Commercial Financing Super Regional Malls Description and Design

Super-regional shopping malls represent the largest single concentration of retail shops in the shopping center format. Super-regional malls, often more than one story in height, may exceed 1 million square feet in leasable area. A few “super-regional” malls are in excess of 2.1 million square feet; however, most are between 1.1 and 1.5 million square feet of gross leasable area. The term super- regional indicates that the market area the center serves has a population of 300,000 or more. The term mall indicates that the shops are to be clustered around a core area usually restricted to pedestrian traffic. Most of the recent successful super-regional malls have been totally enclosed, roofed, and air-conditioned. The tenants lease space for their merchandising area, plus basements and other storage space, employee rest areas, and offices. Tenants also pay a pro rata share of the expenses of operating the enclosed, purely public spaces in the mall; each share is based on a formula of the tenant’s percentage of gross leasable area to the total leasable area.

Super-regional malls are generally “anchored” by at least four major retail departments stores. These huge retailers have advertising budgets, reputations, and size that generate considerable shopping traffic. Anchor tenants often demand and receive rent concessions; they may even build and own their own buildings on space donated by the developer to attract them to the mall. In terms of rent paid, the anchors usually offer only break-even benefit to the developer; however, they are often key to the success of the other retailers, who pay higher rents to make up for the anchors’ concessions.

Besides the anchor department stores, a variety of other tenants are attracted to super-regional malls. The 10 most prevalent mall tenants (after department stores), listed in order of their occurrence, are

  • women’s ready-to-wear shops

  • jewelry shops

  • fast food carryout restaurants

  • menswear shops

  • women’s shoe stores

  • women’s specialty clothing shops

  • family shoe shops

  • card and gift shops

  • department stores

  • special apparel—unisex clothing shops

    • The design of the super-regional mall is often critical to the success of the non-anchor chain stores and local tenants. Such tenants get the exposure they need from the pedestrian traffic between the anchors. A four-cornered pattern creates the maximum amount of traffic for local shops. If a mall includes tenants such as restaurants or movie theaters, which create their own traffic, a central location on the pedestrian path is less critical. (Often, restaurants and movie houses will be segregated, if possible, as they often cause congestion and litter that are inconvenient to other tenants.)

    In addition to higher rents per square foot of leased space, retailers pay more to operate in a super-regional mall than to operate in an open-air or “strip” shopping center. This is primarily because mall tenants must pay a pro rata share of the cost of heating, cooling, and cleaning an enclosed pedestrian space.