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Well said – absolutely correct. We need the downtown mall to be a destination for the hundreds of thousands of conventioneers and other visitors the city draws each year, as well as a shopping option for the increasing number of those who live and/or work downtown. If that means continuing to subsidize as companies and city did in the beginning to secure anchors – so be it! We never hesitate to pay mega $millions each year to subsidize professional sports teams that could well afford to pay their own way.
Very much agree. I recently returned from traveling to Atlanta for a long weekend. I was amazingly impressed by the Ponce City Market and how much the city has embraced it a destination spot to shop, eat, and socialize. The space is bookended by two major anchors in Williams & Sonoma and West Elm, but the rest of the space is made up of a large food hall, small artisanal makers and boutique clothing brands as well as art installations. It even has a roof top space overlooking the neighborhood. By curating the right kind of small business, it really created a nice community within the space. The owners of the mall do need to take a long, hard look at the Circle Centre space and how it impacts the vision of the city around it as well as the amazing convention traffic we see from the successful team at Visit Indy.
Along with the above commenters, we need to use this prime real estate as a focal point for visitors (and city workers) as a place you’d want to visit… I think this would be a perfect place to showcase the Indy 500 as an interactive exhibit/museum (as an extension to what is currently available at Speedway).
I like the above suggestion of an art space and food hall (although that might take away from the City market).
They need to work on the infrastructure of the mall. Ensure that they have working escalators and elevators!
For years, Circle Centre was a centerpiece for the city. If huge efforts are not made it will be the abyss of the city. It is important to recognize the demographic change occurring downtown with the influx of residential developments. People living downtown want the same convenience (or more) that can be experienced in the suburbs. They need value shopping venues, hardware stores, groceries, etc., that just aren’t that readily available. Buckhead Station in Atlanta has an excellent mix of tenants to replace the retail giants that were thought to be required anchors. Low cost retailers like T.J. Maxx, Nordstrom Rack, DSW, Old Navy, are doing well at Buckhead Station. A tenant mix like that, combined with specialty restaurants, hardware, sporting goods, and grocery stores thrown in would satisfy the needs of a lot of downtown residents and bring new life to the current morgue environment.
I’ve always wished that we had a time square type vibe to parody the Monument Circle. I know it’s a pipe dream, but I think it would be amazing to have a giant crystal IndyCar that would drop on the mall’s roof, above the Movie Theater that’s across from the PNC Center loading docks. Making the area and the inside feel more lively with community activities\festivals would encourage people to go in and use the mall. There’s usually festivals and activities going on in the winter, so they could take advantage of the fact that people don’t want to be outside freezing in December-March and maybe make new traditions.
Our mall has always been a tourist mall so it really wouldn’t have made sense for a store that sells candles for $30 when you can’t burn them in a hotel room or endless selections of shirts when a person might just need 1 or 2. But if your luggage breaks you only have TJ Maxx to buy something else. A lot of people visiting our mall have budgets or are kids sent here with only a certain amount of money to spend the entire time they’re here, so they’re most likely only going to spend it on experiences and things their friends spend money on. They also don’t have a lot of time here, so they won’t spend money or time on things that take too long and they aren’t going to buy what they can buy back home here at our mall. TJ Maxx is always busy, so I feel like we are mainly missing the home stores, furniture stores, electronic stores, big hardware for downtowners and then unique things that people from out of town can’t get elsewhere.
I saw in a lot of studies published here on the IBJ in the past that mentioned home furnishings, décor and furniture of all sizes as being the biggest retail demand right now. People who rent or buy downtown or within the vicinity have to travel to the suburbs or just go without. I think downtown would feel more like a completion solution for those who live downtown if we had another hardware store and a HomeGoods Store and possibly TJX’s new concept HomeSense. They’re already doing really well at Claypool court, so I think if the rent was right it’d make sense for them. Since the mall is already putting in street level access for tenants, I feel like they could easily support a 1 or 2 story furniture store that uses one of the alleys or side streets for car/truck loading. In the early 1900s Indy had all kinds of furniture makers and furniture stores downtown.