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Remaking malls More changes are coming to Nashville’s indoor and outdoor retail centers BY WILLIAM WILLIAMS
he appearance and usage of largescale retail spaces nationwide are rapidly being altered. And Nashville’s indoor and outdoor malls are, not surprisingly, seeing such a facelift. The changes to both the form and function of indoor and outdoor retail facilities alike are being driven by multiple factors, not the least of which is a retail real estate industry that has been dramatically disrupted during a relatively brief time span. Many massive indoor malls have closed nationwide (think Bellevue Center locally) to accommodate major reinventions of the sites on which they operated, while large-scale outdoor retail strips are likewise seeing modifications that render them more “urban” in their form and function (for example, the Madison Town Center project planned for the Davidson County community from which that name derives). Clearly, this is not a new phenomenon. The former One Hundred Oaks mall was reimagined years ago, its main tenant now a Vanderbilt health facility. The ex-Harding Mall site has accommodated a Walmart Supercenter structure so long that only local old-timers remember when the property offered an indoor mall with, among others, a movie theater complex, Port O’Call record shop and a Dillard’s retail store. Around the country, many other malls are equally likely to be pushed into the history books. Steve Sadove, a former CEO of Saks, told Bloomberg News in mid-June that the combination of long-term trends and the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic will bring huge changes.
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“We’re in a reset period right now,” Sadove said. “There are 1,200 malls in the United States. I think in the next three or four years, a third of them may go away.” Today, Davidson County is home to a mere three conventional big-box indoor malls: The Mall at Green Hills, Opry Mills, and RiverGate Mall. And, as noted, many of the city’s older, large outdoor shopping centers — including Donelson Plaza, Lions Head Village (now home to a Trader Joe) and the renamed Hill Center at Nashville West (anchored by a Publix) — have seen significant updates so as to be more appealing to younger shoppers. Adding to this “new-look retail mix” is Hill Center Green Hills, which opened more than a decade ago and has been extremely popular. It has brought urban vibrancy to a site that previously accommodated typical suburban retail strip center. “The shift away from large regional shopping malls has been years, maybe decades in the making, pushed along by megatrends in technology and demographics,” says Jeff Kuhnhenn, Gresham Smith director of architectural design.
‘The shift away from large regional shopping malls has been years, maybe decades in the making, pushed along by megatrends in technology and demographics.’ JEFF KUHNHENN, GRESHAM SMITH
NASHVILLEPOST.COM | SUMMER 2020
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