Posts about Retail

The 31 malls on the map range from small local ones like Fair City in Fairfax, to gargantuan super-regional ones like Tysons Corner. The only requirement to be on the map is that malls contain a common interior hallway lined with several shops.

Some, like Pentagon City, are chugging along as healthily as ever. Others, like Seven Corners Center, have been gone for years. Overall, more than 40% of the dots are red.

The reasons malls have closed vary as much as the malls themselves. Some closed because they were housed in cheap buildings that simply reached the end of their intended lifespans, while others couldn't compete with the mixed-use town center developments that have become common in recent years.

Geography seems to be unimportant in whether a mall lives or dies. Red dots permeate all corners of the map, regardless of the wealth of the jurisdiction.

One thing that does seem to make a difference is size. Larger malls that draw from a wider area generally seem more likely to thrive than smaller ones. As the years go by and even more green dots turn to red, it's likely the last hold outs will be the biggest and most famous.

Is this map comprehensive? Did I miss any malls? Let me know in the comments.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Here's my approach. I think Wheaton's downtown is sorely missing a public place to go and just spend time. I know, for example, that if I go to Downtown Silver Spring, Bethesda or Rockville, I can spend several hours with my family without having to move the car. I can pick a destination—and the afternoon starts there. There will be other people moving about. I may run into friends. I can eat, shop at a market or in one of the stores. My kids can play at a fountain or other structure and I can knock off an errand.

Wheaton has many businesses to support this but it lacks a central place where people can gather. It lacks an Ellsworth Drive or Bethesda Row—not necessarily a town square, although it could be, but a place with a compelling and memorable identity that has been built and designed for people.

Wheaton's core already has many great shops. Some of my favorites there on Triangle Lane include Marchones, where I buy the best deli sandwiches, Showcase Aquarium, and one of the region's coolest stores, the Toy Exchange, which has vintage toys, from Star Wars figures to Lionel trains. In the surrounding blocks, there are notable restaurants such as Pho Hiep Hoa (where I discovered Pho), Nava Thai, Full Key, Hollywood East, Ren's Ramen, Caramelo Bakery (with the most spectacular saltenas), and the list goes on.

But what Wheaton does not have is a connecting space to weave the shops, and its identity, together. Typically I have to park at one restaurant and then get back in the car to drive to another location, which is a real pain with kids. I end up spending additional money somewhere else.

In my view, Silver Spring is a success not because of any particular office building in the area, but because of the public space that was created and the sense of identity it fostered. People just love going there.

Wheaton could have that, too. Wheaton has plenty of potential customers in the surrounding neighborhoods, but I suspect that many of them prefer to go out to other destinations that have more street life. They spend their money somewhere else, too.

It is hard to create street life in a parking lot, which is what we currently use as a big space at the center of the urban core.

If we are going to make Wheaton a real destination with appeal to families, teens, singles and everyone, we should start by building an urban park.

What is an urban park? My favorite is the spectacular Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, where I've spent hours soaking in the city. While I don't think we can go that far, we do have nearly $42 million proposed in the capital budget for Wheaton redevelopment.

We also need to remake Triangle Lane, pictured below, so that not only cars and delivery trucks can access the area but people can walk around in an enriching environment. We could have a wider storefront sidewalk for businesses and customers, pavers, lamps, benches and trees. Triangle Lane is, after all, "Wheaton Row."

Finally, reaching a little further out into the orbit of the urban core, we should get the new Wheaton Library and Recreation Center built as fast as possible. A quality community amenity like that will go a long way to getting residents in the surrounding area even more engaged in their own local community, and it may help attract new, higher income residents to the area.

Wheaton certainly needs new office workers to support the businesses, and the county needs to relocate agencies in order to reduce leasing costs. Fortunately, there are many places in Wheaton to locate new office buildings. We could even build a tall tower where the Mid-County Regional center is today.

We will see what the best approach is, but I am dead set against any construction impact that will wipe out the businesses on Triangle Lane. If these businesses have their parking removed during many years of construction, I am worried that many of them may not survive. There is a possibility that this approach will only end up sterilizing the small business ecosystem that makes Wheaton unique.

