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Jan11
By Anne Mastin, Executive Vice President, Retail Real Estate on January 11, 2012 The new year brings exciting new shopping options to Easton Town Center. We recently announced that three upscale stores will be joining our extensive list of retailers. Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton and Sephora – some of the top names in fashion – are expected to be open by the summer 2012. In fact, the Louis Vuitton store will be the only one of its kind in Ohio, and the Michael Kors store is among two locations throughout the state.
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Jan05
By Yaromir Steiner, Founder / CEO on January 5, 2012 Since its grand opening in June 1999, Easton Town Center has drawn more than 20 million annual visitors. We knew it was innovative. We knew that we were setting the benchmark for others that would emulate it. And we knew it would become a strong regional attraction. However, we could never have imagined that it would be named one of the top five most innovative malls of all time.
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Dec08
By Ralph Ireland on December 8, 2011 The following article was featured in the November 2011 issue of Chain Store Age and ranks the country's Top 10 Redevelopers. We're pleased to share that Steiner + Associates made the list. The piece highlights our work on the Peninsula Town Center in Hampton, Va.
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Dec02
By Beau Arnason on December 2, 2011 Steiner + Associates is pleased to support Celebrate Local, a non-profit seasonal store at Easton Town Center showcasing the best of Ohio-produced handmade and artisan goods. The store provides Ohio farmers, growers, food artisans, handcrafters, artists, and other local specialty retailers an opportunity to have a presence at one of central Ohio’s favorite retail destinations.
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Nov15
By Beau Arnason on November 15, 2011 “Going, going green” has been our philosophy at Easton Town Center since it opened more than 10 years ago. Over the last decade, we have continued to search for ways to increase eco awareness and reduce our carbon footprint.
As a result, we’re pleased to announce that we have recently installed two electric vehicle charging stations on the second floor of the east parking garage that are free for public use. This will allow our visitors the opportunity to charge their electric or extended range vehicles while they shop, take in a movie or grab a bite to eat.
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Oct31
By Yaromir Steiner, Founder / CEO on October 31, 2011 Peer over the drawing boards of today’s most successful real estate land planners, designers and developers. Listen in on city and township planning board meetings. Follow the scent of a freshly brewed Starbucks coffee and one thing becomes clear, single use retail environments, whether malls, power centers, lifestyle centers or neighborhood centers will soon be the exception rather than the rule.
This trend, or inevitability, is perhaps most apparent at the regional mall level, where malls have progressively been replaced by mixed-use town centers. First, we saw the introduction of leisure time uses like cinemas, restaurants and comedy clubs into the retail mix, excellent examples being Horton Plaza in San Diego, California, Irvine Spectrum in Irvine, California and CocoWalk in Coconut Grove, Florida. The integration of these uses was turned up a notch, based on both human and commercial logic, and we saw new open air layouts that embodied traditional urban patterns, such as The Grove in Los Angeles, California and Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio. Next, office space and residential units appeared above the retail, just as they had generations ago in downtowns across America. Examples include Zona Rosa in Kansas City, Missouri and The Greene in Dayton, Ohio. Today, this is clearly the pattern: the traditional regional mall is being replaced by mixed-use urban patterned open-air town centers.
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Sep26
By Yaromir Steiner, Founder / CEO on September 26, 2011 Developers everywhere have come to the growing realization that retail is just one star in a larger constellation, and that the mixed-use galaxy can be further enriched with residential elements that contribute social energy and commercial synergy. Thoughtfully designed mixed-use projects with a strong residential component are able to function as a true community, with a correspondingly strong and memorable sense of place. But as mixed-use design becomes increasingly more mixed, the mechanics of how to seamlessly and successfully integrate residential elements into a mixed-use environment has become a greater challenge. As residential continues to become a significantly more important and proportionately larger component of mixed-use projects, discovering new answers to tough questions has become both more relevant and more urgent.
Developers understand that building residential as part of a mixed-use project is very different than a freestanding project; fraught with greater complexity and significantly more challenges. Today, innovative architects and developers are meeting those challenges; leveraging their mixed-use experience and expertise and delivering bold new solutions and powerful efficiencies. One of the most intriguing innovations in this area is the advent of modular and precast residential construction, a trend that has exhibited great promise in its ability to deliver quality residential components with greater speed, efficiency and flexibility. Commercial and mixed-use developers are discovering that, in the context of mixed-use development, residential development lends itself very well to modular and precast construction techniques, and that by embracing these ideas, it is possible to overcome a number of sometimes frustrating and costly challenges.
