Массовым направлением реконцепции небольших ТЦ стало их переформатирование в специализированные объекты
mong the most ambitious and iconic examples of
reconceptions, we can highlight the
transformations that have occurred in the MEGA Teply Stan shopping center, MEGA Khimki, the transformation of the XL on Yaroslavskoye Highway into the XL Family Outlet, the turning of the Central children's store on Lubyanka towards those who have already matured.
Reconception takes place in different formats: someone is “zeroed out” only inside and changes positioning, someone makes more obviously certain groups of subtenants and changes their mix. There are objects whose owners realized that reconception and a simple update of the content would not be enough and went in the direction of facelift or redevelopment.
Changes do not occur due to the change itself, they are dictated by some utilitarian tasks that this or that owner decides: traffic fell, tenants diminished, the audience is not as expected (spending less than supposed to) or heterogeneous — it is not clear who is the consumer, for whom this object had been conceived and how to work with it. Sometimes the owner wants to change the concept not in order to solve the occupancy problem, but in order to increase the rental income and capitalize the project with good location.
Since the crisis of 2008, the most massive direction of reconception of small shopping centers has been to reformat them into specialized objects, for example, power centers — when instead of a small-sized shopping arcade into a district shopping center, two or three key anchor tenants are involved. Now small objects as well as the market primers are on the way of reconception.
Kids have grown up
For example, in the Central Children's Store on Lubyanka, the task of attracting new target groups of visitors was successfully solved. The shopping center, which previously had been aimed at only the family audience, realized that it does not get the most out of its profitable location. But the CCS was opened after a long and difficult reconstruction just a few years ago, and even now the necessity of changes is obvious. After three years of operation of the updated store, a demographic study was conducted, which showed that, in addition to the main target audience (families with children), the CCS is also a center of attraction for young people, office workers, Russian and foreign tourists.
As a result, new tenant profiles targeted at more adult audience were added to the CCS: the Winstrike eSports arena and the Arena Space virtual entertainment park, new cafes and restaurants, including Osteria Mario viewport, Top Stretching sports studio, Exmo Territory store with books and stationery.
Leonid Kaprov, senior vice-president of Hals-Development, says that the company plans to conduct a new study in order to investigate the influence of the changes on the visitors of the Central Children's Store, as well as to identify new needs and wishes.
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70 | SHOPPING CENTERS RUSSIA | MARCH 2019