Oakbrook Center, which opened in 1962 and is today one of Chicagoland’s most venerable retail establishments, is nearing completion of a roughly decadelong redevelopment. Brookfield Property Partners took ownership of this 2 million-square-foot outdoor mall in Oak Brook, Ill., as part of its $9.3 billion acquisition of GGP last year. Oakbrook Center is the area’s second-largest retail center, after Woodfield Mall, in Schaumburg.
“Oakbrook was operating and performing as one of our top assets, but very largely as it existed 20 years previous when the Nordstrom wing opened in 1991,” said Adam Tritt, executive vice president of development at Brookfield Properties Retail. “We knew coming out of the recession [and] looking at the new landscape in our business that we were going to have to continue to evolve and get better and adapt to retain that status.”
Brookfield chose Dallas-based Omniplan Architects in 2011 to oversee the redevelopment. “They had a great brand, but the center had gotten old and tired visually,” said J. Tipton Housewright, CEO of Omniplan, which had been working with GGP on several projects for about 25 years.
Planning for the redevelopment project began in late 2011 and construction on the first phase commenced the following year. The common area was first, and following that was construction of a three-story parking garage, a 12-screen AMC cinema, three restaurants and a food hall called The District. “[The District] activated a very underutilized area,” said Hans Wolf, regional vice president of leasing at Brookfield Properties Retail.
A top priority was to make the common areas more inviting in order to forge a connection to the Oakbrook community. “We made them much more interactive, much more customer-friendly, much more experiential, much more about community and gathering,” said Housewright. The Omniplan team removed the ornamental hedges and curbs to open up the spaces, which it called the Village Green. “We felt changing that was a huge game changer for Oakbrook.”
Timeline
Late 2011 Project planning begins
2012 Construction starts on the Village Green central common area
2018 A three-story parking garage, an AMC cinema and the food hall are completed
Fall 2019 KidZania entertainment center scheduled to open
2020 Redevelopment scheduled for former Lord & Taylor space
Given the center’s prominence in the community, one major challenge was getting the local people on board with change. “The center has always been very beloved by the surrounding community, and change is hard,” said Tritt. “When we did the common-area renovation, which logistically is one of the easier pieces to manage, there was a tremendous and almost unprecedented level of the community involvement, [with people] speaking to us about it, initially … in very negative ways, because we were changing what they had known and loved.”
Other trials have arisen and been dealt with. For instance, replacements have been lined up following several prominent store closures. Currently, work is under way on phase five, which will see the opening of a KidZania in the fall, on the second level of a former three-story, 240,000-square-foot Sears. Leasing is under way on the lower level. “We have a ton of interest for retail and entertainment concepts for that space,” said Tritt.
A Life Time Fitness facility is scheduled to open in 2020 in a former Sears Auto Center space. And there are plans to bring retailers into a space Lord & Taylor occupied until its closure in January.
Tritt sees Oakbrook Center as the poster child for how to handle a changing retail landscape. “Here we have an A-plus property with an upward trajectory, and we have had three department stores close and one downsize, and we haven’t missed a beat,” he said. “In fact, we have been able to grow traffic and sales and [to] bring more interest from the marketplace to the portfolio, thanks to that real estate that is available to us.”
In the aggregate, the Oakbrook Center redevelopment speaks to the changing and increased diversity of uses across the Brookfield shopping center portfolio, including the addition of entertainment and food. “Over this 10-year development cycle, Oakbrook went from zero to approaching 20 percent entertainment square footage, once KidZania opens,” said Tritt. “Oakbrook Center will always have new things to experience, he said. “It is a living, breathing part of the community that is going to continue to change and evolve with the retail industry.”
By Ben Johnson
Contributor, Commerce + Communities Today
