A Laguna Hills shopping center known for its furniture offerings has spent $1 million to revamp its image in a campaign that has helped diversify its tenant base and foot traffic.
The rebranding effort at the 515,135-square-foot center includes fresh facades and landscapes, as well as a new name for the center—The Row.
“It’s going to be more of a lifestyle center now, not just focused on furniture and housing,” said John Petersen, chief financial officer of the PS Business Parks Inc. in Glendale, which has owned the property since 1998. “It was time for an upgrade. As the economy improved, we started to get [tenants] that do more than furniture, so why limit ourselves to just one kind of retailer? That would be shortsighted.”
The center has 25 one-story buildings, most nestled along the Avenida De La Carlota, just south of Lake Forest Drive.
Retailers
Anchor retailers include Easylife Furniture Inc., Metropolix Home and Office Furnishings, Sit ’n Sleep, Lamps Plus Inc., Lakeshore Learning Store and the newly added Big Air Trampoline Park.
An additional five spaces totaling 32,316 square feet are vacant and hold a key to the new strategy.
Robin Mather, vice president of PS Business Parks’ Southern California division, said she’s hoping for a high-end cooking store or an art gallery to move in to “pull it all together, so you’re not just going from furniture store to furniture store. We want people to be comfortable getting out of their car, walking through the center.”
South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa, a consortium of furniture stores, fashion retailers, hip cafes and restaurants, has scored with a similar concept. The 300,000-square-foot center, owned and operated by Burnham-Ward Properties in Newport Beach, invites shoppers to discover their “inner designer, chef, foodie or fashionista” by attending design lectures, cooking demonstrations or browsing more than 20 home decor showrooms.
JB 3D Architectural Graphics & Branding in Orange, which created signs for the Edwards Lifescience building and Irvine Technology Center, helped Mather’s in-house marketing team develop The Row brand.
“Our idea was to have a warm, modern feel for the park, which frankly became somewhat dated,” she said. “A lot of thought went into that, to keep it simple yet something that people would understand. The park itself fronts the freeway and almost looks like a row, so we wanted to brand off that. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, but we thought that it was a good destination name.”
Nearly Complete
The renovation efforts are nearly complete. A new, large sign bearing The Row name greets motorists driving the San Diego (I-5) Freeway. The freshly painted store facades feature wood paneling and planters. Its green and brown color scheme extends to the side streets, encouraging shoppers to venture further into the shopping center.
“It’s been a fun renovation,” Mather said. “This is something that we think will really make a big difference.”
The center weathered the recent economic downturn with a reasonable occupancy rate, thanks to its high visibility.
“With the housing (crisis), it was a little tougher for the furniture stores, but we did pretty well,” she said. “The beauty of this park is you really can’t beat the location, so we always stayed really full.”
Existing tenants, according to the company, support the new direction for the shopping center.
“We are not trying to change entirely away from furniture,” Mather said. “This is something that they would benefit from, and they’re excited. They’ve been with us for a number of years, and we hope they stay with us for a number of years. A good lifestyle center where there is variety and warmth will benefit everyone. They understand that.”
PS Business Parks is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and recently had a market value of about $1.83 billion. It owns 29.4 million square feet of commercial space across the country, as well as eight other properties in Orange County, such as the 437,000-square-foot Orange County Business Center in Santa Ana and the 300,000-square-foot Canada Business Park in Lake Forest.
