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Keeping The Lights On
It's working, and local retailers aren't the only ones paying attention to downtown revivals. "The major national retailers have saturated their presence in malls," says Herbert Alan Leeds, president of Miami's Leeds Business Counseling Inc. He cites The Limited clothing store as an example, noting that Limited Chairman Leslie Wexner has expressed interest in urban locations. "If The Limited decides to place stores downtown, others will follow," says Leeds. "You know the herd mentality."
Problems remain for downtown retailers, however, and one that is coloring urban retail development everywhere is the scarcity and expense of parking. "You hear it from everybody," says Lakeland retailer Ann Rye. In fact, Rye's problem became so severe that this fall she plans to move her gift shop, Traditions Unlimited, to a new location. She quips, "I bought a parking lot and a nice little building came with it."
Across the state, several other downtown retail trends are apparent. "Entertain them and they will come" could be the urban mantra. From the high-brow to the low-brow, Florida communities are using art, music, sports and festivals to draw people downtown.
Two decades ago, Orlando's downtown practically invented the idea of using entertainment-driven retail when Church Street Station entertainment/retail complex opened. Now, the city is building on Church Street's success, encouraging other retailers and restaurateurs with a downtown farmers market and a host of arts, sports, and other entertainment festivals and events. There's been a dramatic increase in retail lease rates in the downtown core. "A year and a half ago, retail lease rates on Orange Avenue were $8 to $12 a square foot," says Frank Billingsley, business development manager for the Orlando Downtown Development Board's Real Estate Resource Center. "We're seeing retail space now being leased for up to $22 a square foot."
The next big kick to Orlando's downtown likely won't come until 1997, when development gets underway on Orlando City Center, to be designed by Miami's whimsical architectural firm Arquitectonica International. The $200 million complex by Pizzuti Development Inc. will include restaurants and retail in addition to dual office towers and a 350-room hotel. And although no development date has been set, Orlando's Jaymont development group plans a mixed-use, 200,000-square-foot-plus retail/entertainment complex with 30 movie theaters on downtown's Orange Ave. One high-profile Orlando project, the $15 million, 140,000-square-foot Church Street West entertainment/retail/office complex, couldn't get off the ground, however. The minority-owned development group, Church Street West Inc., couldn't get financing for the project, in part because of slight chemical contamination on the site. The city's Downtown Development Board has been soliciting new development proposals for the property.
The focus of downtown Fort Lauderdale's retail redevelopment has been the transformation of once-sleepy Las Olas Boulevard to an active, pedestrian-friendly mix of specialty retailers and restaurants with sidewalk dining. "People now sit there on a beautiful day having a cup of cappuccino," says Michael Frey, economic development manager for the city of Fort Lauderdale, "It changed the whole atmosphere."
A few blocks west of Las Olas' main shopping district, Michael Swerdlow Cos. will develop Brickell Station, a 280,000-square-foot downtown complex with a Regal Cinema multiplex movie theater with 24 screens, upscale retail and restaurants. "My understanding is it's going gangbusters in retail leasing," says Frey. Smaller cities are getting in the act also. In Pensacola, an active downtown arts council and quarterly "gallery walks" have encouraged galleries, framing shops and boutiques to open in vacant office space on Palafax Street, the city's main downtown roadway. Now there are plans to turn a nearby vacant auto dealership into a marketplace for fresh produce and specialty items. Sarasota's downtown leads the state in high-brow entertainment. Paul N. Thorpe Jr., executive director of the Downtown Association of Sarasota, boasts, "We have eight major live theaters in downtown Sarasota." That's not all the city has, however. Through a multimillion dollar revitalization program that added parks as well as parking, re-routed roads and changed the traffic flow, the city created a downtown with 175 retailers, including local clothiers, gift stores, restaurants, antique stores and a large group of art galleries. This summer, construction will begin on a Cobb multiplex movie theater with 20 screens, an event that Thorpe hopes will spark the revival of a sparsely occupied two-story downtown mall that could house 100 more retailers. He enthuses, "Now the downtown is becoming a happening."