Wheaton is different, and we should take a different approach to economic development there. Don't wipe the businesses out and then build new. Nurture the core and let it grow organically. Make it a destination, and the people will come.

These restrictions make it difficult and expensive to run a bar, which encourages owners to locate in areas where there's already a bar scene with a guaranteed customer base. Hence, there are lots of bars in Bethesda and relatively few elsewhere. Yelp counts 25 bars in downtown Bethesda and just 9 bars in downtown Silver Spring, including Babe's Sports Bar, which closed earlier this month. And both pale in comparison to Clarendon, which with 44 bars has the highest number of any neighborhood outside the District.

This hurts bars in other parts of Montgomery County, who lose customers just by not being where all of the other bars are. It's especially hard for bars like Piratz Tavern. Though I've enjoyed myself thoroughly each time I went there, I can safely assume that not everyone wants to go to a bar and drink grog and sing sea shanties.

Piratz was a niche business, like a Korean restaurant or a record store, reliant on a small portion of the general public for their customer base. Niche businesses need a lot of people coming to the area to ensure that enough of them want what you're selling. That requires a high population density, like in the Akibahara "geek ghetto" in Tokyo, or a concentration of businesses serving a niche population, like Annandale, whose 900 businesses catering to Koreans make it a destination for Greater Washington's Korean community.

When you have a lot of people coming to your area, niche businesses can thrive. But in Silver Spring, where the bar scene and thus the pool of potential customers is very small, anything too unusual will get squeezed out.

Successful nightlife districts offer visitors lots of choices for dinner, drinks, and entertainment options. That's why Joe Englert purposely opened several unique venues at once along H Street NE in the District. He provided lots of reasons for lots of different kinds of people to come there, drumming up a substantial bar scene in a short period of time and helping to revitalize the neighborhood, which in turn produced more bars and restaurants.

Silver Spring could do the same if Montgomery County made it easier to open a bar here. Making the area a bigger nightlife destination could draw business to existing bars while encouraging new bars to open. It could also provide enough customers for niche bars like Piratz Tavern. Not only that, but it could also make the area safer, getting people on the streets at night when the sidewalks are normally empty.

Piratz Tavern didn't just fail because it was a pirate-themed bar. It failed because there aren't enough bars, pirate-themed or otherwise, to create a critical mass of bargoers in Silver Spring. Unless things change, the new Corporate Bar & Grill will struggle as well.

We know that dense cities are both environmentally better and dramatically more equitable places. Walkable neighborhoods are better than the suburbs for people with a wide range of incomes, and what happens in cities that don't grow is that they gentrify and poor people are pushed out. Trying to fight change makes you less sustainable and more unfair.

Sometimes, standing in front of bulldozers is the right thing to do. It's likely that Takoma Park wouldn't have become a sought-after place to live if it were carved up by highways. And sometimes it's harmful, like the efforts of some residents to block a housing development adjacent to the Takoma Metro station back in 2007.

Well-designed urban infill development in places like Old Town Takoma can get people out of their cars and bring customers to the area's struggling local businesses, which presumably are progressive ideals. Not allowing development to happen effectively enables all of the things progressives say they don't want, such as more driving, more gentrification, more suburban sprawl, and more destruction of farmland.

Greater density would in fact support progressive causes, according to Takoma Park resident Victor Reinoso. He says that there would be more progressive businesses, such as the TPSS Grocery Coop, and the ones that exist would get more business, if his neighbors didn't oppose greater density at every juncture.

Not all progress is bad. It's the mark of a true progressive when they can tell the difference.

It is located just off of the Capital Beltway at Arena Drive—steps away from the Largo Town Center Metro Station on the Blue Line, and approximately one mile away from FedEx Field.

Borders Books was one of the Boulevard's original anchor tenants. However, in 2011, Borders shut its doors as part of the company's bankruptcy and eventual nationwide liquidation. The space, pictured below, has been vacant ever since.

