The opening of the new Southpoint shopping mall near Durham takes consumer expectations to a new level, and no doubt it will hurt the retailers who operate in downtown Durham. But the theme of the mall and some of its special features should intrigue promoters of central business districts everywhere.
Could the pendulum be getting ready to swing retail shoppers back toward downtowns in a big way?
A few cities like Salisbury have been able to keep a unique mix of retail and commercial businesses in their downtowns. But is it possible that shoppers could again see national retailers in the heart of town?
The traffic clogging Interstate 40 around Durham’s Fayetteville Road exit last weekend was headed toward what’s officially named “The Streets at Southpoint and Main Street,” a new 1.3 million-square-foot mall. That’s the same size as Crabtree Mall in Raleigh, and slightly smaller than the 1.4 million-square-foot Concord Mills near here.
Size is not the paramount issue, though. Of even greater interest is the mall’s design. Remember the eye-catching variety of Concord Mills’ interior, with areas of its mile-long “Main Street”bearing different names and themes? The Streets at Southpoint takes the Main Street concept to a new level, this time with store facades of varying colors and designs. It’s as much Disney World as Main Street; the look is almost cartoonish. But to make the theme complete, Southpoint also includes an outdoor area where some stores line the walkways just like — taa daa! — a real downtown.
You can actually see the sky and feel the weather. What a concept.
Mall designers are moving further and further away from bland sameness. As they do, they get closer and closer to the retail model the nation enjoyed in the middle of the last century, with each store facing the public with its own structure and identity. Mall developers and retailers are going to great lengths to recreate downtown. Why not return to it?
The foremost answer can be summed up in one word:parking. The sea of asphalt that surrounds virtually every shopping mall probably cannot be replicated in a downtown like Salisbury’s, so retailers assume they have to go elsewhere. But parking may not be as big a problem as some folks think. Mega-malls like Southpoint may need 6,400 parking spaces to serve a whole region of shoppers. But how many spaces do shoppers in a place like Salisbury need?Maybe 3,481?
That nice, odd figure represents the number of parking spaces in Salisbury’s downtown, including 651 spaces on the street and 2,830 in parking lots. While parking around the courthouse poses unique problems, shoppers don’t have much trouble finding spaces near stores and restaurants.
As malls get bigger and bigger, their convenience diminishes. Parking spaces get harder to find near the entrance, and the walk from store to store inside gets longer, too. Concord Mills touted its indoor shopping mile. What shoppers would volunteer to walk a mile downtown?
Maybe shoppers looking for something different would. No matter what malls do to make their interior look different, their retail mix has a definite sameness. From Abercrombie &Fitch to Yankee Candle, the mega-malls of America are beginning to run together. When will national retailers and consumers once again appreciate the value and variety of a stroll downtown?
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