As I mentioned last week, we continued the River Place “road shows” in Austin and Dallas.  While on the road, I had the opportunity to meet with the Vice President of Real Estate for Whole Foods Market at the company’s headquarters and flagship store in downtown Austin.

The reason for my visit to the Whole Foods HQ was simply to bring our contact up to speed on our plans for River Place, in the event the company decides to open new stores in Indianapolis.  The amount and type of consumer traffic that these stores generate is very desirable to a development like River Place, which is why many of the most successful mixed-use projects around the U.S. host a Whole Foods stores.

If you’ve not been to a Whole Foods store, it’s an amazing experience. Whole Foods Market has grown from a single, natural and organic foods store to a chain of 270 stores in North America and the UK. They are highly selective about what they sell and dedicated to quality standards and committed to, as they say on their website “a sustainable agriculture; while keeping the balance of the food chain, people and Mother Earth.” The Whole Foods website goes on to say that they respect the neighborhood and want to become an integral part of the community and demonstrates their neighborhood commitment by supporting food banks, sponsoring neighborhood events, compensating their team members for community service work and contributing at least 5% of total net profits to non-for-profit organizations. My conclusion after our recent meeting is the company’s employees embodies the philosophy stated on its web site.  Clearly, the people and culture that Whole Foods nurtures is the basis for this successful organization.

If you’re like me and the other 566,127 people that live within a 10 mile radius and roughly 15 minute drive time of River Place, keep your fingers crossed that Whole Foods considers our site, or at least a location somewhere between Fishers, Carmel, and the Geist Communities.  Here’s a couple blogs to check out: General Company blog or the blog of John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods.

Tomorrow, we continue our “road shows” for Centre Properties' River Place development.  My collegue Dean Almas and I will be meeting with national retailers based in Austin and Dallas, Texas.  From these Road Shows we hope to build the identity of River Place, provide retailers with a clear understanding of what we hope to accomplish with our development, and ultimately attract retailers to what we believe is going to be the most exciting mixed-use development in Indiana.

During our trip we’ll have the opportunity to also visit some of the most well known and successfully developed mixed-use lifestyle centers.  While in Austin we’ll visit the Domain. Simon Property Group, the developer, successfully integrated a retail lifestyle center with office, residential, entertainment, and hospitality products.

When we arrive in Dallas, we hope to take enough time to visit Legacy in north suburban Plano and Southlake Town Square, located in northwest suburban Southlake, Texas.  Both are innovative mixed-use projects that once again have combined a variety of retail, office, entertainment, and residential products to create thriving communities.

Later this week I’ll share my observations about these projects.

Over the past month, I have been doing “road shows” for Centre Properties to build awareness among national retailers of Centre’s new River Place development, which is an 86 acre mixed-use development located in north suburban Indianapolis.  During recent trips to Seattle, New York City, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Las Vegas, I’ve taken the opportunity to visit mixed-use projects, which incorporate residential and office elements into retail lifestyle centers.

I’ve taken note on how diverse these projects are in size, scope and product mix.  I was also struck by how successful some of these projects seem and how developers have found the one ingredient that may be the most influential element of creating a successful mixed-use project: the creation of “a sense of place” that holds the attention of consumers longer than the occasional trip to the mall. The sense of place comes from creating a pedestrian friendly environment that holds consumers with a more engaging experience than merely the traditional passive shopping experience found so often in enclosed malls and power centers. 

This was clear two weeks ago when on a Tuesday evening a colleague of mine and I dropped by Bayside in north suburban Milwaukee.  We arrived at the project at roughly 9:00 PM and were immediately struck by how many people remained at an hour and on a day of the week that I would have ordinarily expected to see little sign of life.  Instead, people milled around, ate in open air restaurants, and gathered in a square that was the central focal point of the development.  Clearly, the developer of Bayside found the ingredients that resulted in a broader experience for its visitors.

These experiences have been invaluable in helping to shape River Place and incorporating features, such as a gathering place and the river front park that we’re developing alongside the lifestyle center.