What can one do with a struggling shopping center before it becomes an abandoned eyesore? If you’re looking for ideas, you might find some in a recent
Urban Land article describing 10 retail center transformation projects.
One of these projects involved the country’s oldest indoor mall, the
Arcade Providence in Rhode Island, which was built in 1828 and closed in 2008 after years of decline. But in 2013, it reopened. The repurposed space includes nearly 50 microloft apartments on the mall’s hard-to-lease second and third floors and redeveloped retail and restaurant space on the first floor.
Another project, in Nashville, turned the struggling late-60s One Hundred Oaks mall into a multi-purpose facility. Retailers occupy the first floor, but the second and third floors are now home to Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s
clinics (including offices, a pharmacy, and labs). One perk of the setup: clinics provide patients with pagers so that they can visit the mall’s food court and shops while waiting for appointments.
