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FEATURE ARTICLE, DECEMBER 2005
DEVELOPING A NEW LIFESTYLE
Poag & McEwen Lifestyle Centers goes beyond the traditional lifestyle center in the Northeast.
Dan Marcec
The term lifestyle center is thrown around all too often these days, as many developers conceptualize this idea simply as a glorified strip center. For Josh Poag, chief financial officer and executive vice president of Poag & McEwen Lifestyle Centers, the idea of a lifestyle center goes far beyond just assembling retail centers more attractively than the traditional format.
“We want to give our shoppers a good experience, not just a functional shopping experience,” Poag says. “Naturally, our centers encourage people to step out of their cars and enjoy the retail amenities, but we also want them to step out of their houses and come to congregate in a social setting.” Poag & McEwen's two newest centers in the Northeast, The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley and The Shoppes at Evergreen Walk, provide this type of atmosphere for its customers.
The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley
The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley is a 445,000-square-foot lifestyle center located near the intersection of Interstate 78 and Highway 309 in the Lehigh Valley region, just south of Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Poag & McEwen began construction on the property in July, anticipating an August 2006 delivery to tenants; the center will open to the public in October 2006. KA Architects designed the project, Norwood is the construction manager, Third Works is handling tenants coordination and CEC is the project engineer.
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Poag & McEwen Lifestyle Centers currently is underway on The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley, a 445,000-square-foot lifestyle center located just south of Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; the project is scheduled for delivery in October 2006.
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The development is set up in a Main Street style, with a Rave movie theater anchoring the project at one end. Barnes & Noble also anchors the center, and several other retailers will be announced as anchors within the coming months. An interesting aspect of the project's design is that the lifestyle center's Main Street parallels Center Valley Parkway, the street that carries most of the traffic past The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley, so Poag & McEwen has strategically placed certain tenants, including Barnes & Noble, with their backs to the Main Street in order to have visibility along the main thoroughfare past the development. Barnes & Noble has its main entrance off Center Valley Parkway, but it also has a secondary entrance off the Main Street. In addition, the project boasts a large Village Green, which features a pop-jet fountain as well as seating for approximately 400 people, where the center will hold concerts during the summer. “We're excited about the Saucon Valley project because we believe that it will encourage people to get out of their cars and really enjoy the experience,” says Poag. “Furthermore, we want to be a central focus for the local community, impacting it by being able to draw other uses to the area. For example, the development is part of a master-planned community, and since we've signed on, two major office users have sited opportunities in the immediate vicinity.”
The Shoppes At Evergreen Walk
In the town of South Windsor, Connecticut, Poag & McEwen opened Phase I of The Shoppes at Evergreen Walk, a lifestyle center encompassing 285,000 square feet. Phase II of the project is planned, featuring 90,000 square feet of ancillary retail space that is scheduled to break ground in spring 2006, with delivery anticipated for spring 2007.
“We originally discovered the site for The Shoppes at Evergreen Walk because the landowners wanted to develop a lifestyle center,” Poag explains. “There already was a lot of competition from a local mall, and while we started by attempting to negotiate a joint venture, we ended up purchasing the land to develop our own concept there.”
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The Shops at Evergreen Walk in South Windsor, Connecticut.
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Tenants within The Shoppes at Evergreen Walk include a 26,000-square-foot Highland Park Market (a grocer opening later this year), Old Navy, Banana Republic, Gap, Brooks Brothers, Casual Corner, Petite Sophisticate, Carolee, Adrienne Vittadini, Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn, just to name a few. This project, like The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley, has spurred additional development in the surrounding area. L.A. Fitness recently opened near the project, and a Healthcare Network office building is opening later this year; interestingly enough, already there are talks of expanding that office space.
The Shoppes at Evergreen Walk's layout is similar to that of The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley. It features a Village Green with a Starbucks Coffee and seating for several hundred people, where concerts were held this summer. The project also features two outparcel restaurants at the end of a Main Street, and then the Highland Park Market, Old Navy and a couple of ancillary stores are located apart from the Main Street, since Highland Park Market requires parking directly in front of its store.
“A unique aspect of this project is that we are unveiling a local artist's sculpture in one of the roundabouts, and this is something we hope to do on a regular basis — maybe every couple of years — in order to support the arts in the local community,” Poag notes. “We want this center, like all of our developments, to be a home for the community at large. All too often, people are pushed into the suburbs and into their individual communities, effectively staying in their homes; we want to change all that and bring them back out.”
Elkus/Manfredi is providing architectural services for The Shoppes at Evergreen Walk, Third Works is handling both construction management and tenant coordination, and Fuss & O'Neill is project engineer.
Overall, Poag & McEwen takes pride in its ability to create a retail project that does not exist solely to provide a conglomeration of commercial users. Naturally, while the focus of the company's centers are high-quality retail and related amenities, Poag explains that so much more goes into a Poag & McEwen lifestyle center.
“Someone at one of our meetings once said ‘everyone developing anything with a P.F. Chang's and a fountain is calling it a lifestyle center,' and there's some truth to that,” he adds. “That's why we take effort to focus on details; we put in fountains and planters, we do a lot of hardscaping and landscaping, and we take care to vary the architecture to make it more aesthetically pleasing to the customer.”
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