It used to be the hot spot, the destination for sales and savvy finds, a place people would go to shop and be seen shopping. But in smaller cities and even urban centres, rundown indoor malls and strip malls are trying to revitalize and rebrand as big box stores and larger competitors crop up.
“Owning retail is like owning a sailboat: You put a lot of money in and sometimes you wonder if you’re going to get the return,” says John Crombie, national retail director for Cushman & Wakefield Ltd. “You've got to keep trendy, you've got to keep forward thinking. It's easy to slip away from what's the latest and greatest.”
But all is not lost if a mall is going belly up. Despite the great concern of increasing vacancies and a rundown space, there are ways to make the mall magic again, retail property experts say.
Seriously rethink your customer base
Everyone in retail knows the customer is king. But malls that are shedding tenants have likely lost sight of the people they need to attract.
These malls must look far beyond current shoppers and target the ideal customer, says Mark Healy, partner at Satov Consultants, a Toronto-based management consultancy. Promoting cross-shopping – with a solid mix of retail that includes fashion, pharmacy, music, shoes and so on – can help attract families that may have fatter wallets than the senior citizens and teenagers who might be the more frequent customers as the mall declines, he says.
While working on a spruce-up of Mountainview Mall in Midland, Ont., Mr. Healy and his colleagues spent a solid five days in the town and conducted a survey and focus groups to find out what their target shoppers really wanted. “We said, ‘Hey, your mall is going to be fixed, we want you to have a say.’ We got a great response,” he said. And it wasn't just from teenagers and senior citizens.
Build community to ramp up foot traffic
That’s exactly what Mr. Healy and his team did at Mountainview Mall. “It was ‘Let’s re-conceptualize what the mall is: Not simply a shopping destination, but a community hub.’” Enticing local physicians, community programs or the municipality to open offices in the mall can almost guarantee a boost in foot traffic, Mr. Healy says. “Look at everything from church groups to minor league soccer to parades and say, ‘How do you leverage the mall as an anchor place?’”
Paired with a good mix of stores, it’s a great way to get soccer moms roaming the malls when they pick up and drop off their kids, he adds. But the “mall as community hub” is more than just a strategy to drive traffic, he says. It gives the place an identity and builds a connection with shoppers, one that can be further forged if you try to weave local entrepreneurs into the mix of higher profile retailers, Mr. Healy says.
Also beneficial would be creative, permanent fixtures such as an indoor skate park. “In the future, if there’s money, we’ll do a skating rink,” he says. A property can even go as far as affixing a retirement home or other residences on a re-invigorated mall, since councils are often quicker to approve mixed-use renovations, Mr. Crombie says.
You need to strike a balance between the types of programs and services you’re luring to the mall, Mr. Healy adds. You may want to introduce a seniors’ mall walking program, but also consider children’s play areas where one parent can shop and the other can stay with the kids.
