Retail
New Retail in White Plains, NY
On May 7th, our design team received the site plan approvals for a new retail project on Bloomingdale Road in White Plains, New York. Led by our fantastic new clients, Faros Properties and Caspi Development, we designed the building to work with the challenging topography of the site by placing all of the parking on top of a single floor of boutique retail shops. Our goal for the project has been to provide a pedestrian-driven shopping center with an outdoor sidewalk bustling with window-shoppers, café seating, and lush landscaping. An existing office building on the site was the former headquarters for Nestle, and is now home to several private and government offices. The new parking garage will serve the offices as well as new retail shops. The Common Council of White Plains approved the project unanimously!
Stay tuned for updates. We’re working on the retail marketing campaign now, and construction will start soon.
Do People Actually Shop in Stores?
(Part 2 in a series – Magic Beans)
The use of mobile devices to make purchases is still a small fraction of the total sales in the e-commerce world. But it’s rising. Per the New York Times, “last year, people spent $25 billion on purchases made from phones and tablets,” and that’s an increase of 81 percent over the previous year. I was curious how that affected my retail clients, so I reached out to them. This post is the second in a short series of responses. My questions were: how does mobile spending affect your retail business? What about show-rooming? How do you either fight it or work with it…
Brooklyn Boulders Rock Climbing Gym Profiled
The Brooklyn Boulders rock climbing gym is profiled in New England Construction News . They are holding hard hat tours on May 5th for anyone interested in checking out the soon to be completed project. We have taken some photos of our own and will be posting them soon.
Site Visit to Chestnut Hill Square
Recently, the Arrowstreet staff accompanied me to the Chestnut Hill Square project for a site visit. The four new structures are each at different phases of construction, but enough is there to get a good sense of the massing, spatial relationships, and envelope finishes. Building A, the largest structure, is the one furthest along, with the brick veneer and storefront being installed and partitions and cores going up on the interior. Buildings B and C have the steel up and the exterior is starting to be framed out. The parking garage is far along- it went up quickly, within the past five weeks, with prefab concrete components…
Do People Actually Shop in Stores?
(Part 1 in a series – Milton’s)
The use of mobile devices to make purchases is still a small fraction of the total sales in the e-commerce world. But it’s rising. As the New York Times said, “last year, people spent $25 billion on purchases made from phones and tablets,” and that’s an increase of 81 percent over the previous year. I was curious how that affected my retail clients, so I reached out to them. This post is the first in a short series of responses. My questions were: how does mobile spending affect your retail business? What about show-rooming? How do you either fight it or work with it…
State of the Industry: Brick and Mortar vs. Internet Retail
[Part 4 of a series of posts from ICSC’s RetailGreen conference. Posted in response to The Wall Street Journal’s article “Malls Get Face-Lift to Pull In Shoppers“, which stated that “the era of new-mall development in the U.S. is drawing to a close.”]
Brad Hutensky, ICSC Chairman, gave an interesting talk about the state of the retail industry, and he debunked a common refrain of the last five years, that the internet is killing bricks and mortar stores. His evidence was compelling. First, in 2012, retailers have opened over 5,000 stores, not a small number. And for good reason, as customers still value the human experience and the instant gratification of a cash purchase. Moreover, twelve of the top 20 online sellers in sales revenue have physical stores, among them Apple and one of Arrowstreet’s clients, LL Bean…
Green Thoughts from Walmart at ICSC RetailGreen
[Part 3 of a series of posts from ICSC’s RetailGreen conference.]
Last year, at ICSC’s RetailGreen conference, Don Moseley from Walmart gave an amazing 15 minute presentation on how codes differ from one municipality to another, and especially how they vary even more from the new International Green Construction Code (IgCC). Although it sounds wonky, Mr. Moseley used the specific example of how the prescribed number of plumbing fixtures can vary from code to code, with the delta being as much as 20 fixtures for the same size Walmart store. Same store footprint, same demands, totally different plumbing requirements. Importantly, when a retailer has thousands of locations across the world, it’s more difficult to plan, and it hits the bottom line in myriad ways.
This year, Mr. Moseley showed what Walmart has been doing on their roofs…
We Have Thrown Away The Keys To This Place
Now and then, I like to revisit a past project and see how it’s doing. Sometimes when you create a building, you spend so much time with it that you grow attached to it and almost think of it as a family member. The L.L.Bean Hunting and Fishing Store in Freeport, Maine is one of those projects. I remember working hard not only to create great retail space but also on the little things, like shelves, nooks, and other special places for the taxidermy displays and heritage pieces like original rifles used by L.L. Bean himself…
An Update on Chestnut Hill
Chestnut Hill Square’s long journey is becoming reality. The foundations are poured, the steel is erected, the exterior brick and limestone facades are being installed, storefront and curtainwall glass is underway, and the parking garage precast erection starts this week. Soon tenants like Wegmans Food Market, the health club Equinox, and restaurants Seasons 52 and Brio Tuscan Grille will begin…
How Play and Humor Help Us Innovate
[Part 2 of a series of posts from ICSC’s RetailGreen conference.]
In a unique presentation at the ICSC RetailGreen conference, Professor Barry Kudrowitz of the University of Minnesota demonstrated “How Play and Humor Help Us Innovate.” My friend and fellow conference committee member Ed Doyle of Target discovered Mr. Kudrowitz at a company team-building retreat and was so impressed that he brought Mr. Kudrowitz to our conference. Now, this presentation was not directly about sustainability or retail development. Instead, it was about “innovation.” It was fantastic! Via a series of hands-on activities, Mr. Kudrowitz led the audience through mind-mapping exercises, word games, and even a game called “the bears and tigers”. The most interesting thing we learned was that more ideas equals better, more creative ideas…