Rethinking open-air retail
Some 40 years ago, my father Dan Poag and his partner Terry McEwen set out to establish an entirely new category of open-air retail and coined the term “lifestyle center.”
Their mission was to curate centers with top-flight retail brands like Apple, Crate & Barrel, and Pottery Barn and a wide range of food and beverage brands such as Perry’s Steakhouse and Ted’s Montana Grill in a setting more evoking upscale suburban downtowns, rather than typical open-air centers. We created spaces and places that helped families create experiences.
In 2022, Poag Shopping Centers entered into a partnership with JLL Lifestyle Property Management to allow Poag to go back to its roots and focus on development and redevelopment, which requires special care and personal attention to details. As this successful partnership has evolved, we are once again offering property management services to address a distinct opportunity in the market. Poag’s boutique, high-touch management for open-air centers provides a specialized service that is a powerful complement to JLL’s diverse capabilities, creating a more comprehensive offering for clients.
“Small Details, Big Experiences”
We at Poag hone in on the details at all of our projects. Managers of smaller centers often tend to miss some of these details and thus do not recognize all of their special needs. Managers may be spending too much on trash removal. They may have too much or too little landscaping. Poag’s strength in coming back into property management as a boutique operator is to pay attention to those details by focusing on efficiencies and allocating dollars to the right resources to maximize the properties. We bring Poag’s ethos to the table: “Small Details, Big Experiences.”
We currently have 20 people to manage the 10 properties we have in our portfolio. Our goal is to grow our client portfolio to 100 properties in the next three years. We have the experience and the base to scale quickly.
What has become increasingly clear is that smaller open-air centers succeed or struggle based on execution, not necessarily concept. Grocery-anchored and service-oriented centers are essential to their communities and demand consistent attention to operate efficiently. These are places people visit weekly, sometimes daily, and expectations around cleanliness, safety, access, convenience and experience are high.
Lifestyle centers demand hands-on management
At one grocery-anchored center we manage, increasing on-site presence has led to quicker response times, better tenant coordination, and tighter control of operating expenses. None of the changes were dramatic, but together they improved day-to-day performance, revenues, income and ultimately value.
Hands-on management makes a measurable difference. When property managers are regularly on site, they can respond quickly to tenant needs, monitor traffic patterns, address maintenance issues before they escalate, and make informed decisions about operating expenses. In these centers, small inefficiencies, whether in landscaping, lighting, signage, or waste removal add up quickly. The goal is not to over-amenitize, but to ensure resources are deployed where they matter most.
As retail continues to evolve, open-air centers that are actively managed, cost-conscious, and closely connected to their trade areas will remain among the most resilient assets in the sector. Poag specializes in practical, well-considered environments that support how centers function day to day. Ours is not a cookie-cutter approach.
That place-making expertise remains the basis of Poag’s identity as it expands its development focus while continuing its hands-on management philosophy, a strategic decision designed to unlock new development and redevelopment opportunities nationwide.
Poag draws on decades of experience to create and sustain some of the most memorable, engaging, and commercially successful environments in the country.
Josh Poag is the president and CEO of Memphis-based Poag Shopping Centers.