Mercato is an award winner!
Mercato- international design winner
The International Council of Shopping Centers (the ICSC) awarded special recognition in its annual design and development competition to the Naples, Florida mixed use development The Mercato. In its annual design convention held in Scottsdale Arizona, the ICSC recognizes shopping centers around the world for their individual achievements in creating meaningful and leading edge shopping environments. The developers of the Mercato, The Lutgert Companies, are no strangers to this prestigious recognition having earned two past such awards, including the retail project in Naples called the Village on Venetian Bay.
The Mercato is a 53 acre project completed in 2009 and includes nearly 500,000 square feet of retail and office space, two parking garages, a 93 unit condominium component called the Strada, plus a future residential phase. The project was designed by Angelo Carusi and his Atlanta based architectural firm, Cooper Carry, and constructed by Birmingham, Alabama based general contractor Hoar Construction. The project includes 12 separate buildings positioned along a four city block long “main street”.
Dougall McCorkle of the Lutgert Companies speared headed the design, development, and leasing efforts of the Mercato and explains the intense details that he and his team put into the project design elements. The first step was a series of site visits to leading developments around the country so as to discover which design elements garner the most shopper acceptance and appeal. Perhaps the most important consideration in such a task is to identify the basic configuration of the buildings and internal road network (pedestrian and vehicular circulation). Many mixed use projects are based on a grid pattern of buildings and roads. This technique allows for an interesting ‘city scape’, but often can create hot and cold spots of intensity. The other basic configuaration is a more straight forward single main street layout, which the Mercato ultimately employed. This type of layout gives the majority of storefronts an equal amount of visibility and exposure (so long as the tenant mix encourages it). The Mercato’s main street places all of the storefronts close to traffic pattern (not separated by a large parking field) while placing the parking conveniantly behind the buildings.
The scale of the project is also a vital design criteria. At the Mercato the buildings are a mix of one, two, three, four, and five story buildings, thus offering an interesting blend of verticality. It is important that the shopper is stimulated visually by the scale of the buildings as well as what they see in the storefront windows. There is a careful balance between not creating a canyon-like affect of taller buildings while not having the scale of the buildings lose their sense of intimacy. The parking component is another key criteria. The parking must be conveniant, yet out of sight as much as possible (particularly the more massive parking garages). To that end, the Mercato cleverly positioned its main 1000 car four level parking garage behind three buildings, thus making it extremely conveniant while totally shielded from view from the Mercato’s main street. It’s second garage largely serves the residential component, the first level available to shoppers while the upper levels exclusively serve the condominiums. On top of that garage is an amenity deck for the condos complete with a resort style pool and club house. That design element also helped provide better views for many of the condo units.
The leasing plan was another component that impacts the design of a major project such as the Mercato. One of the Mercato’s anchor tenants, Whole Foods (a national natural and organic grocery store chain), was placed at the front of the property so as to give that tenant its necessary highway visibility as well as a separate grade level parking field. At the other end of the Mercato’s main street is a large part of its office component, leaving most of main street exclusively for retailers. An eleven screen upscale movie theatre was placed on the second floor which also leaves the ground floor available to retailers’ storefronts (rather than the blank walls of a theatre). Restaurants are also collectively viewed as an “anchor” of the center. A cluster of high energy restaurants drive more shopping patrons than a conventional department store anchor. At the Mercato, the restaurants were placed strategically throughout the main street so as to encourage pedestrian traffic.
Accordingly, there’s a lot of underlying issues and considerations involved in designing a project, particularly a large mixed use center that must cater to the distinct and separate needs of multiple uses such as office, retail, residential, etc. The task of proper design goes well beyond the obvious. For more information on how to design, develop, and lease such a project please email me.
Dougall McCorkle, MBA
Sales Associate and Commercial Specialist
Premier Commercial, Inc., Licensed Real Estate Brokers
Direct: 239.213.7234
Cell: 239.860.3368
dougall@premiermail.net
