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Shapes of shops to come

St. Petersburg Times retail writer Mark Albright is in Las Vegas, where 42,000 developers, retailers and suppliers are plotting strategy, hearing pitches and making deals. Here's what he has found out.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published May 23, 2006

[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]

McKenzie Kyler, 5, left, helps Avery Ferrera, 2, off giant play area french fries at Westfield's Citrus Park Town Center on Monday. The indoor play area opened May 6 and is themed to match the food court.

MOMMY, DADDY, SHOP HERE

After spreading to more than 400 malls, those soft-sculptured, foam, kids play areas are now becoming a matter of one-upmanship.

Many malls are buying themed upgrades and replacements for their kids play areas well before the equipment's 10-year life span ends.

Play areas, which cost about $100,000, have become such kid magnets that mall landlords don't want to take a chance parents will be tugged away to a competing mall by their offspring panning the play area as same old, same old.

New designs are starting to treat the play areas like tiny theme parks. Some malls are ordering custom-built characters that can be found only in their mall. Others use LED lighting in fake climbing trees to make their play area come alive. Taubman Centers Inc., managers of International Plaza in Tampa, recently signed an exclusive to use the Warner Bros. cartoon characters. Westfield America, which owns three Tampa Bay area malls, is installing a play area in all its U.S. malls.

Westfield installed not one, but two play areas at its Citrus Park Town Center mall near Tampa. One is identical to most other Westfield properties. The second is a one-of-a-kind theme based on the food court decor.

Both were fabricated by Playtime Creations Inc. of Englewood, Colo., which was hired to build two aviation-themed play areas at Tampa International Airport.

"After the Tampa airport took a chance on a play area, it was so successful we got orders for the first ones in Logan Airport in Boston, DFW in Dallas and Sea-Tac in Seattle,'' said David O'Niones, Playtime sales director.

SHOPPING LONGER, MORE OFTEN IN MALLS 

Nobody broke out the champagne. But mall owners were happy to see two encouraging signs in 2005: The average mall shopper dropped by more often and spent a little more time and money there.

It's more evidence that after dropping dramatically for two decades, mall traffic has bottomed out and stabilized in the past five years as the number of regional malls shrank to 430.

The typical regional mall shopper visited 3.1 times a month in 2005, up from 2.9 times in 2004. That's two more trips a year. The average shopping trip was 82 minutes, up seven minutes from four years ago. They spent an average of $90.90 a trip, up from $71.90 four years ago.

More significantly, however, more shoppers are browsing several stores 44 percent, compared with 34 percent a decade ago rather than making the trip to visit a specific store (33 percent, down from 49 percent a decade ago). The average browser drops $102 a trip, compared with $88 for a store-specific buyer. The figures were compiled in an International Council of Shopping Centers' study of 21,000 shoppers over a 10-year period.

SEMBLER ASSEMBLES BIG PACKAGES 

The Sembler Co., which until now has stuck with retail development, is branching into condo, loft and townhouse development by opening a residential division.

Sembler hired former Opus South executive George Smith to head the venture and added office space for a home base near its headquarters in St. Petersburg.

''We think it's time to spread our wings,'' said Greg Sembler, vice chairman of the company owned by his father, Mel.

Sembler has experimented with residential development in a few mixed-use joint ventures with apartment and condo developers in Atlanta, where Sembler has grown quickly into that city's most active retail shopping center developer.

Mixed-use projects, which put stores, offices and residential units under the same roof, are all the rage among developers.

But retailers are still getting used to them. Voters in Indian Rocks Beach recently turned down a condo project that would have included a Publix on the ground floor, and opposition surfaced to a similar project in St. Pete Beach.

Sembler has projects with 5,000 condo, townhouse or apartment units on the drawing boards. That includes a 26-story condo in downtown St. Petersburg in a joint venture with JMC Communities and Jimmy Avirim of ANB Enterprises, the owner of the Bank of America Tower. The ground-floor retail will provide space to expand Sembler's BayWalk.

GREEN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 

While consumer spending has been resilient despite soaring gas prices, this summer may prove the tipping point.

Fresh data circulating from the National Retail Federation found 76 percent of consumers say volatile gas prices have already affected their spending. That's up from 67 percent a year ago and 57 percent two years ago.

The affluent, who may be least likely to alter their spending habits, are no longer immune, with 69 percent saying they have cut spending because of gas prices.

Former President Bill Clinton offered his own solution in a speech at the convention.

He advocated making the country more energy efficient and less dependent on foreign oil. While Clinton in other recent speeches cited the threat of global warning for a return to policies dating to the Jimmy Carter era, to this largely Republican crowd he sold the idea as a form of economic development that creates good-paying jobs.

"To have a strong economy, America needs to find a new source of good-paying jobs every five to seven years'' before the jobs created by technical advances move offshore, said Clinton, who received a standing ovation. "If we were serious about building an energy-independent, clean-energy country with an emphasis on wind and solar power, hybrid vehicles and more ethanol at the pump, we would create millions of jobs in America."

DEMAND AND SUPPLY IN WESLEY CHAPEL 

The developers of the Shops and Wiregrass Ranch in Wesley Chapel are a confident lot.

They say that with county government approval, they have assembled enough restaurants and stores to start construction on their $105-million project this summer and open as originally scheduled in late 2007.

Nobody's talking store names beyond the already opened JCPenney and a planned Dillard's.

But developers typically don't boldly commit to start building until at least half the project is leased, a threshold developers confirm they have exceeded.

''There was some question among retailers about whether the population was there yet or would be in a couple of years,'' said Brian Ratner, executive vice president of development for Forest City Enterprises Inc. "After the business JCPenney has already done there, that has been put to rest.''

The open-air mall is supposed to house 80 stores and up to 11 restaurants.

NEW TACTICS TO BEAT THE BIRD BRAINS

Unwelcome pigeons, gulls and vultures are getting juiced again to stop them from landing in the eaves of retail buildings.

Such tactics as fake owls are old-hat. Taped bird distress cries still work, but many shoppers tire of the recorded yelping.

Nettlesome birds have turned many of those rows of stainless steel spikes that are supposed to keep them from landing on building window sills into inner spring mattresses for nest building. Stringing webs of fishing line confuses birds trying to land, but cannot be used in nooks and crannies.

"So we re-engineered the electric warning systems popular back in the 1930s to a fine wire that delivers the equivalent of a static shock a person might get touching a doorknob,'' said Deanna Selzer, co-founder of Avian Flyway Inc., a Rockwall, Texas, company that has outfitted the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and some federal buildings in downtown Tampa.

The unsightly old ancestors of these systems were removed decades ago. "We've made the insulators so small, you can barely see the unit,'' Selzer said. "You don't need them all over, just where the birds want to nest.''

Publix Super Markets and Sears have been trying them out along with the upscale Shops at Bal Harbour near Miami.

[Last modified May 23, 2006, 05:41:54]