How much of an anomaly is Sarasota's new $315 million mall?
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Aug 21, 2014

A brand-new enclosed mall, like the one about to open in Sarasota, seems like an oxymoron, at least for those who conjure images of the pink-and-aqua retail hallways of the 1980s and 1990s when they hear the word "mall.” The Mall at Unversity Town Center is slated for a grand opening on Oct. 16, a $315 million project that took about two years to build. The mall represents thousands of jobs, between construction and retail employees, as well as a major anomaly in commercial real estate.

Open-air shopping centers have dominated retail development for several years. The last enclosed mall to open in the United States was in 2012, said Jesse Tron, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers.

That mall - City Creek Center in Salt Lake City, Utah - was also developed by Taubman Centers. Taubman partnered with Sarasota-based Benderson Development on the Mall at UTC.

Taubman, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "remains a mall believer.” It's under construction on another enclosed mall in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and owns several very prominent, very successful enclosed malls in Central Florida - among them International Plaza in Tampa and Mall at Millenia in Orlando.

Taubman, development director John Eggert said, decides individually whether each development should be an enclosed mall or an open-air center, and not the least of the considerations is the region's weather, which makes Florida a prime location for enclosed malls.

But there are some that won't make it, to be sure, according to Green Street Advisors, a real estate analytics firm. The company estimates "that roughly 15% of mall stock in the U.S. will close, or be fully or partially repurposed into something other than retail, over the next 10 years. That said, the lowest quality malls only account for a very small portion of total U.S. mall value.”

Ashley Gurbal Kritzer is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.