WESTMINSTER — Joan Dougherty, with her dog Bindi nearby, worked fervently Wednesday to set up displays of bedazzled dog collars and dog strollers and fill her glass display case with colorful doggie treats in time for the opening of her store at the Orchard Town Center today.
“The housing market is all growing this way,” Dougherty said about opening her second Barkin’ Boutique and Bakery even in this slowing economy at the new center at 144th Avenue and Interstate 25. “And being that the only AMC (movie theater) and shopping area is here, I decided to take the plunge.”
The opening today of the Orchard Town Center of Westminster culminates several years of the city and developer Forest City working together to bring a regional shopping center to that booming part of the city and to help diversify the city’s sales-tax base.
The center opens with 45 retailers, said Nancy Rezac, the center’s general manager. When it reaches completion in 2010, the center will have nearly 100 retailers in the spaces that are still being built out or sited for future development.
All around the center Wednesday, workers painted walls, wiped glass windows and set up displays. At PacSun, workers dressed mannequins; at Aeropostale, a representative from the regional office steamed the wrinkles out of new shirts.
The outdoor-lifestyle-center model being used by Orchard and other new centers is the “hottest retail concept in America,” said Britt Beemer, a retail analyst and chairman of America’s Research Group in Charleston, S.C. Consumers under age 40 seem to be the most enamored with the model, with 55 percent of men and 45 percent of women under 40 shopping at them, Beemer said.
Because of lifestyle centers and the change in consumer habits, traditional mall traffic is down 30 to 35 percent in the last six years, according to Beemer’s firm.
For the city of Westminster, those numbers are not just statistics.
At one time, the Westminster Mall accounted for a third of the city’s sales-tax revenue, but that declined steadily from a high of 31 percent in 1989 to 10 percent in 2006, causing city officials to think about creating new sales-tax sources.
The growth along the I-25 corridor and the need to diversify the sales-tax base pushed city officials to assemble the land and work with Forest City to develop the regional retail center, said Brent McFall, Westminster city manager.
The city estimates that the Orchard Town Center will reach $350 million in annual sales, which means about $7 million annually for the city in sales-tax receipts.
Elizabeth Aguilera: 303-954-1372 or eaguilera@denverpost.com
Orchard Town Center
Size: 215 acres
The skinny: Mixed-use property, including more than 1 million square feet of regional, open-air, lifestyle retail, as well as future office and housing
Groundbreaking: September 2005
Grand opening: Today
Major tenants: AMC Orchard 12 (opening Friday), Imax Experience (coming soon), Macy’s, JCPenney (opened Oct. 6, 2006), SuperTarget (opened Oct. 8, 2006)
