Malls lean on innovation for success
Greendale Mall, Worcester Square footage: 309,000 Number of stores: 39 Number of parking spaces: 1,514
Auburn Mall Square footage: 575,000 Number of stores: 58 Number of parking spaces: 2,431
The Natick Mall, top left, is adding a Wegmans. At Worcester’s Greendale Mall, top right, and Auburn Mall, size, as well as shifts toward open-air shopping centers are creating challenges.
The Sears store at Auburn Mall
Natick Mall Square footage: 1.71M Number of stores: 230 Number of parking spaces: 7,522
Amid heightened competition from larger, more sprawling outdoor retail developments, two indoor shopping malls in Worcester and Auburn have been backed into a corner where experts say innovation is the only path toward continued viability.
But their struggles stand in stark contrast to the continued success of the Natick Mall, in a community that continues to be a shopping destination in Central Massachusetts.
While the Natick Mall recently signed on growing supermarket chain Wegmans to move into one of its anchor store locations, the Auburn Mall and Worcester’s Greendale Mall have been struggling for some time.
What makes them so different?
Size, for one, according to Rob Robledo, vice president of retail tenant services at CBRE New England. While the Greendale Mall has a relatively paltry 300,000 square feet of retail space, the Natick Mall sprawls at 1.7 million square feet. When it comes to shopping centers, size allows for a deep retail mix that creates the kind of “find anything for anyone” shopping experience malls have been built on. In the case of the Greendale Mall, which, like Auburn Mall and Solomon Pond Mall in Marlborough, is operated by Simon Malls, it’s simply too small to truly support the kind of retail depth needed in a shopping location, Robledo said.
Brian Nelson, a vice president for Simon Malls, attributed the Greendale’s current situation to “the normal business cycle,” he wrote in an email exchange, attributing the current state of the mall to changing shopping patterns. Nelson did not offer more specifics.
But Robledo suggests that malls can continue to thrive if they make major changes, as many have by adding entertainment and dining options.
Sea of stores
Natick Mall has a strong mix of stores, as well as other stores in nearby plazas, such as Shoppers World. These stores can apparently benefit each other. J. Lynn Josephson, the marketing manager for General Growth Properties, which operates Natick Mall, said that, together, all those stores create a destination where shoppers from the immediate area and farther away come to shop because they know they can get most of it done in one contiguous area.
“One of the reasons people come out to MetroWest is all of the shopping, because we have such a concentration of retail in a few square miles,” she said. “Natick and this part of MetroWest (have) been really active with how … we boost the local economy, whether it’s the shopping or the cultural options.”
The pull of this retail hub played into Wegmans’ decision to locate its first mall-attached store, said Jo Natale, vice president of media relations for the Rochester, N.Y.-based chain.
“We wanted to be in the Natick market. It’s a great retail market because of the location and access and … density of population,” she said.
The Auburn and Greendale malls also have a huge problem – literally – in massive outdoor shopping centers that have created the kind of retail heft previously reserved for indoor malls, Robledo said. These locations, such as The Shoppes at Blackstone Valley in Millbury, Northborough Crossing, which includes Wegmans, and the newly opened Cabela’s Plaza on the Berlin-Hudson line, cover nearly a million square feet each and have the space to accommodate numerous large stores. This creates the kind of critical mass in retail locations that attract people in the same way malls traditionally have, Robledo said.
“They created an outdoor open-air center that was different than any other outdoor center at the time because it had the size … that put a crunch onto Auburn and a crunch on Greendale,” he said of The Shoppes at Blackstone Valley.
The impact can already be seen at Auburn and Greendale he said, and will become more profound at Solomon Pond once the Cabela’s Plaza is fully leased. (About 70 percent of that site is leased, and includes a Lowe’s, BJ’s Wholesale Club, PetSmart and Market Basket.) Robledo estimates that the Auburn and Solomon Pond are producing slightly less than $400 in sales per square foot annually, which is the industry average. While these two malls are doing much better than Greendale, which he said yields under $200 per square foot, they’re well behind Natick, which generates a whopping $600 per square foot.
Nelson, of Simon Malls, did not respond specifically to Robledo’s estimates. In an emailed statement, he would only say the company is “extremely focused on managing and leasing Greendale Mall and our other properties within New England. We continue to look for new ways to redevelop, improve and attract new retailers to our shopping centers.”
Tight real estate in Natick insulates the mall from these outside competitors. Much of the land around the mall has been built up with big-box offerings. The decision by Wegmans to move in came partially out of necessity, with few other available options to build, said Wegmans’ Natale.
She said the criteria the company looks for in a site are ample parking, regional access and easy navigation in a densely populated area.
In Leominster, The Mall at Whitney Field in Leominster, with shopping space less than that of Solomon Pond and more than Auburn’s, lacks many of the pressures on other malls since there are no other major mall competitors nearby, Robledo said. That, he noted, will allow it to continue with a more traditional “big box” approach.
New strategies
Despite competitive pressure and other challenges, the future of shopping malls in Central Massachusetts can be bright, according to experts. A key to success is to give people more reasons beyond shopping to go, said Jesse Tron, director of communications for the International Council of Shopping Centers, an industry trade group.
Entertainment options such as movie theaters that serve alcohol, pottery studios, dueling piano bars, or trampoline parks have become extremely popular, Tron said. While each location must cater to its demographic, centering a non-shopping entertainment option helps pull people in and give them a reason to spend time at the mall, he added.
“You’re looking at basically becoming a destination … A lot of these successful properties recognize that and do things to draw the consumer in for things other than to shop,” he said.
Similarly, Tron added, dining has become a way to bring in people, with many locations adding restaurants outside of the food courts.
The pull of technology
Technology is another way to enhance and boost the mall experience, both Tron and General Growth’s Josephson said. Most consumers use an omni-channel shopping method, relying on both the Internet and in-store purchases, according to Josephson. Many will use the Internet while they’re shopping to research their choices and narrow them, but ultimately buy them from a physical store, she said. Having Wi-Fi inside the Natick Mall facilitates that experience for shoppers, Josephson noted.
Many malls have also developed their own mobile applications, Tron said. In conjunction with Bluetooth transmitters placed throughout the mall, these apps can detect where a shopper is and offer targeted discounts at stores or even dining suggestions.
All these techniques could be enough to shore up the Auburn and Solomon Pond malls, Robledo said. And if Greendale could bring in more entertainment or a key restaurant, that would help, but it will always be challenged by its size, he added.
If the Greendale Mall were to try to catch up to modern shopping habits, it would not be the only mall to make or contemplate fundamental changes. Tron said more hybrids of indoor and outdoor locations are cropping up, combining the destination shopping and entertainment experience of an enclosed mall with the outdoor and expedited shopping style of open-air shopping centers.
“In the next five to 10 years, the definitions are going to change,” Tron said. “There is going to be a blending of retail types.”
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