SoNo Collection mall nearly set to open its doors
At the world’s largest property company with assets of more than $250 billion, one would expect to find no shortage of people at the top of their fields, from real estate CEO Brian Kingston right down through the myriad managers overseeing specific projects.
Brookfield Properties may have no individual in its ranks better suited to assess the odds of success for the SoNo Collection mall than its senior general manager, Matthew Seebeck, given his Norwalk heritage and experience in Brookfield’s Northeast retail centers — and Seebeck says he has been sold from the getgo on the SoNo Collection.
The SoNo Collection opens Oct. 11 with a limited selection of stores on day one including Bloomindale’s and Nordstrom, but with more to follow in November. Depending on final configurations of storefronts, the mall can accommodate as many as 100 retailers, with Brookfield indicating this week it has filled in 90 percent of mall’s available spaces.
The mall will have other draws as well — a massive outdoor terrace overlooking Long Island Sound, a lightflooded atrium for people to idle with their laptops for work or pleasure, several fastcasual dining options situated throughout, and a parking garage designed to help SoNo Collection visitors get in and out quickly.
In short, as Amazon continues to redefine how people shop, the SoNo Collection represents a groundup reimagining of the classic American mall. With Brookfield sinking roughly $460 million into the project, the question is on the tip of the tongue for many in Norwalk and by extension America: will it work?
“I’ve been in the shopping center industry for a while now, and I recognized the same thing that Brookfield recognized when they looked at acquiring this (project),” Seebeck said. “We found the perfect piece of real estate . ... We have the retailers that the public is asking for — and that’s really the raison d’etre for a shopping center in the 21st century.”
The health of malls
Last year, Connecticut added one shopping center on a net basis across its 169 municipalities to give it 1,566 in all, according to CoStar, with the state tacking on nearly 200 additional retail establishments over the 12month period to push the total above 24,400 as tracked by the International Council of Shopping Centers.
ICSC calculated a 4 percent increase in property taxes paid last year by the owners of Connecticut shopping center owners however, to $288 million. The SoNo Collection is expected to displace Merritt 7 Corporate Park as the largest single contributor of property taxes to Norwalk among owners of commercial real estate.
The SoNo Collection will push the number of
enclosed malls nationally above 1,180 according to ICSC.
“More malls have opened (nationally) than closed,” ICSC spokesperson Shannon Troy told Hearst Connecticut Media. “Occupancy rates remain high — above 90 percent — which means malls are in a healthy state.”
But that is an average, with performance varying widely depending on the mall. In the first quarter of this year, Macerich saw only 21 of 40 malls nationally post increases for both tenant occupancies and sales per square foot on a yearoveryear basis, among the group of malls for which Macerich breaks out statistical data.
Those gainers included Danbury Fair, which had a 95.6 percent occupancy rate, with the mall one of three representing the nearest competitors to the SoNo Collection alongside Stamford Town Center and Westfield Trumbull.
The 21st century bazaar
The vitality of the SoNo Collection will now be paramount, with property taxes representing only one piece of that picture along with jobs — the center is expected to support as many as 2,500 at full tenancy, with the possibility that some of those new positions will be offset by retailers relocating to the SoNo Collection from other nearby retail centers.
Also an open question is the degree to which Norwalk could benefit by any spillover effect from the SoNo Collection as thousands of shoppers arrive daily for the holiday shopping season, and into the years to come.
The South Norwalk location represents a unique profile in Connecticut — like Stamford Town Center, the mall is within easy walking distance of its home city’s historic center, but also an easy drive to bustling retail strips on Connecticut, Main and Westport avenues, as the case with Danbury Fair, the Connecticut Post mall in Milford and several others statewide.
However Brookfield’s vision for the SoNo Collection plays out in the coming weeks and 2019 holiday shopping season, the company will have plenty of time to tweak its vision as it attempts to reimagine the retail experience, at America’s newest mall.
“We designed flexible ... space that is adaptable for the future,” Seebeck said. “The bazaar was here in 600 B.C., and it will be here in 6000 A.D. — it’s all about how we adapt to the way that our customers shop.”