Based on the guidelines established by Whole Foods for consideration of new retail locations, the old Borders space at the Boulevard is an ideal site. This is what the retailer says it is looking for:

• 200,000 people or more in a 20-minute drive time
  
• 25,000-50,000 square feet
  
• Large number of college-educated residents
  
• Abundant parking available for our exclusive use
  
• Stand alone preferred, would consider complementary
  
• Easy access from roadways, lighted intersection
  
• Excellent visibility, directly off of the street
  
• Must be located in a high traffic area (foot and/or vehicle)
  

Let's see how the old Borders space matches up. In terms of demographics, more than 252,000 people live within a five-mile radius—well within a 20-minute drive. In addition, all Blue Line Metrorail stations from Capitol South eastward to Largo Town Center are within a 20-minute ride of the Boulevard (and within a 20-25 minute drive on a good day). This dramatically increases the population count within the target area of this retail space.

The average household income in the immediate three-mile radius is $80,600, and more than 64% of the adult population within a one-mile radius of the Boulevard has either attended or graduated from college. Taking into account the entire area within a 20-minute drive or Metro ride of the Boulevard, including the affluent and highly-educated Capitol Hill neighborhood, the household income and educational attainment levels increase significantly.

The old Borders space is also very well situated, meeting all of Whole Foods' desired site location criteria. It is clearly visible from Arena Drive, just off of a lighted intersection. There are multiple signalized vehicle access points to the Boulevard—two from Arena Drive at the north end, and one from Harry S. Truman Drive at the south end. In addition, there is a lighted pedestrian path (near Truman Drive) that provides direct access to the Boulevard from the Largo Town Center Metro station.

Finally, there is ample parking directly in front of the store space that would be available for the near-exclusive use of Whole Foods customers. Simply put, in terms of foot and vehicle traffic, visibility, and parking availability, few locations in Prince George's County can match it.

Aside from the necessary construction to convert the old Borders space from a bookstore into an upscale specialty grocery store, Whole Foods would need to do very little work to get the store up and running. At 22,915 square feet, this one-story stand-alone space is currently slightly smaller than the Whole Foods stated minimum goal of 25,000 square feet. However, as you can see from the above picture, the space was built with a faux second floor, complete with ample window lighting.

Although I am not an architect or structural engineer, it seems that it should be feasible to add the necessary floor and ceiling to convert this space into two actual stories—in which case, there would be nearly 44,000 square feet of usable space. If not, the existing space is sufficient for a specialty grocer like Whole Foods. Similar competitors, like Greensboro, North Carolina based The Fresh Market, regularly build stores that are about 20,000 square feet.

So what would be the downside, from Whole Foods' perspective, of coming to the Boulevard? Sure, the Boulevard has had its challenges over the years with crime and rowdy teens, but so have other great Metro-accessible shopping centers, like Gallery Place and DC USA in the District. The Boulevard has also had the misfortune of having three of its anchors—Borders, Circuit City, and Linens 'N Things—file for bankruptcy and close their doors.

Recently, though, things have been looking up for the Boulevard. HH Gregg and Shoppers World have taken over the Circuit City and Linens 'N Things spaces, and a new T.G.I. Friday's recently opened in the space vacated by Uno's Chicago Grill. The Boulevard's property managers have instituted a "Parental Escort Policy" that has been successful in discouraging teenagers from loitering.

Increased security and police presence throughout the Boulevard have improved both public perceptions and the realities of safety. Furthermore, it should be noted that the old Borders property is located on the opposite end of the mall, far from the movie theater and other venues that attract many of the youngsters.

The success of the nearby Woodmore Town Center development, which houses a Wegmans grocery store, Costco, Best Buy, and other retailers, shows that there is sufficient spending power in central Prince George's County to make a speciality grocer like Whole Foods extremely profitable.

Indeed, locating a Whole Foods at the old Borders Books store at Boulevard at the Capital Centre offers two advantages that Woodmore Town Center cannot: walkable proximity to Metro and direct visibility from a major street. (Not to mention that Whole Foods probably could not open at Woodmore anyway, given the likelihood of a restrictive covenant in favor of Wegmans that would prohibit another grocery store in that development.)

