One of Larry Brooks’ favorite sayings about business applies to the struggling Towne West Square in Wichita. “When everybody’s running for the exits, find a way back inside,” he said.
“People run in fear. When there is fear, there is opportunity.” Brooks is director of leasing for New York-based Kohan Retail Investment Group, which, in partnership with Florida-based 4th Dimension Properties, purchased Towne West Square in July 2019 for $14.1 million. The companies saw a lot of potential in the mall. Felix Reznick, principal at 4th Dimension, owns about 30 malls nationally and likes how Towne West is at the junction of Kellogg and I-235. “You (have) a massive amount of cars going by,” he said. Key for Reznick is the ability to develop land around the mall, and he said he had promising early interest from a car dealership and a government entity. Then the pandemic hit. “We just didn’t know we were going to go into a year and a half, two years of COVID.”
Charley Cooper is the manager of Wichita’s Towne West Square. The retail property has fallen on hard times in the past decade, but Cooper says she’s seeing good signs at the 40-year-old building. Towne West manager Charley Cooper’s arrival at the mall just about coincided with the pandemic. “People already saw this as a loss,” she said. “They were already saying, ‘Tear it down.’ ” Cooper won’t tolerate the talk. “I’m done with the negativity,” she said. “This is a Wichita institution. “Regardless of past problems that created the current Towne West situation, Cooper said the new owners appreciate unconventional ideas, such as temporary art installations, for traditional retail spaces. “My creative brain just really started to take off,” she said. “I feel like now in 2022, people are actually starting to see that progress that we’ve been working on for the last year.”
The mall’s food court had gotten down to only the Caffe Americana coffee shop and an Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop. Recently, Cheyenne Bullock decided to open her Shea’s Sol Kitchen there and believes fellow vegans will follow her to the mall.
A big win was the fairly quick replacement for the five-screen Movie Machine, which Regal closed during the pandemic. Cooper’s husband, Tyler, and his business partner, Ryan Blasdel, are opening Boulevard Theatres on the west side of the mall where the Movie Machine had been for years. “Towne West is a lot like the duck on the pond,” Tyler Cooper said. “There is a lot going on below the surface.”
A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Mike Kohan, managing member of Kohan Retail Investment Group, owns 60 malls on his way to what he hopes will be 100 soon. No single approach works for them all, he said, but the first step is to create a self-sustaining property. “We’re not looking to make tons of money when we begin.” Not counting the big box spaces at Towne West, like the former Dillard’s store that the Arkansas-based company still owns — which is separate from the popular Dillard’s Clearance Center still there — the inline spaces at the mall are about 60% occupied.
“We’re trying to attract the local tenants that really do need a place to open up a business,” Brooks said. “Malls over the years, because of their pricing structure, were an impediment to the mom and pop.” A distressed asset potentially offers better lease rates for local stores. “We won’t lock them into long-term leases,” Kohan said. “We’ll give them the opportunity to try the business and hopefully be successful and stay.” Charley Cooper said she sees how Towne West could achieve a vibe similar to Wichita’s Clifton Square, which is a collection of neighborhood shops in College Hill that combine to create a destination experience. “There are so many fantastic locally owned businesses that need space,” Cooper said. She said that can help bring national tenants, too. “They want to see that there’s a reason to be here.”
Cooper recently signed a five-space deal with the nonprofit OpenStudios to give free space for artists to work and do temporary art installations. “It’s a way to utilize some spaces that have been overlooked,” she said. The nonprofit pays the utilities. “It may not be a great retail use, but it’s going to bring people to the mall,” Brooks said. “That brings a new life, brings new things to the mall, and that will attract people.”
Cooper also signed recent deals for some tenants to move into larger spaces. Knockout Sneaker Boutique, for instance, jumped from 705 square feet to 2,565 square feet. A pet peeve of hers that sometimes people think stores move to bigger spaces at Towne West simply because there are so many empty spaces. “That’s not the case,” Cooper said. “These are stores that have grown. They have been able to grow their business into a bigger space.”
ALTERNATIVE USES
Regardless of how many local retailers are attracted to a mall, the biggest impact usually comes from a new type of nonretail use, such as an entertainment venue or office tenant. At 4th Dimension’s Shoppes of Bel Air in Mobile, Ala., a former Belk department store left a 126,000-square-foot space. That caught the attention of former NFL star Drew Brees, who is putting a Surge Entertainment by Drew Brees there. The venue combines sports, entertainment, and dining with a variety of options.
Towne West mall is a shell of the space it used to be, with many storefronts empty and food court with no vendors. Manager Charley Cooper sees better times ahead though with recent additions of local retailers and entertainment activities. “That is going to bring thousands of people on each weekend to the mall,” Brooks said. “It provides opportunity for other tenants and, quite frankly . . . profitability for us.” Brooks said the days of 150,000-square-foot and 200,000-square-foot clothing retail spaces are mostly over. “Those tenants don’t exist anymore.” Towne West already has some alternative users, such as 54 West Music Hall and 3:16 Slot Car Raceway. Brooks said he’s in conversations for more. He’d like to land the Drew Brees concept or something like it.
The new owners took another hit at Towne West when the Convergys call center left not long after their purchase. They were able to replace it with an MCI call center, though, which is in part of the former Sears space. Brooks said those 400 MCI workers need services and products at the mall, including more food. Some malls nationally are bringing back food options in the form of ghost kitchens, which is when food operators do short-term leases at vacant restaurant spaces but only operate for pick-up and delivery. It all goes back to “critical mass breeds more uses,” Brooks said. “What we see as a landlord, our main job is to bring people to the mall. . . . The more people that come there, we’ve done our job. Then it’s the tenant’s responsibility to get them in their space and sell them something.”
A SLOW U-TURN
Brooks has been to Towne West only once in the year he’s worked for Kohan. He’s signed a new contract with Wichita’s Landmark Commercial Real Estate to help handle leasing. Everyone involved describes it as a process. “This is an aircraft carrier trying to make a U-turn,” Brooks said. Kohan said he doesn’t have a concrete redevelopment plan for Towne West.
Regardless of past problems that created the current Towne West situation, Towne West manager Charley Cooper says the new owners appreciate unconventional ideas for traditional retail spaces. “I can’t do empty promises,” he said. “My own plan right now is bring more tenants.” He’d like something like a bowling alley, laser tag and more restaurants as he’s done elsewhere. Reznick said anything is a possibility. “If your readers want to write in and make suggestions of what’s missing in the community, if that’s a way to drum up business . . . we’re open for business.” That includes medical, educational, and governmental leases, too. Reznick said those kinds of leases can activate a mall beyond the more popular evening and weekend shopping hours. “Now, people with disposable income go to work and need something to do over lunch hour,” he said. “Now, you’ve activated a very different time period.”
He and Cooper hope people will give Towne West another try. “I think that there are opportunities here that maybe if people came down they could see that this is a very warm environment,” Reznick said. “There’s a church inside for reason.” Radiant Church holds services there. “You can come here and find things you’re looking for now, and you’ll probably find something you didn’t expect,” Cooper said.
She said she believes the No. 1 obstacle the mall faces is perception. Reznick said one key tenant can change that, such as the Drew Brees concept in Mobile. “It’s completely changed the opinion of folks,” he said. Brooks agreed, whether it’s one major tenant or a string of others, such as a call center and a movie theater that attract more people. “It’s not that simple, but it’s not that hard.”
Article by Carrie Rengers from the Wichita Eagle
