In the era of Amazon Prime, do bricks-and-mortar malls still have a future?
Matt Seebeck thinks so. He’s just a “regular guy from Norwalk” tapped by Brookfield Properties Retail Group to manage the SoNo Collection, the new upscale shopping mall that opened in October in South Norwalk.
Located by the confluence of I-95 and Rt. 7 (Exit 15 off the interstate), SoNo is anchored by Nordstrom’s and Bloomingdale’s only stores in southern Connecticut.
Seebeck, whose title is senior general manager, calls the new project (open barely two months) “the most exciting new retail venture in the United States.”
“Malls are not dead,” Seebeck told an audience of about 150 at a board meeting of the Workplace Inc. held Dec. 20 at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, just as SoNo Collection was putting a bow on its inaugural holiday shopping season.
Even in the face of online challenges like the rollout of Amazon Prime in early 2019, Seebeck cited surveys revealing that “72 percent of [retail] customers want to touch and feel products before they buy,” he said. Can’t do that online.
What else can a physical mall provide that a retail website can’t? Call it the experience factor.
Retail centers can provide experiences, especially entertainment options, that go above and beyond simply buying stuff. Seebeck said SoNo seeks to provide shoppers “a fundamentally different experience that isn’t static — it’s different every time you go.”
Earlier this year, for example, the Westfield Trumbull Mall added Seaquest, an aquatic and underwater-themed attraction that includes live sea creatures that visitors can interact with.
Unlike malls, which in the 1960s and ‘70s proliferated in suburbs partly as a function of inexpensive real estate, SoNo Collection’s urban location determined its physical format — up, not out. The actual structure occupies an 11.2-acre footprint on a 13-acre pad. It also houses about 700,000 square feet of space vs. 1.1 million to 1.2 million for a typical suburban mall.
Accommodating that smaller space involves compromises — SoNo Collection has no food court, for example. But it still houses 86,000 square feet of what Seebeck called “public realm” space.
In addition, its urban location is hardly an accident, and is in fact an advantage: At the intersection of I-95 and Route 7 on South Norwalk’s North Water Street, SoNo sees some 167,000 motor vehicles pass by it on a typical weekday, Seebeck noted.
The big picture? Multifaceted public spaces can strive to become a key “third place” in consumers’ lives, following home and workplace — a “place of gathering” for entertainment, socializing and, yes, shopping. Seeback called it “connecting with the community.”
“We’re evolving with you,” he added.
