Building Design Construction

hospitality facilities
BUILDING TRENDS ANALYSIS
TODD JOYCE FOR LIBERTY CENTER
When the developer Steiner + Associates opened a freestanding
Brio Tuscan Grille at its Easton Town Center in Columbus,
Ohio, too many shoppers passed it by. So the Brio at
Steiner’s Liberty Center near Cincinnati (pictured) is flanked
by two smaller retailers. It also has a front and back patio.
the International Council of Shopping Centers,
have sprung up across the country.
Liberty Center, a $350 million, 1.2 millionsf
lifestyle center that opened near Cincinnati
last October, will eventually offer 21 restaurants.
The 600,000-sf Hill Center Brentwood,
a lifestyle center situated between Nashville
and Franklin, Tenn., is scheduled to open
this fall with at least three standalone restaurants:
the 8,000-sf Mexican casual Uncle
Julio’s, the 3,500-sf Nami Sushi bar, and the
2,800-sf fast-casual YEAH! Burger.
Tom Rogers, Director of Community
and Economic Development for Mill Creek,
Wash. (2015 population: 19,760 est.), says
the tenant base in the city’s “town center”
has changed dramatically since its opening
in 2004. “Our original vision as mostly highend
retail boutiques has evolved to become
more service oriented, like chiropractors and
restaurants—things you can’t buy on the
Internet.” The 500,000-sf town center, about
20 miles north of Seattle up Interstate 5, now
hosts 15 sit-down restaurants and another
eight food and beverage shops with seating.
“Restaurants bring an energy to town
centers that not all retail can,” says Beau
Arnason, EVP/Asset Manager for developer
Steiner + Associates, whose six town centers
include Liberty Center.
The following trends show the central role
that restaurants—at 14.4 million, the nation’s
second-largest employer, according to the
National Restaurant Association—play in
the future of brick-and-mortar retail, and in
customers’ lifestyles.
1. Lifestyle center developers are encouraging
restaurant tenants to make a
bold statement and attract shoppers to
their retail stores.
Lifestyle centers set out to create walkable
mini-communities with distinct, often nostalgic,
architectural styles from which their
developers usually don’t permit much deviation.
Chain operators and drive-throughs are
prohibited at Mill Creek.
Hill Center Brentwood’s developer, H.G.
Hill, is “very strict” about maintaining the look
of the neighborhood, says Matt Nicholson,
Business Development Manager in Turner
Construction’s Nashville offi ce. Turner was
the contractor on the project.
But lifestyle center developers are open
to new realities, which may explain why Hill
Center Brentwood’s design includes more
glass for daylighting than is typical for such
projects, says Nicholson.
Mark Eclipse, AIA, LEED AP, Principal with
Prellwitz Chilinski Associates, says PCA’s
recent experiences designing lifestyle centers
have found “developers really want the
restaurants to stand out.” At the 475,000-sf
Marketplace lifestyle center in Lynnfi eld,
Mass., restaurant tenants must offer outdoor
seating. So PCA’s design included canopies
over the seating areas.
Lifestyle center developers are a bit more
fl exible when it comes to design parameters
for restaurant interiors. Gensler’s Washington,
D.C., offi ce is working with a client whose
restaurant will anchor a lifestyle center. “The
developer is doing backfl ips to accommodate
the chef,” says Kimoy Lallement, AIA, LEED
AP, Gensler’s Design Manager.
62 MAY 2016 BUILDING DESIGN+CONSTRUCTION www.BDCnetwork.com