Terminated vistas: focusing the power of urban retail

ROB STEUTEVILLE

Although the concept of the terminated vista has been known to retailers for years and is regularly used in some conventional shopping centers, it wields more power in an urban environment, according to experts interviewed by New Urban News. In suburbia, there is typically too little enclosure (in the case of a strip shopping center) or too much enclosure (on the inside of a mall) to give the terminated vista great significance.

The terminated vista — a view that focuses on a consciously chosen object or scene — is one of a number of tools that are useful to town center designers but unavailable or less important in conventional retail development. Other tools include the placement of buildings and entrances directly on the corners of significant intersections and the use of plazas or squares to give retailers high visibility.

Terminated vistas are important, experts believe, because they can:
• Increase sales.
• Attract important anchor tenants.
• Screen out less attractive elements of large retailing, such as parking lots and blank walls.
• Draw tenants toward a destination, getting them to walk past and possibly patronize other stores.
• Create an optical illusion, making destinations appear closer than they are and encouraging pedestrians to walk.

Historically, the terminated vista was usually reserved for important civic buildings. That is no longer the case, although civic uses still are placed at key locations in new urban communities. Modern retailing is far more competitive and programmed in a world of big box stores, power centers, and malls, and terminated vistas and other urban focal points possess economic power that developers and retailers cannot ignore. This is evident in the fact that key retailers demand such locations — and the fact that new urbanists design town centers around them.

“Terminated vistas either get higher rents, or the main tenants — the anchors — are demanding them as part of their negotiations,” says Birmingham Michigan-based planner and retail specialist Robert Gibbs. At The Glen town center in Glenview, Illinois, for example, anchors Galyans, an outdoors superstore, and Von Maur, a Midwest-based department store, both demanded and received terminated vistas, Gibbs says. “There is no question that the terminated vista is the premier spot in the retail lineup and the anchor stores know that,” remarked Seth Harry, an architect in Woodbine, Maryland.

A number of new urbanist town center designers, including Gibbs, Harry, and Terry Shook of Charlotte, North Carolina, are using zigzag — or crooked — main street designs. “Each zigzag is a deflected terminated vista — it terminates in both directions,” says Harry, who drew the plan on the lower right of this page that illustrates this concept. “This design also gives spatial definition to numerous [retail] courts, each of which becomes a unique place.”

The main street can be divided into a series of experiences, Harry says, with establishments grouped in ways that support each other. He calls this a “string of pearls.” The terminated vistas draw the shoppers from one “pearl” to the next, past all of the enticing windows of smaller shops, which typically pay higher rents (the anchors often cut deals because their signed leases are keys to financing). “The terminated vista gets people to walk past the in-line stores,” Harry says. “That is the economic engine that drives retail.”

Historic downtowns and main streets typically have a main-main configuration, Harry explains, in which the prime intersection gets the highest rents (see the illustration below). “In every direction when you move away from the main-main intersection, the rents drop off,” Harry explains. “It’s not a good model, although there is some good historic precedent.”

ANCHORS AS MAGNETS

The malls engineered a retail advance — anchors were placed away from the center, to function as magnets, forcing customers to walk from one end to another. New urbanists typically place key retailers at a series of focal points — around a main square, at terminated vistas, and at key intersections, helping to move pedestrian traffic throughout a center. “People are historically attracted to civic places,” says Bob Tiscareno of Tiscareno Associates in Seattle, Washington, a designer of new urban town centers. “There is an opportunity for retailers and large tenants to take advantage of these settings. It works for the retailer and for the public.”

The typical method of creating visibility in conventional suburbia — putting up a large sign advertising specific retailers along a large arterial road, is not the approach preferred by new urbanists. Town center designers have to be creative with architecture and urban design to provide that visibility, Tiscareno says. He points to the image of Dick’s Sporting Goods at the terminus of a main square in Crocker Park, near Cleveland (see image above). At such a location, “the image of the tenant becomes more significant,” Tiscareno believes, demonstrating to retailers that architecture and urban design brings a return on investment.

THE PREMIER SPOT

A central square on which a vista focuses would probably be the premier retail spot in a town center and would either command the highest rents or attract the key tenant, says Gibbs. Both Gibbs and Shook note that retailers are increasingly looking for the highest-energy urban location, as opposed to a spot on the edge of the town center near the arterial road. “They see it as being like a central court in a mall,” Gibbs says. “Everybody is going to be walking past that spot.” Gibbs adds that many developers put buildings on the interior of a square to boost rentable space, but they should resist that temptation. A square or plaza that’s left open offers an unimpeded view of retailers all around.

Douglas Storrs — codeveloper with Buff Chace of Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod, one of the first new urban town centers — agrees with many of the designers that a terminated vista will increase sales for a retailer. “A lot of shopping is spontaneous and if you come out of a café and see the Gap at the end of the street, you might be inclined to pop in and pick something up,” Storrs says. “That absolutely does happen and I would say it increases sales, but does it increase sales five percent? I don’t have those numbers, and I don’t think anybody else does.”

Storrs offers a story that illustrates the value of enclosing space in a town center. A few years ago a single-side row of shops in Mashpee Commons was given a sense of enclosure by building stores on the opposite side. It terminated the street with a Gap at one end and a CVS pharmacy at the other end (see photo on page 1). “The sales per square foot of the original tenants went up by as much as 15 to 20 percent,” Storrs says. “Now we have a double-loaded street with terminated vistas on both ends. Now there’s a reason for people to come on those streets.”

Mashpee Commons, which has a mix of local, regional, and national retailers, is able to attract national retailers to the terminated vistas, Storrs says. The national retailers get higher sales per square foot — revenue in which the developer shares. This allows the developer to put up multistory buildings with a higher level of architectural detail, Storrs adds.

The higher level of architectural detail generally applies to any prime retail spot in a new urban town center, including key corners. The problem with corners is that they need detailing on two sides. Key retailers want to be located on corners, but they may not want to pay higher rent, Gibbs notes. Designing a lot of corners “is the right thing to do,” Gibbs notes, “but planners and architects should be aware that developers will often come back and say that the corners are increasing the costs.” One solution — not an ideal one, says Gibbs — is to pick an “A” side of the corner for expensive detailing and a “B” side for less expensive materials and detailing.

One major retailer, Macy’s, has a prototype store with a rotunda at the corner that is designed to be placed at a key intersection in a town center. This store was built in City Place (see photo on page 6) in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Redmond Town Center in Redmond, Washington. The Redmond store has changed the flow of pedestrian traffic, essentially doubling the prime retail section of the project, Tiscareno reports.

Given the economic power of terminated vistas and squares, the question arises of whether retailers will outbid civic buildings to occupy key locations. Storrs believes the answer lies in a combination of “romantic” and “real world” planning. There’s a good deal of the romantic in Storrs and Chace’s attempt to recreate a New England village, and Mashpee Commons includes a church at a terminated vista and a post office at the middle of an important block. But there are limits. “Can you drop a fire station into the middle of a main street the way you see them in a lot of New England villages?” he asks. “I don’t think so. Fire stations have different needs these days.” Gibbs notes that most developers want civic buildings in their town centers, but they don’t want to give up revenue. “In most cases we are able to find a prominent civic site on a square or terminated vista that does not work well for retail for some reason,” he says.

Savvy retailers inherently sense the value of an urban focal point, Gibbs says. He points to a 20-year-old example, the revitalization of King Street in Charleston, South Carolina. The Omni Hotel and Saks Fifth Avenue are located where King Street deflects, and they are still going strong. “Taubman [the developer] could have gone anywhere,” Gibbs says, “and they picked the deflected view.”