The Southlands Mall is coming up on its 10th anniversary next month, and in addition to a community celebration, officials at the retail super center are toasting their best year of sales and growth to date.
“The best year is this year,” said Jeff Nemec, who has served as general manager of the Southlands Mall since 2009. “We see sales numbers from a lot of our tenants … and from 2009 the trajectory has just been up and up and up. The best sales year is easily this year, and our total sales are easily in the hundreds of millions.”
Ground first starting moving on the mall property in October 2003, when much of southeast Aurora was miles and miles of undeveloped plains. Construction and lease deals began talking shape in 2005, and by October 2006, the 1.5 million square foot shopping center was open and inciting a ripple effect of residential and commercial development around it.
There was a 36 percent population jump between 2009 and 2015 within a 3-mile radius of Southlands, and 20 percent growth within a 5- mile radius.
“This whole market is really driven by the housing growth,” Nemec said. “It’s all happening out here because of Cherry Creek Schools, the affordable housing options and the quality of housing.”
Growth begets growth, Nemec said, and Southlands was able to corner a developing market 10 years ago and spur its residential proliferation by becoming a cornerstone in the early community.
“We hear from a lot of people who live out here that they moved here because of Southlands. It makes you feel like you’re part of a city and not just out in isolated suburbs,” he said. “What we’ve tried to do the last six years is create the sense of place that has something for everyone.”
Southlands Marketing Director Joyce Rocha-Brown said that one of the mall’s most well-attended events is its annual trick-or-treat trail.
“The first year that we did it people asked me how many people came and I said, ‘All of them,’ ” Rocha-Brown said. “Southlands, ever since it began, has had this philosophy of being a place for the community.”
The Southlands Mall project was first owned by Alberta Development and later sold to Northwood Retail, which owns 900,000 square feet of the property today. In 2006, the mall was already 90 percent built out to what it is now.
“As one of the city’s three main retail hubs and concentrations of retails space, Southlands has been well positioned to take advantage of the new growth and strong demographics in the southeast Aurora area,” said Tim Gonerka, Aurora retail specialist. “Southlands has proven to be contrary to most of the outdoor lifestyle centers, which traditionally tend in Colorado to produce lower sales per square foot than their enclosed counterpoints.”
Gonerka said the shopping center between E-470 and South Aurora Parkway is one of the city’s key retail tax production areas, placing it in the top five of Aurora’s economic powerhouses and in the same company as the Anschutz Medical Campus and Buckley Air Force Base.
“Southlands is competitive within the entire metro market, as well as the city for the generation of sales,” Gonerka said. “But when you add in their impact as an anchor to a growing series of neighborhoods and all of the sales and retail that accompanies that in generating revenue, it is a major player in the city … It is the anchor in a geographic area that then spins retail, commerce and restaurants around it. Even the investment in new housing and neighborhoods are, in part, a result of a well-positioned and leased shopping center.”
— 18 new retail leasing deals totaling 65,000 square feet, and 12 new office space leasing deals equaling 20,000 square feet.
Today, the mall is about 85 percent leased out until officials wrap up a deal to backfill a vacated 40,000 square foot store previously occupied by now bankrupt Sports Authority.Nemac said the new occupant will be another large retailer. A Finish Line that also closed will be filled with a Maurices, set to open next month.
Because of surrounding commercial development by other landowners, it is unlikely that the mall will expand beyond small additional sites here and there, but Nemec isn’t concerned about stagnation.
“Aurora has a lot more projects planned north of here and south of I-70,” he said. “The city isn’t even halfway built out yet. At some point, the question won’t be if Aurora is bigger than Denver, it will be ‘how much bigger than Denver is Aurora?’ This could easily be a 700,000 person city.”
If you go:
Southlands for Our 10 Year Anniversary Celebration
Saturday, October 8:
– 9:15 a.m. to 11 a.m. A 1-mile Family Fun Walk at 9 a.m. followed by a Community Pancake Breakfast
– Noon, Fall Trends Fashion Show emceed by Leah Block of ABC’s The Bachelor
– 3 p.m. – 5 p.m., free concert featuring nationally known a capella band, FACE, plus, food sampling from 14 Southlands eateries