What Retail Development Says About the Future of the American City

This spring, the Las Vegas High Roller – now the tallest Ferris wheel on earth – carried its first passengers to a stunning height of 550 feet. The High Roller is a striking addition to the Las Vegas Technicolor skyline – but I am even more excited by what is happening at its base.

In partnership with Caesar’s Entertainment, my company developed The Linq, the quarter-mile outdoor retail, dining and entertainment district that sits at the foot of the High Roller. It is our hope that The Linq will not only be part of a new approach to retail and retail development, but also part of a new urbanism that can help to create more vibrant communities anywhere in the U.S.

As I’ve said before in this column, Americans are lonelier than ever: some 40 percent of adults report being lonely, nearly double the number from 30 years ago, and our social networks are a full third smaller than they were then. We’re also far more likely to live alone: today, 25 percent of U.S. homes have just one occupant.

In a lonelier, more divided world, do we need a new concept of community? Across the country, many planners, city leaders, retailers, and developers like myself think we do. For my part, I believe that urban planning can play a significant role in restoring our sense of closeness and community.

American developers and planners are beginning to take their cues from the central, open areas that make European cities delightful places to visit – from the car-free Stroget pedestrian mall next to the Copenhagen City Hall, to London’s Covent Gardens, which includes the Royal Opera House and other cultural attractions.

Europe’s centuries of experience tell us that it is only human nature to want to unwind in open and inviting places. We want room to stroll, in environments where natural light and fresh air provide a contrast to the stifling atmosphere of indoor malls and a relief from our workaday lives. Add engaging entertainment and cultural experiences to such environments and a retail area can become the living heart of a community.

I’ve seen this play out at my company’s properties in Southern California, but it holds true all over the U.S. In Columbus, Ohio, the defunct City Center Mall closed in 2009, but it rose again from the ashes in 2011 with a complete new identity as a community gathering place, thanks to the addition of a nine-acre park, an outdoor concert stage, and a children’s carousel. Where the old mall once languished, the community is now embracing mixed-use development – including new and more vibrant physical retail.

And in Centennial, Colorado, developers tore down every single building between the Southglenn Mall’s north and south anchors, and built a new neighborhood from the ground up. In 2009, they unveiled a 77-acre grid, featuring not only shopping and residential development, but also a new branch of the local public library to serve the surrounding community.

We designed The Linq to be part of this shift toward experience - and community -driven development, designed to maximize pleasantness instead of sales per square foot. Locals and tourists alike can walk the boulevard and sit on the patios of rooftop lounges and open-air restaurants. Inside The Linq’s stores, commercial transactions have been recast to give shoppers experiences they’ll remember, not just goods to take home in shopping bags.

In sheer business terms, retailers are finding that the draw of experience-driven centers exceeds traditional, indoor retail spaces. But communities themselves also are embracing retail’s new reality.

Civic leaders are turning to physical retail as a means to revive their community centers and catalyze economic growth. Efforts such as Houston, Texas’ Retail Task Force, charged with reinvigorating retail downtown, are underway in big cities and small towns across the U.S. And in my native Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s new Great Streets initiative is making improvements to up to 40 city corridors to kick start economic activity, including retail, and improve community gathering places like plazas and parks.

Neighborhoods anchored by thriving retail are quickly becoming the center of town. Consider the Southlake Town Square in South Texas: where there was once 130 acres of farmland, there is now a bustling civic center, complete with townhouses, a U.S. post office, a city hall, and of course, 550,000 square feet of retail, restaurants, and entertainment.

By blending the public and the private, the cultural and the commercial, the outdoors and the indoors, we are finally acting on the obvious realization that our cities are made for us, not the other way around. Expect to see more developments that will reinvigorate our sense of community by enhancing the activities that bring us together.

Photo: The Linq in Las Vegas/Caruso Affiliated