Whatever decision the Prince George's County Planning Board and County Council eventually make regarding the rezoning of the Cafritz Property in Riverdale Park, it will likely result in years of litigation before Whole Foods, or any other commercial retailer, can start developing there. Local opposition to that new greenfield development is stiff (e.g., see here and here.)

Whole Foods cannot and should not wait that long to bring a store to Prince George's County. Neither should Whole Foods think that there can be only one of its stores in the entire county. The old Borders Books at Boulevard at Capital Centre in Largo is "transit ready" and waiting for a store like Whole Foods.

If you agree that Whole Foods (or another specialty grocer like The Fresh Market) should come to the Boulevard, contact the following people and let them know you support the idea:

• Whole Foods' Master Broker for Maryland: Mark J. Katz, H&R Retail, 2800 Quarry Lake Drive, Suite 320, Baltimore, MD 21209; Email: mkatz@HRRetail.com; 410-308-6366.
  
• The Fresh Market's Director of Real Estate for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Region: James Dewey, 628 Green Valley Road, Suite 500, Greensboro, NC 27408; Email: jamesdewey@thefreshmarket.com; 336-272-1338.
  
• Property Manager for Boulevard at the Capital Centre: Mark Nicholas, Inland US Management, LLC, 2901 Butterfield Rd, Oak Brook, Illinois 60523; Email: nicholas@inland-western.com; 866.646.5263.
  
• Brokerage Contact for Boulevard at the Capital Centre: Ryan Wilner, KLNB, LLC, 100 West Road, Suite 505, Baltimore, MD 21204; Email: rwilner@klnb.com; 443.632.2058

Greenberg grew up in the DC area, living briefly in Wheaton during the 1950's. After working for a Boston-based real estate investment firm on their D.C.-area projects, he struck out on his own and founded Greenhill Capital in 1974. In the 1980's, he's began buying and developing properties in Wheaton, anticipating the opening of a new Metro station.

"It was the last [central business district] that was scheduled to be developed" after Silver Spring, Bethesda and Friendship Heights, says Greenberg. "Plus, it was human scale. And there's something about the small proprietors."

Most of Greenberg's properties in Wheaton are single-story retail buildings, many of which were designed by Rockville architect Steven Karr. But he's always itched to do something greater. As he told the Gazette last week, Greenberg sees Wheaton as the next Adams Morgan, a vibrant hub for entertainment, shopping and culture. Not only that, but he knows how to do it.

"I'm a johnny-one-note. I've been saying this for 25 years, to get people on the street. I'm an urbophile. I'm a believer in 'city.' I get it."

If Greenberg had his way, he'd change liquor licenses to allow up to 75% of a venue's total sales to be alcohol, drawing bars and clubs. He wants a "county sponsored lease plan and economic program" to fill empty stores with theatres, artists and even university ventures. And he would've made sure that businesses displaced by redevelopment stayed in the area, unlike Barry's Magic Shop, which was condemned by the county to build a pedestrian walkway and received $260,000 to move to Rockville.

Finally, Greenberg would build lots of housing, both downtown and in surrounding neighborhoods, to create more foot traffic that can support local businesses. He's not convinced that B.F. Saul's plan to build offices over the Wheaton Metro will pencil out. "It costs as much to build in Wheaton as it does in Friendship Heights, but the rent multiplier is significantly higher," he explains.

In other words, tenants will pay more for an office in Friendship Heights than in Wheaton, no matter how nice it is. Meanwhile, rents for apartments in Wheaton are the same as those elsewhere in the county. "The county will have to heavily subsidize that office building," Greenberg told me on Monday, two days before Leggett's announcement.

After our talk, I e-mail Greenberg to ask what he thought about the $40 million subsidy B.F. Saul could receive. "Development would have occurred in Wheaton with bolder (even traditional urban) planning, but the county was too lazy and too anti-business for change to naturally evolve," he replies. "We never considered a [government] subsidy ... on any of our other projects."

