City seeks new identity in the post-mall era

In Lakewood, Colorado, 100 acres of shopping mall and parking lots is about to yield to an urban center. The Villa Italia Mall is typical of the ailing, greyfield malls that line the nation’s suburban corridors. On the cutting edge of retail development when it was built in 1966, the mall has been surpassed by more modern competitors, and sales have declined since the early 1990s. By the beginning of 2001, 60 percent of the shops stood vacant, and when department store anchors Montgomery Ward and JC Penney closed their doors, Villa Italia had reached the point of no return. But the site won’t languish for long. Once the mall has been vacated by the end of July, it will be demolished. A few retail outlets located outside the main mall building, including a Foley’s department store, will continue to operate while the site is cleared. In the first quarter of 2002, construction will begin on Belmar, the most intense new urbanist mall redevelopment to date. Planned on a rectilinear street grid, the mixed-use center will create 19 new city blocks, which over the next 5 to 10 years are expected to be filled with 1,400 residences, 1 million square feet of retail and entertainment facilities, and 1 million square feet of offices. As is often the case with greyfield malls, the location remains commercially viable, although the structure is outmoded. The site sits at the intersection of two major thoroughfares, is bordered by residential neighborhoods, and five years ago, the city built the Lakewood City Commons civic center west of the mall. Since then, the city has looked to a Villa Italia redevelopment to reinforce the civic facilities and to create a center and a new identity for Lakewood, says Mayor Steve Burkholder. Though this first-ring suburb of Denver is now the fourth largest city in Colorado with 144,000 residents, Lakewood came of age in the automobile era and has never had an urban core. To a large extent, Villa Italia had become the default social center. “The easy way out for us would have been to scrape down the property and put up big box retail,” Burkholder says. “But from the beginning we made it very clear that the city believed in the vision of doing something with a mixed-use design on these 100 acres.” city backing Lakewood’s willingness to think outside the box attracted Denver developers Mark Falcone and Will Fleissig of Continuum Partners, who spearheaded the recently released greyfield mall study sponsored by the Congress for the New Urbanism. According to Falcone, the wholehearted support from the city has been crucial to getting the redevelopment going. The property has been incorporated into an existing urban renewal district, making it possible for the city to provide tax increment financing and to use eminent domain. Public investments will be needed for new streets, utilities, parks, and parking structures. Early stages of the redevelopment process have also been guided by a citizens’ advisory committee, which has kept the community involved through a series of public meetings. The master plan by Elkus-Manfredi Architects of Boston responds to the committee’s key concerns. These stipulate, among other things, that the development should be pedestrian-oriented, that surface parking be limited, that a central public gathering place be included, and that building heights stay compatible with existing development. The landscape architecture is by Civitas Inc. of Denver. While the street layout is fixed, the exact configuration of building types and uses will remain open to refinement and change, Falcone says. Current plans show an overlapping of uses, with a concentration of office buildings on the western edge of the site, retail in the center and on the northern edge, and about 10 purely residential blocks in the southeastern quadrant. A park terminates the development’s main street. The built-in flexibility is one of the chief advantages of the mixed-use plan. Unlike a conventional, single-use retail development, it can respond rapidly to changes in the market and demographic conditions. Continuum has already had to jettison its initial plan for a phased demolition, because the mall lost its long-term viability with the departure of three of four anchors. The accelerated building schedule may prove to be a blessing in disguise, however, enabling the project to attain critical mass earlier than anticipated. Approximately 200 residences, 750,000 square feet of retail, and 130,000 square feet of offices will be built in the first phase. This will include an anchor cinema complex, a supermarket, and the central plaza. The first-phase building designs by Elkus- Manfredi are rooted in the 19th and early 20th century architecture found in downtown Chicago and Denver, but also embrace more modern styles. “We are actively seeking diversity,” says architect Ted Chapin, “this will not look like an outdoor mall.” Facades are continuous rather than segmented, and buildings range from two to four stories throughout the center of the development. Housing in the first phase will take the form of apartments above retail, and later phases will add townhomes, stacked flats, and live/work units to the mix. Among new urbanist mall redevelopments, Belmar’s scale is rivaled only by the plans for Downtown Kendall, Florida. The latter has a thriving mall at its center; however, that mall has shown an unwillingness to conform to the master plan. Belmar has the advantage of having a single owner, strong public support, and, according to Falcone, a retail community that is highly receptive to locating in an urban environment.