WESTLAKE, Ohio -- When developer Bob Stark dreamed up Crocker Park more than 15 years ago, he essentially created a downtown for the far-flung suburb -- and a beacon for communities that hoped to copy its energy in their own shopping center.
Crocker was the first lifestyle center of its kind in Ohio -- a regional draw with homes, businesses, restaurants and stores -- built a few years after voters rejected Beachwood Place developer Rouse Co.'s plans to build stores at the same location.
Beavercreek's The Greene Town Center -- a 72-acre, 1.1 million square foot, mixed-use community with pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, open-air gathering spaces, pop fountains and parks for children -- opened in 2006. Similar to Crocker's style, The Greene has more than 120,000 square feet of second-floor office space and 200 residential units.
The 90-acre Easton Town Center in Columbus is also similar, though apartments sit outside the perimeter replica city streets. But Easton developer Steiner + Associates are building a $350 million, work-live-play development called Liberty Center, slated to open north of Cincinnati in October.
Northeast Ohio Media Group is featuring malls throughout Northeast Ohio each Monday this summer, showing off photos of the shopping centers' beginnings and letting readers reminisce about the pop culture hubs.
In Westlake, what began as a 28,000-square foot movie theater and traditional strip mall called the Promenade has grown into a mega-complex with 446,000 square feet of retail and restaurants; 385,000 square feet of residential space; and 115,000 square feet of offices.
Crocker Park has 131 stores, 26 restaurants and counting, drawing more than 16 million visitors a year. More than 40 percent of the 88-acre property is still under construction, including the headquarters of American Greetings and a new community building called Market Square.
How'd it start?
Crocker and Detroit roads were mostly farmland before the early 1990s, about the same time the idea of the mixed-use lifestyle center was born, said Jesse Tron, spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers.
Westlake didn't have a traditional city center.
"Historically, the center of downtown was Dover Center and Center Ridge roads," Westlake Assistant Planning Director William Krause said. "Westlake was an agricultural community, so we never really had a downtown. There never was a commercial core to Westlake."
When Crocker Road was built, connecting I-90 and I-480, Westlake residents didn't want it clogged up with regular retail. They wanted more.
"By having that mixed use, you're capturing the retail, but you're also shaping it with something better by adding residential and commercial," said Krause, a member of the Westlake Historical Society.
Then-city Planning Director Robert Parry, who had attended a seminar on urbanism, drew the first sketches for a mixed-use center on the Crocker Park site after voters rejected an idea from Rouse to built a shopping mall similar to Beachwood Place.
At the same time, Stark, who in Westlake is known as the "poet developer," had a big idea.
Stark, who built the existing movie theater at Crocker Park in 1982, had visited Mizner Park, a mixed-use shopping center in Boca Raton, Florida. He wanted to build the same thing in Westlake, Krause said.
"It was very good timing for both the city staff and the developer to have a similar vision for where things could go, and our City Council and administration got on board," Krause said. "They visited Mizner Park and saw that it could be an asset to the city."
Parry's contributions are memorialized as Parry Lane on the Crocker Park property, the first phase of which opened in 2004.
Why does it work?
Tron says mixed-use lifestyle centers like Crocker Park succeed because they have their own built-in customer base, and because they offer many more options than traditional enclosed malls.
"Businesses have patrons that are living within the shopping area," Tron said. "Mixed-use facilities are becoming more popular because they offers a lot of different options, like diversifying your stock portfolio, as a landlord."
Rick Caruso of retail complex developer Caruso Affiliated told the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants at an event last year that creating a "timeless and enduring" experience matters.
"People want to engage and feel a sense of community," Caruso said. "They are driven by the experience."
Crocker creates the experience with city streets, where apartment dwellers walk dogs and couples stroll after dinner. There's a spray park for kids in the summer and a train, and lifesized chess sets (also a feature of Stark's Eton Chagrin Boulevard) year-round. Vendors sell hot dogs at kiosks, and cars are hidden from sight in garages.
Easton Town Center
* Location: Columbus
* Acres: 90
* Stores: 170
* Restaurants: 54
* Office: 3 million square feet
* Residential: None
Crocker Park
* Location: Westlake
* Acres: 88
* Stores: 131
* Restaurants: 26
* Office: 115,00 square feet
* Residential: 218 apartments; 73 townhomes
In Northeast Ohio, Lyndhurst has offices atop stores, and a hotel is on the way at Legacy Village. Developers are set to break ground on Pinecrest, with nearly 300,000 square feet of stores, 40,000 square feet of restaurants, a 580-seat theater, an 80-room hotel and 18,000 square feet of offices in Orange as early as next month.
But from Parma to South Euclid, when developers build any sort of retail, over and over they pitch versions of the town-center feel of Crocker Park.
Crocker Park's stores have their own built-in customers, living in 218 apartments on the second level above the stores, and in 73 townhomes in the Westhampton area. There's also employees of 30 businesses on the property, who can pop into shops on their lunch break or head to happy hour after work.
What's the future?
Another 318 apartments are under construction at Crocker. The new spaces range from efficiency suites to three-bedrooms and corporate housing, and rent for $1,100 to $3,500 a month.
Then there are 56 more town homes under construction and an additional 659,000 square feet of office space, Krause said.
American Greetings, lured from Brooklyn, will be finished next year.
A six-story, 110-room Hyatt Place hotel is being built at the corner of Union Street. That area eventually will include new restaurants and "micro-retailers" along a pedestrian alley modeled after Cleveland's popular East Fourth Street.
And a $2 million city-owned building called Market Square will one day host community events.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include The Greene, another mixed-use lifestyle center in the Dayton area.
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