Colorado Mills reopens amid retail uncertainty
Colorado Mills’ comeback from a devastating springtime hailstorm begins at 10 a.m. Tuesday, when much of the mall opens its doors for the first time since May.
The relaunch of the 1.1 million-square-foot shopping complex in Lakewood — workers were still cleaning windows, stocking inventory and installing store shelves 24 hours beforehand — comes at a time of intense retail uncertainty in which online shopping continues to encroach on the traditional brick-and-mortar model.
There has been no shortage of stories this year about the troubles facing traditional mall anchors, like Macy’s, J.C. Penney and Sears, which have shuttered stores around the country as online shopping has exploded. This struggle is playing out at Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs, where earlier this month, the 1.2 million-squarefoot center was hit with a pair of foreclosure notices totaling $37 million.
And the forecast nationwide offers little hope. A report from Credit Suisse earlier this year warned that between 20 and 25 percent of shopping malls could close in the United States over the next five years.
The viability of Colorado Mills won’t start coming into focus until Tuesday, when shoppers get their first look inside the 15-year-old mall since the May 8 storm punched holes in the roof and poured untold gallons of water into the building, trashing store interiors and ruining millions of dollars worth of inventory.
Jon Schallert, a Longmontbased retail analyst with the Schallert Group, said not to count the shopping center out. Colorado Mills has enough spe-
cialty and outlet stores in its portfolio, along with a Super Target and a movie theater, that it is still an attractive destination for many consumers.
“Generic malls are in dire shape, especially in large metro areas,” Schallert said. “Colorado Mills has a large enough concentration of unique specialty stores that people are going to go there.”
West suburban consumers have developed alternate shopping patterns over the last half-year, whether it’s taking their business to Flatiron Crossing Mall in Broomfield or Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver, but those can be easily broken in the name of proximity and convenience, he said.
Plus, Schallert said, so many people are moving into the metro area each month that Colorado Mills will have a sizable new pool of customers to tap.
Paula Rosenblum, a retail analyst and managing partner with RSR Research, agreed. She said the lessthan-rosy prognosis for America’s malls — predicated on the idea that if an anchor store goes under, so does the mall — is overblown.
Smart mall operators can fill — and have filled — those failing spaces with other shopping options and provide the consumer with a compelling destination rather than just a place to dump dollars.
“It’s important to remember that shopping is a social experience,” Rosenblum said.
Simon Property Group, Colorado Mills’ owner, knows the retail game well and can adapt to changing market conditions, she said.
“These guys are not dumb guys,” Rosenblum said. “They know they have to create a destination.”
Gregg Goodman is president of The Mills, a Simon subsidiary. He isn’t concerned about the mall’s extended closure permanently driving consumers to other shopping centers or online retailers this holiday season.
“By and large, there is a hole in the market right now that has not been filled,” he said. “We are comfortable that by opening the doors and providing a customer experience in the same fashion that we have been doing in the past that our customers will be excited to come back and join us.”
Count Michelle Jones, an Arvada mother of three, among the excited.
“I didn’t realize how much we went there until it was closed,” said Jones, who plans to be at the mall Tuesday.
While she has had to take her shopping elsewhere in the last half-year, Jones said there are certain stores at Colorado Mills Mall that she wants to get back to, namely Ann Taylor, the Lego Store and the Nike Outlet Store.
In combination with some of the stores and restaurants surrounding the mall on West Colfax Avenue, she said, Colorado Mills serves as a time-saving one-stop destination.
“You can get a lot done over there if you need to,” Jones said.
Shoppers won’t see a fullstrength Colorado Mills on Tuesday, with only around 100 stores out of 160 retail spaces back open. They will join a half-dozen businesses with exterior entrances that opened earlier this fall.
Goodman said there has been little turnover on the mall’s tenant list during the extended closure. He said some retailers used the closure as an opportunity to roll out new store designs. Others will be new, like Los Chingones, a hip Mexican restaurant developed by well-known Denver restaurateur Troy Guard, that will open a location at the Mills next year.
Goodman said he expects full operations at the mall to resume in 2018.
“We will be working when the center is not open to finish that piece and get the other tenants back open,” he said. “We wanted to give people a chance to get back to work at their jobs, and we wanted to give the retailers in the center a chance to be open for all of the important holiday season and generate revenues.”
That won’t be the case for Jeff Cleveland, owner of Cleveland Creek Lodge & Log Furniture, who was allowed access to his retail space inside the mall only two days ago. He doesn’t expect to open his store for another couple of weeks.
He wished there had been better communication from Simon about who specifically would be able to open by Tuesday so that he could have been in a better position to restock and reopen.
“We wish we could have been back in business sooner,” Cleveland said. “We’re going to miss all the Black Friday sales, and we can never get those back.”