In downtown St. Petersburg, restaurateurs are renovating vacant storefronts, creating vegetarian, Mexican and European cafes to serve visitors of the year-and-a-half-old Florida International Museum, which itself is housed in a defunct department store. Another restaurant, The Garden, hosts live music on weekend evenings. Entertainment and the 1998 promise of the city's major league baseball team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, jump-started interest in downtown in a way St. Petersburg's departed master downtown developer, Bay Plaza Cos., never did. Since Bay Plaza pulled out last year, private entrepreneurs have stepped in. Vince Naimoli, managing general partner of the Devil Rays, is jockeying to replace Bay Plaza as the city's primary redevelopment partner. Along with shopping center developer Sembler Co., Naimoli is proposing a downtown mixed-use project.
On another front, local lawyer George Rahdert (whose clients include Florida Trend) has become a major urban rehaber. He converted a former St. Pete department store into an arts complex that houses offices, artists' studios and the Florida Craftsmen Gallery. Next challenge: renovating an ornate downtown landmark that's been mostly vacant for years.
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A decade of struggle
Even small towns are turning to entertainment and the arts. Tiny Quincy, in Northwest Florida's Gadsden County, has a picturesque downtown complete with historic Victorian buildings surrounding a courthouse square. To encourage residents to visit downtown and patronize shops, the community transformed a 1940's era former movie theater into a live performing arts center. A nearby gallery sells local artwork. It appears to be working. Unlike in many small towns, shops are opening, not closing, and in June the National Civic League named Quincy one of 10 "All-America" communities, beating out St. Petersburg among others.
Specialty stores draw young, affluent customers who don't mind traveling an extra mile or two to find a one-of-a-kind gift or special name brand. "A newer, younger population doesn't mind paying a penny more than if they were shopping in a mall," says Jerry Kolo, associate professor of urban and regional planning at Florida Atlantic University.
After more than a decade of struggle, Lakeland's downtown antiques district is reinventing itself as a specialty retail center, with shops selling wearable art, gourmet food and upscale garden and patio accessories. "Things have certainly become more positive," says Rye, the retailer who is moving her shop to a space with more parking.
Specialty stores that appeal to well-heeled customers also hold their own against larger shopping complexes. Tampa's Old Hyde Park Village is a 65-store open-air collection of shops with national retailers such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Williams-Sonoma, Ann Taylor and Brooks Brothers. Restaurants and a seven-screen movie theater complex also have helped to drive sales higher and higher since the center opened in 1985. When Brandon Towncenter, a regional mall 20 minutes away, opened last year, it caused only a "hiccup" in Hyde Park's business, says general manager Pat Westerhouse.
Suburban towns and cities are inventing downtowns, creating central shopping districts where none existed before. For some new Florida communities, such as Disney's Celebration, that means designing a downtown as part of a master development plan. This fall, Celebration opens its commercial retail center with a mix of restaurants, clothing stores, a bookstore, grocery store and a two-screen AMC movie theater all housed in small-scale buildings designed to look like a traditional Main Street. Leeds, the Miami retail consultant, believes the concept will work, noting that Disney's participation will appeal to a wide variety of merchants.
Other established Florida communities, primarily in South Florida, which were developed without a core downtown shopping district, are now trying to build one from scratch. Lee County's Bonita Springs, Palm Beach Gardens and Sunrise among others are working on creating downtowns. Margate, for example, is a working-class city of almost 50,000 in western Broward County that primarily is defined by its major thoroughfare, six-lane U.S. 441. So the city is adding landscaping to the roadway and trying to convince a developer to build a mixed-use office/retail complex on a 17-acre plot of land that would serve as a downtown landmark. Jeff Oris, the city's economic development coordinator, envisions "quality retail" shops that would serve both city residents and the thousands of South Florida workers who cross U.S. 441 each day on their way to booming Coral Springs.
It's no secret why communities are jumping through hoops to lure merchants downtown. Revitalized downtown retail districts mean jobs, tax revenues and a lure to business and residential investment. But why are shoppers returning downtown? "Perhaps we're seeing some boredom with the concept of regional malls," says Fort Lauderdale economic development manager Frey. "They're all cookie-cutter alike."
