Grand designs

LOVELAND – John Lang, economic development officer for San Jose, Calif., said he had heard the same question many times before: How has the swanky, 600,000-square-foot Santana Row retail-and-entertainment center affected existing businesses that surround it?

A similar question is percolating around Northern Colorado in the wake of the announcement by developers of Loveland’s Centerra project that they would build a project almost twice the size of Santana Row just northeast of the Interstate 25/U.S. Highway 34 interchange.

The million-square-foot Grand Station that developers are calling Centerra’s new “heart” has caused a palpable edginess among downtown business boosters from Greeley to Loveland to Fort Collins. While the three cities are apples, and San Jose and Columbus, Ohio, are oranges, Grand Station developers say it still makes some sense to gauge how similar projects have melded into their regional economies.

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“It doesn’t look like we’ve lost any business downtown because of Santana Row,” Lang said. “We think it’s more of a benefit than anything else.”

When the new project opened with an array of high-end, exclusive retail tenants in 2002, other retail centers in southern San Francisco Bay communities braced for the blood-letting. They ranged from an aging shopping mall across a busy boulevard from Santana Row to a similarly upscale retail center in Palo Alto, 20 miles north, to San Jose’s downtown retail district about five miles away.

But the sky did not fall, Lang said.

“I know there were concerns that Stanford Shopping Center (in Palo Alto) would lose some of its draw to Santana Row,” Lang said. “But looking at Palo Alto’s sales tax history, it doesn’t look like anything has happened. It’s providing as much or more now.”

Worldwide span

Baltimore-based Development Design Group Inc., the architecture and planning company that designed Grand Station and scores of other town centers and retail-entertainment complexes worldwide, also keeps close tabs on the way its projects affect the communities where they are built.

So, too, do economic development agencies in areas where DDG, as the firm is best known, install their town-center developments.

When DDG opened the Easton Town Center, with more than a million square feet of retail, entertainment and hospitality space in northeast Columbus, Ohio, in 1999, downtown retailers and other centers cringed.

But worst fears evaporated, as Easton’s energy and vitality spread into adjacent areas and downtown Columbus, about eight miles southwest of Easton, began a renaissance of its own.

“I think honestly it had a great impact on the positive side,´ said Cynthia Rickman, spokeswoman for the Columbus Department of Development. “In terms of job growth and revenue generation, it was a big plus.”

In the six years following the opening of the Easton center, Columbus added more than 4,000 residential units to its downtown core, jumpstarting a retail rebirth in the district, Rickman said.

‘On its way back’

“In the first couple of years following the opening of Easton, our downtown City Center Mall was really affected,” she said. “But now, our downtown is really on its way back. … I think most people will say Easton is a wonderful asset to the city of Columbus.”

Simon Sykes, the project architect for Grand Station and a native of Manchester, England, who has been with DDG about 20 years, said he has seen first-hand how the company’s mixed-use town centers have attracted tenants that would not likely seek out existing urban core areas.

Sykes said he had spent time in downtown Fort Collins during his frequent visits to Centerra, and regards the city as almost impervious to the competition that Grand Station would present.

“You’ll never take anything away from Fort Collins,” Sykes said. “I’ve never seen so many restaurants, and so many people dining outside, as I have in Fort Collins. That’s not going to change. Grand Station is a different product. It offers to the whole regional community another destination.”

The McWhinney staff spent a portion of the Grand Station planning process assessing the impact of DDG projects in other communities, interviewing chamber of commerce officials and other business leaders.

“What we’ve heard from elsewhere is that these projects create a rising tide that lifts all boats,´ said Chris LaPlante, vice president for mixed-use development at McWhinney and project manager for Grand Station.

“We believe that this is going to be a major catalyst, not just for Centerra but for the entire region.”