The allure of NorthPark Center

as we talked to commercial real estate experts, we heard it over and over: NorthPark Center is one of the top five malls in the country.

“There’s a lot to be said for the power that NorthPark has,” says David Shelton, who places NorthPark in the top tier in terms of sales and co-tenancy, or mix of retailers — both middle-market fashion and extreme high-end boutique retailers.

“and tenancy drives a lot of decisions that retailers will make,” Shelton says. actually, says Derek Wood, NorthPark Center’s leasing director, “we’re no. 7.” That’s the ranking he derives from the amount of sales per square foot in the center. It’s an even more impressive number if you consider that “all the ones bigger than us have a bigger tourism component (California, Florida, Honolulu),” Wood says. “We don’t have gambling; we don’t have oceans; we don’t have mountains.” either way, it means that when any major mall-type retailer is looking to make a move to Dallas, NorthPark will be the first place it looks. So when international retail giant H&M made its announcement this past October about an impending store opening in big D, it came as no surprise that NorthPark would be its first Dallas home.

No. 5, no. 7 potato, potahto.

Wood says H&M was by far the no. 1 most requested store via website feedback. He began talking to H&M in 2003 about opening in NorthPark.

“We’re always looking for the best retailer in each category — the coolest, the hottest, whatever,” Wood says. So H&M was an obvious target.

“When you look at the top global brands, they’re the no. 2 fashion retailer in the world behind Louis Vuitton. They’re the best at fast fashion,” Wood says.

H&M opened a temporary shop in December, and its NorthPark flagship store is slated to open in October 2011. The future location of H&M’s 24,000-squarefoot flagship store in the mall hadn’t been announced at press time. Webb says there will be “some movement” before H&M moves in, but once its location is made known, “it will all make sense” in terms of NorthPark’s strategic layout, Webb says.

Perhaps you’ve noticed the center’s strategic layout, which Webb calls “cluster

Homegrown Hits

the map.

SINELLI CONCEPTS: WHICH WICH AND BURGUESA BURGER

FIRST RESTAURANT

Which Wich: Downtown Dallas, December 2003

Burguesa Burger: Inwood and Harry Hines, May 2009 (closed)

TOTAL STORES WW: 115; BB: three

CLOSEST TO OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WW: NorthPark Center, Northwest Highway and 75

COMPANY PHILOSOPHY Dallas’ Jeff Sinelli founded Genghis Grill before selling the company in 2003, then launched Which Wich — more than 50 varieties of sandwiches with a unique ordering system (grab a paper bag; mark meat, topping and condiment selections; wait for sandwich to be made and delivered in same paper bag). The concept quickly spread across Dallas-Fort Worth, then Texas, and then the country. He still owns the original location; the rest are franchised. Whereas Which Wich is a “new, current, hip, young sandwich brand,” Sinelli says, his latest concept, Burguesa Burger, was developed with longtime Hispanic employee Pablo Gallegos and is a burger joint with both Mexican and American influences. The menu is in both English and Spanish, and restaurants accept both dollars and pesos.

EXPANSION PLANS A dense population of lunchtime eaters drove Sinelli’s decision to open the original Which Wich Downtown. “That’s where you start you want to make sure you have a core of customers,” he says. “But as the brand developed, we found that we had customers in the suburbs the schools, the families, the soccer moms” who patronize the restaurant. More than 115 restaurants later, Sinelli says Which Wich is looking to fill in areas where the restaurant already exists and is fielding calls from throughout the country, plus Canada, Mexico and even Europe. Does that mean more Dallas locations? “Absolutely,” Sinelli says. “We would love to have more 214 [area code] locations, pretty much inside the 635 loop. (Yes, he’s interested in the Lake Highlands Town Center, once it materializes.) We’ve found the model to do quite well in lifestyle centers, a combination of residential and restaurants.” Burguesa Burger, however, is Which Wich’s “polar opposite,” Sinelli says. “We’re still exploring with the model, and as we know more, it really belongs to the Hispanic community. Unlike Which Wich, a restaurant that “needs to be in a place that’s brand new because we expect Which Wich to be there 20 years-plus,” Burguesa fits best in second-generation restaurant space. “There are more restaurants than needed right now, so why not recycle old ones instead of building new ones?” Sinelli asks. “And if you do it right, you can literally save hundreds of thousands of dollars — or pesos, as we say in Burguesa.”

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retailing”? The layout strategy solidified after the May 2006 expansion, which doubled the mall’s size.

Essentially, stores are grouped by theme: luxury stores near Neiman Marcus; children’s stores on the lower level between Macy’s and the escalators; teen and tween stores around the food court and AMC movie theater; Baby Boomer favorites on the lower level near Nordstrom; 20- and 30-something finds on the upper level as customers turn the corner from the teen hallway; and “the best of what you find in every shopping center” between Dillard’s and Macy’s, Webb says.

Being no. 7, NorthPark can call such shots. It also has other distinctions that set it apart — Shelton says “you go to pretty much any mall in the country, and you’ve got kiosks. Landlords make a tremendous amount of money in leasing kiosk space.”

NorthPark could do the same, he says, “but they choose not to. They choose aesthetics over income in that respect.”

If NorthPark added kiosks, its customers “might be bombarded by solicitation, and we want for you to have a more peaceful shopping experience,” says Vail Tolbert, NorthPark public relations and events manager, who stresses that artwork, landscaping and charitable displays are all of crucial importance to Nancy Nasher, whose father, the late Raymond Nasher, developed NorthPark in the 1960s.

Yes, these factors appeal to wealthy customers, but Webb says though “we do have a high-end image over here, at the same time we’re not just all about luxury. We like to say we’re Gap to Gucci and everyone in between.”

The center contains roughly 225 retailers and restaurants, and boasts of having more than 100 unique stores compared to its nearest competitor, the Dallas Galleria.

H&M adds a large feather to NorthPark’s cap, but Webb says it’s isn’t finished yet.

The top retailers are “always in flux, and always will be. The second you’re stagnant is when you should be worried,” Webb says.

He’s not naming names, but there are “definitely five to 10 retailers we would like to add to the mix because they’re not in Texas yet.”

GO ONLINE TO READ AN EXTENDED VERSION of this NorthPark Center profile: lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/retail.