2025 Top 10 Retail Center Experiences: No. 1 Crocker Park
Some 20 years ago, Bob Stark, the founder and chairman of Cleveland-based Stark Enterprises had a bold idea.
Major corporations had moved their headquarters to Cleveland's western suburbs, but they couldn't move the city. Bob had the idea to fill the downtown social and shopping void with the visionary mixed-use development of Crocker Park, where residents live in apartments atop tenants the likes of Apple, L.L. Bean, Coach, The Cheesecake Factory, H&M, Macy’s, Lululemon, Nordstrom Rack, Vera Bradley, Arhaus, and more than 30 restaurants.
Chain Store Age spoke with Bob and his son Ezra, the current CEO of Stark Enterprises, of how Westlake, Ohio's Crocker Park, which topped Chain Store Age's Top 10 Retail Center Experiences list for 2025, came to be.
What inspired you to think that a retail-based center the size of Crocker Park would work in the sleepy suburbs of Cleveland?
Bob: The most exciting thing about big cities is that they are filled with lots of people doing different things in the same place. When inner-ring suburbs started developing outside of cities like Cleveland, downtowns began to decline. A downtown has a special energy, packed with people doing different things in the same place. But when downtowns declined, the question that came to my mind was, ‘Could you urbanize suburbia?’
What were some of the development details that set Crocker Park apart from other retail-based centers in the area?
Bob: Early streetscape developments tended to copy the interior designs of enclosed malls. All of the storefronts looked the same. You could fall asleep from the lack of rhythm they don’t create. Crocker Park was an artistic venture of blending building materials, colors, proportions. We made the widths of the sidewalks greater to permit the kind of window shopping you see in downtowns. We created alleyways with seating to allow people to eat and chat in them. Crocker Park is a retail center genre unto itself. It has dynamism.
In our visits to Crocker Park, we’ve observed more people walking the entire center than we’ve seen in other mixed-use developments.
Bob: We made sure we had real street grids that you’d see in a downtown. We have sidewalk parking with parking meters. We installed city bus stops. Crocker Park is a grid of short blocks where things change when you cross the street. And each block contains some distinct visual element that entices people to walk the entire center. Authenticity inspired our designs.
There are single family houses inside the property. There are parks and tennis courts. Do locals interpret it as an upscale downtown in the western Cleveland suburbs?
Ezra: Crocker Park has really emerged as the hub and the center of the West Side. It’s where every significant retail and food and beverage concept needs to be. What my dad set out to do was to build something ageless, a place that will continue to grow and evolve, and I think we continue to achieve that. We have a long tenant waiting list.
Bob: I looked at Crocker Park as a vehicle to enhance the quality of life of the people who lived in that community. That’s been the motivation behind all Stark Enterprises’ projects. It’s always about improving people’s lives, and if you put the value there and spend the money the right way, your hope is to have an impact. At Crocker Park, that hope was realized.
