Consumer demand for shop-ping convenience and enhanced experience have led two Nursery Retailer Top 100 independents to set up shop in lifestyle centers, shifting stand-alone site plans toward more trendy, upscale tie-ins for their new locations. Is it a successful concept that could boost business for independents across the country? Time will tell. As Navlet’s Garden Centers readies to open an anchor store in Danville, CA, SummerWinds Garden Centers is taking a close look at the struggles its Outdoor Living concept in Mesa, AZ, has faced as the company continues to consider how it fits in lifestyle centers.

Specialty Retail, Office and Residential
Slated to open this spring in Danville, CA, The Rose Garden is a mixed-use specialty retail, office and residential lifestyle center - anchored on the south end by Navlet’s new 9,000-square-foot retail building and 28,000 square feet of outdoor nursery yard.

The development sits on nearly 10 acres and will feature 42,750 square feet of specialty retail space, 26,000 square feet of office space and 56 apartment units. It is the first project private real estate developer Blake Hunt Ventures has conceptualized with a garden center serving as the anchor. “It’s unique,” says Brad Blake, Blake Hunt’s CEO, “unique in its location, and unique given Navlet’s history, long-standing good reputation and ability to generate customer traffic.”

Specializing in suburban mixed-use projects in Northern California, Blake Hunt has been working with Navlet’s to develop the site for a few years. For several decades, the retailer owned the property where The Rose Garden will sit. It sold all but 21/2 acres to the developer in May, and demolished the store that had operated on site to make room for the new lifestyle center.

Navlet’s Neighbors in Sync
Who your neighbors are in a lifestyle center plays a big part in who your customers will be. Navlet’s searched for a firm to develop a shopping center that would enhance the garden center’s business and complement the other businesses around it. As part of the development deal, Navlet’s has a mutual understanding with Blake Hunt that the developer will lease only to tenants who fit in with the specialty, high-end focus of the project. At press time, in addition to specialty retailers, two fine-dining restaurants and a casual-dining cafe had signed leases as well as a 17,000-square-foot day spa.

“I think [the spa] complements it very well because Navlet’s primary customers, I think, are women between 30 and 60, homeowners with higher income, higher education levels,” Blake says. “Burke Williams is a very high-end spa, and it will attract a similar type of customer profile.”

To encourage cross shopping and pedestrian flow, a trellis-covered walkway with vines and climbing roses will follow around the perimeter of the center.

SummerWinds Spots a Challenge
The move into a lifestyle center takes a lot of planning and preparation. Placement - where the garden center is located in the development - plays a key role in the success of the partnership.

Boise, ID-based SummerWinds Garden Centers learned this important lesson when it opened the first of its new upscale, garden lifestyle stores, Outdoor Living by SummerWinds, last year in a Mesa, AZ, lifestyle center. The 8,000-square-foot store joins several other retail units at an extreme end of one of the wings of the large center, where it is positioned away from the traffic pattern.

“All of the retailers on that side, save one, have been disappointed by their performance,” says Walt Minnick, Chairman and CEO of SummerWinds. “It doesn’t draw as much traffic as the rest of the center.”

Even though the Outdoor Living store’s sales are lower than what SummerWinds had hoped, the independent finds positives in the lifestyle center concept and still sees potential there.

“Our experience has been disappointing from a sales volume standpoint, but the customers we get are very enthusiastic,” Minnick says.

What About Green Goods?
SummerWinds stands confidently behind the product mix at its Outdoor Living store, with the exception of one category - green goods. The store isn’t quite sure where plants fit in its mix of high-end patio furniture, outdoor decor and 1,200-square-foot Smith & Hawken “store within a store.” The retailer’s decision to limit the selection of tropicals and houseplants has been questioned by some garden retailers. “One of the problems with a lifestyle center is that the casual shopper who is coming for something else tends to be in heels and a nice dress,” Minnick says. “If we’re going to introduce plants, we’re not convinced that it is as good of a location as a stand-alone store. But we’re learning.”

The upper-crust appeal of lifestyle centers demands a more refined shopping experience. Navlet’s says it is ready to cater to everyone, including women in heels, at its full-line garden center. The outdoor selling area will have wide aisles that are paved, and there won’t be any gravel or weeds in the way.

“Outside in the garden center, it’s 100 percent paved, and the beds are raised off the ground,” Gray says. “We won’t have any cans or products sitting on the ground. We will have some sitting on the cement or pathways for display purposes, but everything that we stock or sell will be very consumer friendly in the merchandising, and people will be totally comfortable.”