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Sep12
By Yaromir Steiner, Founder / CEO on September 12, 2011 Yaromir recently spoke with Chain Store Age Senior Editor Katherine Field Boccaccio and reflected on Easton's 10th Anniversary. The Q&A is below.
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In Fall 2001, Steiner + Associates and Georgetown Co. completed the second phase of mixed-use trendsetter Easton Town Center, Columbus, Ohio -- and a decade later, the 1.7-million-sq.-ft. development stands as testament that the right project in the right location with the right uses can survive even the most trying economic conditions.
Chain Store Age talked with Yaromir Steiner, CEO of Columbus-based Steiner + Associates, about Easton’s staying power during a recession, and its continued evolution as it strives to remain relevant...
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Aug04
By Yaromir Steiner, Founder / CEO on August 4, 2011 The following article was featured in the May 2000 convention issue of Retail Traffic Magazine. The content is as applicable today as it was the day I wrote it more than 11 years ago.
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While communities today search for ways to reconnect and create focal points, the planning and development philosophies of the early 1900s have sparked discussion on ways to reinvent municipal zoning that allows for the "innovation" of mixed-use developments that answer the cry to bring a village-type atmosphere back to our neighborhoods. As we often find, the lessons of the future will be garnered from the past.
It may surprise many of us to learn that strict municipal zoning is a relatively new phenomenon, established in the 1920s, after the rise of the American city as a hub of manufacturing and commerce and immigration...
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Jun20
By Barry Rosenberg on June 20, 2011  For an industry that has taken its lumps over the past few years, the first signs of a retail recovery are welcome news. There was an optimistic buzz at the annual Las Vegas RECon convention in May that had been missing the last couple of years. But I think there’s a bigger story here. What’s going on is not so much a traditional recovery as it is a rebalancing; less a return to expansion than a move to refocus. There is still too much square footage out there, and the process of consolidation is highlighting the contrast between the “haves” and the “have nots.” We are already seeing a widening gap between quality retail opportunities and mediocre projects as cautious retailers prioritize a relatively small handful of high-performing malls and select locations. In the evolving mallscape of 2012 and beyond, great spaces and places will be at a premium, and the implications for retailers and developers alike will be profound.
It’s not just post-recession fallout driving this trend. Online sales continue to rise, nibbling away a larger chunk of the overall bottom line and decreasing the demand for brick-and-mortar locations. Retailers are also looking overseas, which means that U.S. malls are now competing with overseas allocations. For Class A properties, this Darwinian dynamic only reinforces their standing. Class B malls will be vulnerable if not well-managed, and most Class C malls are going to have to reinvent themselves or almost certainly go extinct. We are already seeing a move away from third- and fourth-tier markets, as well. Markets like Lancaster, Ohio, for example, might still make sense for tenants like Target and JC Penney, but the majority of in-line retailers will likely take a pass; calculating (correctly) that many consumers will make the drive to nearby Columbus.
Retailers are not only looking at focusing on the best markets, but with fewer stores in each market, they are also prioritizing the best real estate. If Gap goes from 5 stores to 3 in a market like Columbus, for example, they are going to be in a position to pick and choose the strongest locations. Sales under $300 per-square-foot (when the average mall is $340) will not cut it for most retailers. Needless to say, this doesn’t bode well for the approximately 500 unanchored lifestyle projects that were built in the last decade.
You don’t need a crystal ball to identify this trend–it’s already happening. At the same time that familiar names like Simon Property Group, General Growth Properties (GGP) and Westfield Group are all looking to reinvest in their top tier centers, they are actively looking to sell their bottom performing centers. Per a recent Morgan Stanley report, of the 500 Class C malls, at least 250 of them will become nonexistent as retail centers within the next 5 to 10 years. That will remove roughly 250 million square feet of retail from the market place. The shutdown of these malls will create select opportunities for some new centers with better locations and better designs. But many old centers will not be replaced; the sales will transfer to the more dominant regional destination centers. For a healthy retail marketplace recovering from problematic overbuilding, this renewed focus on prime locations and quality developments is an inevitable and almost certainly positive development. We might find out in the very near future that truly, less is more.
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