Owners and developers look to successful projects for inspiration. They should. But studying what makes a place work is different from trying to replicate it.
At Streetsense, we see this often. A project opens, performs well, wins awards, and suddenly everyone wants their version of it. It is easy to assume that what worked in one market will work in another.
What gets lost is the context.
Successful places bring together tenants, uses, design, programming, and public space that fit a particular consumer, market, and moment. Copying the ingredients does not reproduce the conditions that made those places work.
Too often, developers decide what a project should look like before understanding who it is for or what the market needs. Precedent imagery and a tenant wish list take the place of a clear assessment of demand.
Walk through enough new mixed-use projects and the pattern becomes familiar: A coffee shop. A fitness concept. A few chef-driven restaurants. Wellness. Beauty. Aspirational soft goods. Outdoor seating. Maybe an entertainment use. Each can be a good choice. But when every project draws from the same playbook, places become interchangeable.
Being new is not the same as being different.
We shouldn’t be asking, “What successful project should we emulate?” but rather, “What does this market need that it does not already have?”
Answering this question takes more than a tour of successful developments. It means understanding where consumers spend their time, what they leave the market to find, what competitors do well, and which needs remain unmet.
A merchandising strategy should turn that understanding into a clear point of view: who the place is for and why someone would choose it.
The mix might include national brands, local or regional operators, or concepts new to the market. In some cases, it may require creating opportunities for businesses that do not fit neatly into a traditional leasing model. The choices should follow the demand.
This matters well beyond the retail space itself. Retail, food and beverage, and the public realm may occupy a small share of a development, yet they often define the personality of the entire asset. They influence whether people want to live there, work there, stay there, or return on the weekend. They create the energy people remember and the experience they associate with the project.
When those uses help define the value of everything around them, defaulting to a familiar tenant mix is a missed opportunity.
At Streetsense, we see how this plays out in practice. At The Parks at Walter Reed, a large mixed-use development in Washington, D.C., ownership believed the project’s scale and an apparent gap in the market could support lifestyle retail focused on soft goods. But limited access constrained the trade area. The development’s size alone could not expand the pool of customers those retailers could realistically draw.
The stronger opportunity was a gourmet grocer and higher-end services that meet the needs of the residents buying and renting homes there. Today, Whole Foods and a mix of service retailers anchor the development.
On another project north of Tampa, our client had entitlements for 2 million square feet of retail. Our demand studies showed support for about 150,000 square feet initially, growing to roughly 400,000 square feet over 10 years.
That finding changed the basis for planning. Understanding demand early helps an owner phase retail appropriately and avoid committing to space the market is unlikely to fill.
Both examples illustrate why the work has to begin with the market. A development’s scale, entitlements, or resemblance to a successful project cannot tell you what people will use or how much retail it can support.
We do not need another version of a place that already exists. We need places with clear reasons to exist in the markets they serve.
Image courtesy of Hoffman-Madison Waterfront.
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