“We're not apologizing”

According to Greenberg, any attempts to take Wheaton beyond the strip mall have been stifled by local opposition and red tape. "Boy, do I try to do more and better there," says Greenberg, "and you cannot imagine the resistance we have."

In 1990, the county passed a plan for downtown Wheaton that instituted a "Retail Overlay Preservation District." The district was supposed to protect small businesses while ensuring that new construction was of high quality. However, by limiting the density of new development and requiring that all new buildings be reviewed by the Planning Board, even ones that complied with the zoning code, it actually repelled investment.

"I absolutely abhor what the county has been doing all these years" in Wheaton, says Greenberg. "What they needed to do is have more density, more people to walk and support the urban core."

Upon buying the Anchor Inn restaurant at Georgia Avenue and University Boulevard in 2004, Greenberg envisioned redeveloping it with new housing and shops. It was the height of the real estate boom, when new apartments and townhouses were being built at the edges of downtown Wheaton. However, his proposal to build a 600,000 square feet mixed-use development on the site went nowhere because the county took too long to finish a new plan for the downtown, which was finally approved last year. "They wouldn't repeal the overlay district" in time, he grumbles.

In a Gazette article from 2006, Greenberg lamented that Wheaton "missed the train" on the economic boom. Instead, he built what zoning allowed: the smaller Georgia Crossing project, a series of one-story retail buildings that one resident called underwhelming.

"In the 1950's and 60's, Montgomery County was the standard by which suburbia was to be developed," Greenberg says. "The Wedges and Corridors [Plan], blah blah blah. But as we became more urbanized, they . . . tried to impose suburban standards on urban locations, without consideration to alleys and deliveries and urban edge and human scale, doors at the urban edge and creating a liveliness that was required."

That said, Greenberg isn't doing terribly well in Wheaton. He calls me out for using the above photo of Triangle Park, a shopping center at the intersection of Ennalls Avenue and Veirs Mill that he rebuilt after a large fire in 2008. The photo was taken in 2010 and shows the complex when it was new and empty. "That space has been leased for 18 months," says Greenberg. "We're getting mid-$30's [the leasing rate per square foot] and the parking lot is always full."

Not all of his tenants have been happy, though. In 2010, several disgruntled former tenants complained to the Gazette of broken contracts and unfairly high rents. One of those tenants was Eddie Velasquez, whose DeJaBel Café at Georgia Crossing opened in 2008 and closed 14 months later. Greenberg says it's simple why DeJaBel closed.

"If you owned a coffee shop, when would you open?" he asks me. "I guess 6 or 7 am, for people going on their way to work," I say.

"He opened at 9," Greenberg replies. Nonetheless, Greenhill got Velasquez a liquor license so the cafe could stay open at night, but even that wasn't enough to keep them in business. Cavan Wilk, suggests that it was a lack of foot traffic that killed DeJaBel Café, which wouldn't have been a problem if Greenberg had been able to build apartments on top.

"We're not apologizing" for the work Greenhill does, Greenberg says. "Think about the jobs we've created. We start people in businesses and we keep people in business."

“No one asked me to do it”

One place where Greenberg sees the county doing something right is in downtown Bethesda, where Greenhill Capital's headquarters are located. The difficulty of doing business elsewhere in the county, whether it's Wheaton's retail overlay district or limits on procuring liquor licenses, sends people here, Greenberg says.

Not surprisingly, the handful of projects Greenhill has built here are much better than those in Wheaton: buildings close to the street, a mix of uses, and little aesthetic flourishes here and there. And no parking lots.

On Cordell Avenue, a pizzeria he developed features trompe l'oeil, or an optical illusion of fountains along the sidewalk. "No one asked me to do it," Greenberg says. "I did it." Over at Woodmont Avenue and Elm Street is what Greenberg calls "the Haagen-Dazs building" after its former ground-floor tenant, which has since moved down the street. The building remains a nice, and fully-occupied, piece of urbanism: it's a mix of retail and office space, has lots of windows facing the street, and a little plaza in front that is occasionally used for concerts.

