ROGERS — New tenants Cabela’s and Fresh Market likely will make for a merry Christmas this year for Pinnacle Hills Promenade, the state’s largest mall.
“Cabela’s opened the floodgates,” said Brenda Majors, marketing manager for General Growth Properties, a partner in the mall and responsible for its leasing. Rogers-based Hunt Ventures also is a partner in the property.
“We have only a few open spaces,” she said.
In recent months, the mall has added J’s Hallmark,Clarks shoes, Maurices and Houlihan’s restaurant. The lifestyle center, or outdoor mall, opened in 2006 and houses more than 100 national and regional retailers, according to its website.
Majors said the mall is gearing up for the Christmas season with more than 30 stores opening at midnight on Black Friday and with at least four expected to be open Thanksgiving.
She said the average sales revenue per square foot for the mall is expected to meet or exceed 5 percent growth this year.
Nebraska-based Cabela’s opened its 100,000 squarefoot Rogers store, the first in the state, at the end of August. Dick and Mary Cabela founded the business in 1961. The Rogers outlet is the company’s 39th store.
A Fresh Market specialty food store opened in late July. It took the vacant 22,000-squarefoot store once occupied by Borders bookstore. The book seller declared bankruptcy in February 2011 and closed the Rogers store in April of that year. Specialty grocer Fresh Market was founded in 1982. The company operates 128 stores in 25 states, including one in Little Rock
Kevin Berry, vice president of investor relations for General Growth, said Pinnacle Hills Promenade’s total gross leasable area was 1.02 million square feet and 95.1 percent was leased as of Sept. 30. A spokesman for GreenStreet Advisors, a real estate research firm, said Pinnacle Hills Promenade was the largest mall in the state, according to the company’s database
The space at Pinnacle Hills Promenade is made up of 360,759 square feet in general mall space; 260,680 square feet in anchor stores including Dillard’s and J.C. Penney; a 358,195 strip center; and 38,561 square feet in office space.
According to the Skyline Report, a biannual analysis of the commercial real estate sector in Benton and Washington counties released in September, retail vacancy rates in Rogers were 11.1 percent at the end of the second quarter, down from 15.6 percent for the same period last year. It was the second lowest retailvacancy rate by submarket, behind Fayetteville with 10.8 percent.
Available retail square footage in Rogers was 278,709 at the end of the second quarter, down from 391,727 for the same period last year, according to the report.
Tim Reed, partner with StreetSmartNWA, which provides real estate market information for Northwest Arkansas, said retail vacancy rates for both Class A and Class B retail in Benton and Washington counties averaged about 12.5 percent through the second quarter of this year.
He said that figure beats the national rate of 13 percent. Historically, retail should be seeing vacancy rates of 9 to 10 percent, he said.
“We’re in that range for Class A property,” Reed said, noting that the Pinnacle Hills Promenade properties fell into that category.
He said on its own, Class A properties in the two counties average a vacancy rate of just under 10 percent.
He said the retail market has been slowly recovering since high vacancy rates seen in the second and third quarters of 2009.
“The top-of-the-line properties are doing the best,” Reed said.
According to its 2011 annual report, Chicago-based General Growth is the second largest owner of regional malls in the nation with interest in 136 malls in 41 states at the end of 2011. General Growth emerged from bankruptcy in late 2010 after seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009, listing $29.5 billion in assets and $27.3 billion in debts.
Pinnacle Hills Promenade is the only Arkansas mall owned by General Growth. The company sold The Pines mall in Pine Bluff in December of 2011 for an undisclosed amount.
Pinnacle Hills also has more than 80,000 square feet of office space on the second floor of some of the retail operations. Majors, the marketing manager, said there has been a dramatic increase in office demand.
She said foot traffic at Pinnacle Hills Promenade should be 13 to 14 million visitors this year.
“We’re projecting a good holiday season,” Majors said.
Business, Pages 21 on 11/21/2012