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Old mall finds new life as office complex
By MARK ALBRIGHT, Times Staff Writer TAMPA -- The only hint that Netp@rk.tampabay had an earlier life is its sprawl over 70 acres. "The shape of the building is your only clue this used to be East Lake Square Mall," said Nat Cherry, project director for Divaris Real Estate Inc. After a $50-million overhaul, the mall where shoppers once pawed the clearance racks at Dillard's emerged reincarnated as a campus for call centers. Today, more than 3,000 people work there for tenants such as Merck-Medco's mail order pharmacy, a steamship company, nursing and computer training centers and customer care call centers for Marriott Vacation Club, Alltel and General Motors. It's redevelopment Florida-style, in a state where shopping centers turn obsolete so fast and frequently that turning them into something else is a vital part of the real estate industry. Sunshine Mall in Clearwater has been leveled and reborn as an apartment complex. An abandoned Kash n' Karry supermarket in Largo has been converted into the headquarters of the Pinellas County Housing Authority. A former Wal-Mart in Pinellas Park has been purchased by Calvary Chapel, which plans to hold Sunday school where checkout counters once teemed with Christmas shoppers. "I've got several groups interested in converting empty stores into charter schools," said Suzanne Chen, president of Retail Realty Group in Tampa. Developers think Netp@ark, on 56th Street at Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, is the largest conversion of retail space to an office park in the United States. The two-story complex has 1-million square feet of space, almost twice as much office space as the tallest building in downtown Tampa. It's 70 percent leased and profitable. The rules of finding a new use for deteriorated old shopping centers are based on rent. Retail fetches the most money, so landlords are reluctant to chase off the remaining stores when big tenants leave. Usually they remodel the facade and fill the holes. Conversion to office space is next on the list. Setting up an indoor flea market is the last resort before tearing the place down. Stripped of embellishments, retail stores are often as adaptable as any open warehouse. Three frontend loaders made short work of the hundreds of interior walls at East Lake Square Mall. But conversions can be tricky. Storefront windows offer the only view unless you're willing to poke holes in load-bearing walls. Remote corners of parking lots scare many office workers, so security can be an issue. Grocery stores get most of their air conditioning from open freezers and coolers, so a new heating and cooling system must be bought. Even seemingly straightforward conversions can be more trouble than they are worth. Publix Super Markets leveled a former Winn-Dixie in the middle of a Clearwater shopping center to build a replacement store from the ground up. Abandoned movie theaters that flooded the market are a big pain. Their sloped floors, boxy auditoriums and high ceilings are expensive to change. Still, an empty Carmike 6 theater in Carrollwood proved to be just the ticket for Apartment Hunters. The startup is spending $1-million to rebuild the empty theater into a one-stop welcome center for newcomers to the Tampa Bay area. The center wanted space for classrooms, a telemarketing center and a lobby with tall ceilings for sales displays rented by apartment complexes, home builders, moving companies and mortgage lenders. RMC Konover Property Trust suggested a theater. "It was a lot cheaper than building from scratch," said Dorothy Joffe, Apartment Hunters' director of affiliate relations. Recycled shopping centers, however, cannot overcome their location. Netp@rk.tampabay, for instance, is still in an industrial area, a problem that doomed its viability as a shopping mall. So Divaris used the same everything's-under-one-roof selling point of a mall to woo call center tenants. John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, which owns the mall, added a fitness center, ATMs and a huge lobby for a break room outfitted with living room furniture. A $2-million renovation turned an old JCPenney Auto Center into a day care center. There's also a video conference center and an old movie theater that's been turned into a 250-seat auditorium. "Because we have all the amenities on site, few workers need to leave during the day," said John Wingfield, Divaris principal for Florida. Short 30-minute lunch breaks are common at Netp@rk, where two-thirds of the work force eat their meals at a central food court.
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From the Times Business report
From the AP
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