buzzword in the industry,” Tucker said.
The Commons of Chicago Ridge, a community shopping center developed by the Tucker Cos. in southwest suburban Chicago Ridge, qualifies as a power center because it has both a T.J. Maxx and Marshall`s off-price stores, as well a Phar-Mor discount drug store and a six-screen movie theater.
Traffic is the biggest problem with intensive development.
”We are spending more and more time and money planning ways to deal with traffic congestion on and around these shopping centers,” Tucker said.
Communities may not always be receptive to this intensive development, he noted. His plan to rebuild the Edens Plaza in north suburban Wilmette, expanding Carsons and adding a hotel and movie theaters, met with so much opposition that last fall Tucker dropped his option to buy the center.
Neighbors objected to the intensive development, the height of buildings, the late-night hours and the increased traffic on nearby streets.
As new malls and centers are built, older centers will need to be rehabilitated, Tucker said.
Major improvements are planned for Old Orchard in Skokie and Northbrook Court in Northbrook, while Golf Mill in Niles has already undergone such changes.
”We have a joke in this business,” Tucker said. ”Only 11 more shopping years until the year 2000.”
