Top 10 Retail Center Experiences

The Electric Daisy Carnival drew 130,000 young people to Las Vegas on its final day last year. This summer, Billy Joel will sell out his 43rd concert at Madison Square Garden, where floor tickets sell in the $200 range. No matter the age or inclination, people still want to leave the house and be with other people. They just need a really good reason to do so. Here are 10 retail centers that have some of the best reasons:

1 Mall of America

The Bible says the last shall be first, but on this list, the first shall be first. Can you believe it’s been 25 years since the Ghermezian family erected a multimillion-sq.-ft. mall/amusement park in one of the coldest cities in America, and, in the process, threw down the gauntlet for experiential retail? Attractions today include Sea Life Aquarium, Flyover America Crayola Experience, and Rick Bronson’s House of Comedy. The latest innovation at MOA is a testament to owner Triple Five Group’s maturity as a retail experience provider. The property’s got the traffic – some 40 million visitors a year. Now Triple Five’s working on getting them to spend more time in shops with the Enhanced Service Portal. Initial results on the directory app find it has a user dwell time of just 40 seconds, versus three minutes for physical directories. That means more time to make purchases at its 500-plus stores, and isn’t that the experience retail tenants desire?

2 Brickell City’s Climate Ribbon

In one of America’s hottest towns, Swire Properties christened a new Miami neighborhood with the opening of its billion-dollar Brickell City Centre. It also set a standard for 21st-century retail center design. The literal high point of this open-air luxury marketplace is the Climate Ribbon, a sculpted, undulating canopy that catches breezes from nearby Biscayne Bay and circulates them to cool shoppers. The $30 million Ribbon – a joint project from a Paris design firm, Carnegie Mellon University, and Cardiff University – collects five million gallons of rainwater a year to aid the cooling process, making it a paradigm for green construction that combines both beauty and functionality.

3 Easton’s Fashion’s Night Out

Retailers know that if something works, keep doing it until it doesn’t. That’s why – even though the Council of Fashion Designers of America phased out its Fashion’s Night Out Event in 2014 – the party still rages on at Easton. “It’s been such a hit that we kept on going,” said Easton Town Center chief executive Jennifer Peterson, a lifelong retailer who launched the Pink brand at L Brands. “On Fashion Night, we’ll have upwards of 50 retailers hosting people and pouring drinks in their spaces.” The former retail tenant singled Easton out as one of the few venues that puts the “town” in Town Center. “Easton never closes,” Peterson said. “People are still leaving the bars at 3 a.m., and by 5 a.m. a hundred-plus mall walkers arrive.”

4 Woodbury Commons

Its bus station shuttles passengers back and forth from Manhattan’s Port Authority Terminal several times a day. Its visitor center staff can direct shoppers in 14 different languages. And now it has a 65,000-sq.-ft. Market Hall and themed sections celebrating New York State regions. The flagship of Simon Premium Outlets is a destination for residents of the Upper East Side as well as the Far East, but it recently completed a wide-scale, three-year project designed to keep a sharp edge on its world-class experience. “We have a mission – value, fashion, and experience,” Simon Premium Outlets CEO Stephen Yalof said. “And I don’t think it plays out any more clearly than it does at Woodbury.”

5 The Grove and Uber

With average sales per square foot of $2,200, the luxe retail site is No. 2 on Fortune’s list of top-grossing shopping centers. But the center’s owner, Caruso, is always improving the experience. Getting on the freeway in L.A. can be a bad scene, so Caruso partnered with Uber to remove driving from the equation. It created a permanent pick-up/drop-off location at The Grove, now Uber’s top L.A. destination with more than 2,000 drop-offs daily. Know thy customer is the lesson, Caruso EVP of leasing Kloe Colacarro said: “We have a deep belief in developing centers only in places where we know the consumer. And we know the SoCal consumer very, very well.”

6 Waterside, a Conscious Place

Trademark Property has so much faith in its new-age experiential concept that it’s branded it. Conscious Place is defined as an “experiential center of commerce, community, and meaning that seeks to host, inspire, educate, and connect community stakeholders.” Design and leasing at Waterside were driven by local input. Local artisans created furniture, games, and art on the grounds. A 6,600-gallon cistern collects rainwater used for irrigating the project’s green space, shaded by heritage oaks and housing a Community Pavilion. “We believe the bar has been raised and developers must deliver much more in the future,” Trademark CEO Terry Montesi said.

7 Taste of Turkey Creek/Battle of Bristol

Down South, football and motor sports put up a fight with the Lord Almighty for attention. Add down-home cooking and you’ve got a retail event that drew a mob to Pinnacle at Turkey Creek, Bayer Properties’ 657,000-sq.-ft. center in Knoxville, Tenn. Bayer hitched its wagon to another event, the Battle at Bristol – a matchup between the University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech at Bristol Motor Speedway that drew 159,990. Some 1,200 showed up at “Taste” to sample food from two dozen Turkey Creek restaurants and watch the game on huge screens. The event raised $20,000 for The Pat Summitt Foundation, named for the Lady Vols legendary basketball coach.

8 Starwood’s Live 360

A free ukulele class is part of Starwood Retail Partner’s Live 360 program, a community outreach initiative that spread from two malls last year to 10 this year and is now moving portfoliowide. Lots of malls have community programs, but Starwood’s are run by actual community members. “We have community input meetings and there’s always one individual who seems to be involved in everything. We hire that person to direct the Live 360 program,” Starwood Retail SVP Laurie Paquette said. Two of them are now in place, bringing locals to the mall for yoga classes, Mom’s Club stroller workouts, and mall-walking clubs.

9 Outlets of Little Rock’s Food Truck Fest

Outlet centers came into being to feed people’s appetites for luscious bargains on luxury goods, not food. Most are now feverishly adding restaurants, but we applaud the ingenuity used by New England Development in speeding food to their outlet centers with food truck festivals. The Arkansas Food Truck & Craft Beer Festival at Outlets of Little Rock was a sellout, attracting 6,000 people. Center traffic went up 112%. “Blew numbers away, awesome day,” was one retailer’s message to NED marketing VP Debbie Black, who told us social media was a key ingredient to event success. Three-quarters of festival-goers said they’d found out about it on Facebook.

10 Avalon’s Noon to Night

Forget that “Experience Avalon&rd