Do Lifestyle Centers Works?

"What should actually be one of the easiest questions to answer — just what constitutes a lifestyle center — becomes more difficult as more such centers are built and the format evolves. The earliest of these projects -- such as The Shops at Saddle Creek, Germantown, Tenn., which opened in 1987 -- were anchorless and had a strip center layout, with well under 200,000 square feet of gross leasable area. Instead of having department stores to draw shoppers, they relied on 'the finest of national specialty shops and restaurants,' said Terry McEwen, president of Memphis, Tenn.-based Poag & McEwen, which developed Shops at Saddle Creek."