Then there's the Edgemoor, shown at the top of the post, a complex of condominiums and townhomes on Montgomery Lane that was developed by Greenberg and built by three local builders. He rattles off a list of high-end features: "Real copper gutters and downspouts, slate roofs on the end units, oak doors," he says. "And until they screwed it up, Georgian gardens. I had these really nice Georgian gardens, but they took out all of the benches." Greenberg also lives in the high-rise building, which looks like an old-school New York apartment house.

"I wanted something between the Dakota and the Plaza," he says.

Yet these accomplishments generally go unnoticed east of Rock Creek Park, where Greenberg's reputation (including on this blog) is as an unscrupulous landlord and purveyor of strip malls. "Nobody talks about the stuff that we've given or the contributions we've made," he says. "To put your name on the line for a construction project is far different than throwing spitballs at it."

As a result, Greenberg is content to wait. "We got so frustrated with the process [in Wheaton] that we said we'll go forward and we'll wait for the next generation to take it to the next level," he says. "We are constrained by a non-business friendly environment, and Montgomery County's paid the price for that. Developers are not willing to take the risk."

And they'll sit on their substantial holdings in Wheaton until everyone else comes around. "We have enough ground for 1.5 million square feet" of development under current zoning, he says. "We're interested in the right kind of deal. We're not interested in selling."

He adds, "We'll see if Wheaton's time is now."

The former Babe's sits on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Brandywine Street, near the top of a hill with downward slopes to the south and west, and Douglas's proposal promises to utilize this topography creatively.

Douglas Development's proposal would allow for a potential sit-down restaurant to have an outdoor seating area along Brandywine Street and for the sought-after retail tenants (no dry cleaners, fast-food restaurants, or banks) to have tall, airy ceilings as high as 16-18 feet.

Although the retail mix in Tenleytown is improving, this stretch of Wisconsin Avenue has long been associated with mattress stores, cheap fast food, dry cleaners and lots of banks (okay, maybe not the banks) that belies the affluence of upper Northwest and the proximity to the student population at American University.

A ground-floor restaurant would be an ideal tenant for the space and provide significant value to the community, but if the ANC or Zoning Commission requires parking, that won't be possible due to the topography.

Foregoing on-site parking will also help make the upstairs housing units more affordable. This is appropriate, as the cost of underground parking can cost as much as $40,000 per unit, a significant barrier to working-class people seeking to move to the Wisconsin Avenue corridor.

The site is also just a few hundred feet from the Metro station, is well-served by several bus routes, and is within walking distance of two grocery stores and other amenities.

Despite the fact that people who are willing to pay a premium to live directly next to a Metro station have fundamentally different travel patterns, with much lower car ownership and transit usage rates than the surrounding neighbors, Douglas Development is planning ahead for the few people who may own a car. The company proposes to aggressively pursue shared parking agreements with neighboring businesses with spaces that go unused every day.

Douglas could also help reduce driving demand further by providing amenities like car sharing spaces and dedicated bicycle parking. Supportive neighbors have recommended making both a part of the community benefits package.

While the predictable opponents of any change have opposed the Babe's development, city officials in Santa Monica, California, recently approved a very similar 56-unit mixed-use development without any off-street parking. This despite the fact that it will be at least a half decade until the light-rail Expo Line is extended to Santa Monica. The Babe's site already has Metro nearly at its doorstep.

If a mixed-use development can be built in car-centric Southern California without any off-street parking, years before a light rail connection will be provided to the neighborhood, DC's elected leaders and planning officials should have the courage to support a similar development in a walkable community, already well-served by transit.

I urge smart growth advocates to attend the ANC 3E meeting. The Babe's issue might not come up until later in the meeting (perhaps around 9:30pm), but if you come earlier, you can hear from the folks at Safeway who are planning to rebuild the store at 42nd and Ellicott Streets NW, along Wisconsin Avenue.

There are sure to be the usual opponents of any Wisconsin Avenue development in attendance, so the more proponents of a mixed-use development of the Babe's site in attendance, the better.