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The Christiana Fashion Center is a busy place as national players take a serious look at the power/lifestyle center operated by Allied Retail Properties.
The most recent retailers planning to open at the center are off-price retailers Marshall’s/Home Goods, which will join Best Buy.
Allied also operates Concord Mall in north Wilmington and the nearby Christiana Town Center, which is anchored by a Boscov’s store.
An April site plan for the Allied cnter showed big names like Best Buy and furniture giant Raymour and Flanigan occupying space at the Fashion Center. Best Buy already operates a retail store a few miles away near Christiana Hospital.
James Oeste, vice president of Wilmington-based Allied confirmed that Best Buy recently signed a lease for the center.
The new prospects are in addition to recent announcements that Ted’s Montana Grill and Zoup! will take space at the center. Zoup! offers a soup and sandwich menu, with Ted’s Montana Grill bringing casual upscale offerings featuring bison raised at the vast ranch holdings of CNN founder Ted Turner.
Also shown are locations for Shake Shack, a rapidly growing hamburger chain, Qdoba, a Mexican food outlet and Zoe’s Kitchen. Zoe’s, which now has a location near the Delaware line in Glen Mills, PA features Mediterranean food, often on pita bread. Shake Shack, which got its start in New York City, has been for having lines out the door when a new location opens.
Chili’s, which closed a location near the mall a few months ago is also shown with a free-standing location at the site. As previously announced, the Fashion Center location will be second for the local franchisee of Zoup!, which has a restaurant at the Midway Plaza Shopping Center at Kirkwood Highway and Limestone Road near Pike Creek.
More off-price operations of retail giants could be on the way with Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s sites shown. Already open are Nordstrom and Saks off-price locations. Also shown were locations for Talbot’s, J Crew Mercantile, Sleepy’s mattress store, Carter’s, Visionworks optical store and Lemon Pop. a small clothing chain.
However, as of mid-May, many of the retailers and restaurants listed in the earlier site plan had been deleted in an updaed document.
Already at the center are popular retailers, REI (an upscale outdoors store), The Container Store, DSW Shoes, Ulta cosmetics and big box jeweler Jared.
Not penciled in is a Whole Foods, Wegmans or another upscale grocer. Wegmans had already ruled out a store in the immediate future after opening a location across the line in Glen Mills, PA.
The Fashion Center, which will have more than a half a million square feet when built out is now reaching critical mass, a factor that may tempt some mall retailers to move across the street when leases expire. Christiana mall has about 1.3 million square feet.
The General Growth Properties mall has blue chip retailers like the Apple Store, along with one of the highest sales per square foot figures in the nation. Rents are not cheap and retailers that do not make the grade in sales can get the boot.
The mall did undergo an expansion a few years ago that added restaurants at outside entrances as well as a movie theater and the popular Cabela’s sporting goods chain on its boundary. Vacancies remain rare, but do pop up with the many retailer bankruptcies that have taken place.
Lifestyle centers have been gaining popularity as it seems unlikely that few, if any enclosed malls, will be built in the future. Enclosed mall anchor giants like Macy’s are struggling with a changing retail climate and closing stores at lower traffic locations.
One question mark for the Christiana Mall area is traffic, with back-ups starting to show up on the weekends, even during non-holiday periods. There are also plans afoot to develop the neighboring Cavaliers Country Club property. That proposal has been met by a save the course golf campaign.