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NEW KID IN TOWN

Older shopping centers prepare for ABQ Uptown, Albuquerque’s first lifestyle center

BY DEBRA HAZEL

Albuquerque, N.M.’s first lifestyle center is not even scheduled to open until June of next year, but it is already shaking up the city’s retail scene.

ABQ Uptown, as the project is called, is part of a mixed-use development going up in a northeast section of Albuquerque called Uptown, traditionally the center of the city’s retail. Anticipating some competition from this newcomer, the owners of two neighboring malls are planning major changes.

ABQ Uptown (ABQ stands for Albuquerque) will not only bring a new style of shopping to this city, but a bunch of new retailers as well.

“There will be just a few tenants here who are already in the market,” said John Sedberry, president of locally based Sedberry Associates, ABQ’s retail broker firm. “A few will be new to the state.” Chico’s and Talbots are two of the newcomers to the market, while Coldwater Creek, J.Jill and Jared’s Jewelers are among those entering the state for the first time.

The first phase, scheduled to open in June of next year, will contain 200,000 square feet of retail, and the second stage will unroll 150,000 square feet of offices and 450 multifamily housing units. A third phase is to contain a hotel and additional office and retail space, as well as condominiums.

Hunt Uptown, ABQ Uptown’s developer, is a subsidiary of El Paso, Texas-based Hunt Building Corp., which has built some retail but largely specializes in multifamily housing for the military. ABQ Uptown will feature a Main Street configuration, with wide sidewalks, seating and fountains to encourage pedestrians to linger.

The center is going up between two regional malls. One of these is General Growth Properties’ Coronado Center, which opened in 1964. The anchors of this 1.2 million-square-foot enclosed mall are Foley’s, JCPenney, Macy’s, Mervyn’s and Sears. General Growth says it is assessing the changes it wants to make to Coronado and will present a plan this summer. The firm planned to tear down part of the mall and replace it with an open-air component. Hunt Uptown blocked the proposal on the grounds that it did not meet city requirements for a mix of uses, not just retail.

On the other side is the largely vacant Winrock Mall, which has been struggling for some time, according to Sedberry. Winrock, built in 1960 by the late Winthrop Rockefeller — he later became governor of Arkansas — was the first enclosed mall in the state. But over time the five-anchor Coronado gained prominence, as did Simon Property Group’s Cottonwood Mall, north of the city.

At press time, Winrock co-owners Prudential Real Estate Investors and Cousins Properties were proposing a de-malling of the 931,000-square-foot center. Plans call for installing category killers and entertainment tenants, the owners say, but existing anchors Bed Bath & Beyond, Borders Books, Dillard’s (separate men’s and women’s stores) and SportMart would remain. Most of the specialty tenants are gone, having left as leases expired.

ABQ Uptown is going up on the 30-acre site of a long-closed Roman Catholic high school. Several developers have expressed interest in the site over the years, with plans to build power centers and office projects. But these clashed with the city’s 1981 Uptown Sector Redevelopment Plan, which encouraged mixed-use development.

The city is keen to preserve the area’s concentration of retail, though.

“This is and has been the core of retail,” said Bob Feinberg, a senior vice president and principal of Albuquerque-based brokerage Grubb & Ellis/New Mexico. With open desert on the west side of the market and forests to the east, people tend to live toward the north and east in Albuquerque. Financial services companies provide a solid daytime market to Uptown.

Furthermore, Albuquerque is growing. The population was 472,000 in 2003, according to the University of New Mexico, but by 2010 that will rise to about 500,000, according to the City of Albuquerque Planning Department.

Aided by manufacturing and, to a lesser degree, a military presence, “the market is good, strong, vibrant,” said Feinberg. Nearby Los Alamos and other laboratories provide a steady supply of well-paid scientists. Trader Joe’s recently arrived, and Target has expanded its store.

But is the market solid enough for three retail centers right next to one another? Feinberg says he anticipates that the new center will shake up the market.

“Three malls like this in downtown Chicago would have a problem,” he said. Albuquerque is still a tertiary market, though, he says.

Atlanta-based Cousins is much more sanguine.

“There is no conflict,” said Robert Manarino, CSM, the firm’s senior vice president and director of Western region development, new sites. “They’re a lifestyle center, where we will be an open-air large-format community center.”

What’s more, he adds, there will be enough customers for all the projects. “We’re a stable, healthy market.”