16 Highlands Ranch Herald
June 14, 2018J
Southwest Plaza evolves with ‘experiential’ attractions Aquarium is latest addition to mall’s day-out offerings BY DAVID GILBERT DGILBERT@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
The indoor malls of yesteryear that once played host to department stores and shoe stores, with food courts and dark corridors, are largely gone. In their place have arisen mixed-use outdoor lifestyle hubs like Streets at SouthGlenn in Centennial, which replaced the longstruggling Southglenn Mall. Southwest Plaza, in southern Jefferson County at West Bowles Avenue and South Wadsworth Boulevard, however, is banking on a new strategy for an old-school indoor mall: creating a place worthy of a full day out, with attractions like the newly-opened SeaQuest Interactive Aquarium.
Southwest Plaza Mall general manager Greg Sims stands on one of the mall’s revamped walkways. Southwest Plaza is emerging as a home of family attractions and dining in the years following a major renovation. DAVID GILBERT “We’ve got to be more open-minded about malls and what goes into them, and anything is fair game,” said Greg Sims, Southwest Plaza’s general
manager. “Indoor malls were dying because owners thought ‘if you build it, they will come,’ and you don’t have to do anything else. But you have to keep evolving. You need ownership that’s willing to adjust and be flexible. Those that are stuck are stuck. Those willing to break out of the box are going to be here.” Southwest Plaza underwent a massive $70 million renovation that wrapped up in 2015, which sought to reinvent the stuffy indoor mall design left over from the hair band era. Aside from significant infrastructure upgrades, the renovation pushed the mall’s storefronts farther back, creating more airy walkways and better lines of sight. But the more fundamental change is coming to fulfillment, with the mall now boasting a slew of attractions beyond chewy pretzels and Orange Julius. Besides the aquarium, Southwest
Plaza now hosts Round 1, a bowling alley and arcade; Yoga Pod, a fitness and yoga studio; fast-casual eats like Mod Market; and sit-down dining like a gleaming Cheesecake Factory. The mall, with 1.2 million square feet of floor space and 94 storefronts, is proving to be resilient and versatile, even in the face of a retail landscape shifting increasingly online. “We’ll work with retail while it’s trying to figure itself out,” Sims said. “But we’ve got other options now too.” The gambit seems to be paying off, Sims said, with vacancy rates below 10 percent, down from a high of nearly 30 percent in the waning years of the recession. Southwest Plaza is well-positioned to be a vital community hub, said Bob Golden, the CEO of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce.
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