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To woo customers, malls become one-stop shops
By Andrea Chang - Los Angeles Times
N&O staff writer David Bracken contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES (NOVEMBER 18, 2011) -- Going to Los Angeles' Westside Pavilion mall is a Friday afternoon ritual for Jenny Ouchi and her 8-year-old son, Will. But shopping isn't usually on the agenda.
Ouchi drops Will off at Music Stars & Masters on the second floor, where he takes private piano lessons. During the half-hour session, Ouchi, 38, runs errands in the Los Angeles shopping center, such as getting her nails done or mailing a letter at the post office in the mall.
"It's definitely a timesaver," said Ouchi, a pediatrician who lives on the Westside. "The more things I can do in one trip, the better." Malls are looking more and more like Main Street.
With retail spending gradually shifting to the Internet, the enclosed shopping centers best known for department stores, teen apparel chains and shoe shops are increasingly adding the kinds of services people usually find closer to home.
So instead of all-day spending sprees, consumers are showing up to drop off prescriptions, get their teeth whitened, have keys made or work out at the gym.
Westside Pavilion, for instance, offers child development classes, shoe and jewelry repair, a hair salon and a massage shop. A branch of National University, a private nonprofit college, is slated to open soon. That's just the beginning. Visit any Southern California shopping center and there's a dizzying array of new businesses: day care and tutoring centers, cooking schools, grocery stores, florists, Ticketmaster branches and shops offering eyelash extensions, career counseling and pet adoptions. "Nontraditional tenants in a retail property is really the wave of the future," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. "We've hit the saturation point of retail."
In the Triangle, filling mall space with nontraditional tenants typically occurs in older properties, said Shane Bull, a broker with NAI Carolantic who helps store owners scout locations.
Bull said University Mall in Chapel Hill, which is being renovated, recently added a town library as a short-term tenant. Dentists have also taken space in a number of malls, including Alexander Place Promenade in Raleigh's Brier Creek, he said.
Nonretail and nonrestaurant businesses make up about 17 percent of leasable regional mall space, but that number is expected to grow significantly and could reach 25 percent within a decade, he said.
The rise of the hybrid shopping center was sped up by the retail industry's troubles during the recession, as malls around the country looked for unconventional tenants to fill shuttered storefronts, often by offering reduced rents and other favorable lease terms. The growth of online shopping has also caused many retailers to downsize or close underperforming bricks-and-mortar locations, opening spaces for newcomers...
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