Lifestyle Centers

"Meanwhile, the era of the regional mall is coming to an undignified end. More than 300 malls currently stand vacant, and last year only nine were being built, nearly all of them contracted for long ago... The lifestyle center, on the other hand, is excitingly 21st century. It is easier to say that than to specify what one of these creatures actually is, but the International Council of Shopping Centers has helpfully come forward with a definition of sorts. A lifestyle center is an open-air mall with at least 50,000 square feet of specialty shopping, usually without a full-scale department store but nearly always with at least one sit-down restaurant... These centers aren’t sprouting up because developers have become acolytes of Andres Duany and the New Urbanists. They are sprouting up because they make money. A study by the consulting firm of Piper Jaffray found that lifestyle centers returned 60.8 percent on their investment after three years. During the same period, conventional malls were returning less than 50 percent."