Mixed-use or multi-use: is there a difference?

The following, in its entirety, is a dispatch from Riccardo A. Davis, managing editor of Retail Traffic magazine, from the Conference on Open-Air Centers sponsored from Feb. 14-16, 2007, in Phoenix by the International Council of Shopping Centers:


Hospitality is top of mind among the attendees of the 2007 ICSC Conference on Open Air Centers.

But it’s not the accommodations or the level of service being rendered at the conference site in Phoenix, the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa.

During the welcoming reception Wednesday evening, upbeat developers and architects were abuzz about their as yet announced mixed-use projects.

While they wouldn’t share specific details such as the projects’ site, each noted a key driver in its anticipated success as the hotel.

The next morning during the general session titled, “Mixed Use” - Should Your Company Be in Mixed-Use Development," two panelists, both developers of mixed-use projects, added fuel to the fire.

“With hotels, you get a premium on residential sales, rentals and higher occupancy rates,” said Yaromir Steiner, CEO of Steiner + Associates. He added that demand for hotels is rising because they are seen as critical to generating above-average returns at mixed-use projects.

Steiner’s fellow panelist, Lee Wagman, CEO of The Martin Group, notes mixed-use’s fast-growing popularity is fueled by projects that most successfully combine several elements into a cohesive whole.

He was clear, his definition of mixed-use incorporates three or more components into a live, work and play environment that creates a high-density hub.

Wagman says, “Two uses is “multi-use, not mixed-use.”


Are multi-use and mixed-use actually different? Or can the terms be used interchangeably? Are they in fact being used interchangeably when it might make more sense to preserve a distinction?

Permalink: http://womblemultifamilyandmixeduse.blogspot.com/2007/02/mixed-use-or-multi-use-is-there.html

Mixed use approaches middle age

In the Jan. 22, 2007, issue of Real Estate Business Online, http://www.rebusinessonline.com/article_archive/01-22-07.shtml, shopping center consultant Jeff Green speculates on whether lifestyle centers and mixed use have run their course, or whether there is life remaining in the form. He concludes that there is plenty of time and life left.

Mixed-use developments, Green notes, "are appealing to communities, including the high growth ones with outstanding demographics. They are a means to jump-starting a community destination or gathering place and, when done well, have a valuable role in identity building. And, unlike some of the pie-in-the-sky streetscape programs of the past, the best communities are listening to the end-users, bringing about mixes of uses that are less likely to sit empty."

As far as what the future holds, Green has some interesting speculation:

"In the quest for locations for retailers, the lifestyle center must continue to find holes of potential. This means becoming more of a community hub that can combine destination, convenience and service. We are already seeing smaller lifestyle centers, often no more than 80,000 square feet, which are comparable in size to most strip centers. As developers identify these niche locations and demographics, there is an opportunity to re-introduce, in up-scaled fashion, the service component of retail that is often missing in the modern environment. Examples include hair salons, smaller spas and skin care centers, designer eyeglasses centers, ethnic and specialty grocers, or artisan bakeries.

"The lesson or direction is not to overstore America by building another generic or prototype lifestyle center wherever one can be shoehorned in, as we may have done in the heyday of regional malls and their department store anchors. Prototype centers may have been OK for the first incantation of lifestyle centers. Not now."

The idea is not to repeat with mixed-use and lifestyle centers the same errors that were made with traditional malls.

Permalink: http://womblemultifamilyandmixeduse.blogspot.com/2007/01/mixed-use-approaches-middle-age.html