Revitalizing worn-down shopping centers in low-income neighborhoods isn’t easy. Banks often don’t want to lend money. Retail tenants usually see too much risk.
But some South Florida developers are finding success by attracting national retailers who specialize in so-called secondary shopping centers.
Among the retailers: Stuarts, One-Price Clothing, Fayva Family Shoes and Payless Shoe Source.
Fayva Family Shoes, for example, was among the first national tenants to lease space at the Dolphin Plaza Shopping Center, a center in Carol City, Fla., a Miami suburb.
“We’re very happy with what’s going on at Carol City,” said John Lattanzio, president of Fayva Family Shoes in Canton, Mass. “Our store there is doing very well. It’s a very active center.”
Shopping centers in lower-income neighborhoods pose a special challenge.
“No developer wants to build in them,” said Stephen Bittel, president of Terranova. “They can’t get financing.”
Getting a national or regional tenant to sign a lease can change a shopping center’s fortunes.
While mom-and-pop businesses always are part of successful tenant mixes, developers and marketers say the lifeline comes from national retailers. A national tenant attracts others, the center gets credibility with lenders, and the stores start to draw shoppers.
“It’s happening all across the country,” said Paula Black, a Miami consultant who specializes in marketing shopping centers. “A national name says that the center is serious about bringing customers, and the mom-and-pop shops benefit from that.”
Stuarts/Stuarts Plus, a division of Petrie Retail in Secaucus, N.J., said Dolphin Plaza is attractive because there are few retailers in the densely populated area.
The center isn’t the first South Florida to attract national clients.
Stuarts, Payless and Fayva have been ringing up sales for years at Biscayne Plaza on 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard. The center was revamped a decade ago, adding a new group of tenants that included those chains.
Bruce Ewing, manager of Flamingo Plaza in East Hialeah, is counting on a similar formula for the 240,000-square foot shopping center, which is in the midst of a $9 million revitalization. The center will get a Winn Dixie Marketplace, One Price Shopping and Stuart/Stuart Plus.
National retailers “assist not just by occupying space but by bringing a nationally recognized product,” Ewing said. “It makes the whole project more viable. They’re what is called a bankable tenant.”
National retailers say the formula for them is simple: If an area has potential shoppers and a well-maintained center, they’re interested.
“It’s just simply the fact that when we’re not serving those areas, and we’re looking and we see that we could have shoppers in there, it’s an opportunity,” said Archie E. Dishman, vice president of real estate and construction for One Price Clothing in Spartanburg, S.C.
Located in a neighborhood where no national chains had ventured until 1992, the 3-year-old Dolphin Plaza is getting a 6,600-square feet, $400,000 expansion to add another national tenant: Stuart/Stuart Plus, a women’s clothing store.
“A significant number of inquiries led us to do the expansion,” said Beth Boheim, senior vice president for Terranova, a Miami real estate development firm that manages the center. “We wouldn’t do it for just anybody.”
One Price Clothing, another national clothing retailer, already operates at the center.
