Shopping for advice: retail consultants clearly impact the way communities look today. Many IHEs are welcoming them to their neighborhoods

University Business, Dec, 2005 by Caryn Meyers Fliegler

HERE'S THE GOOD NEWS: ACCORDING TO CHICAGO-AREA FIRM TEENAGE Research Unlimited, young people spent upwards of a whopping $169 billion in 2004. Those dollars can translate into significant business around colleges and can impact the way a school attracts Generation Y prospects.

The bad news: Figuring out how to build a retail portfolio makes for a real undertaking.

It's an undeniable truth that change does not come quickly or easily in the world of higher education. Yet from The Ohio State University to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more IHE decision-makers are realizing that developing a retail portfolio near campus provides a solution to several challenges. Vital retail offerings--from Starbucks to a locally owned music shop--can not only satisfy students but boost a school's image, attract faculty and staff, enliven surrounding neighborhoods, and strengthen revenue streams.

The word on retail is circulating widely. During a recent meeting of the Association of University Real Estate Officials, a roundtable session on retail development drew a packed room of about 75 people. Beneath the excitement about retail exists a strategy, one that successful colleges are not keeping secret: Looking beyond the IHE realm for guidance from third-party consultants can help ensure that retail efforts thrive.

"When you are a college you have a bit of a provincial view about your specific place and role in the city in which you're located," says Scott Levitan, director of Real Estate Development at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which unveiled a mixed-use project including retail space in 2003 with the guidance of global services firm Jones Lang LaSalle and other companies. "It's helpful to get the breadth of experience that a consultant can bring," notes Levitan.

Anthony Sorrentino, a spokesman for Facilities and Real Estate Services at the University of Pennsylvania, which has developed highly regarded plans for retail in the last decade, notes that IHEs can use consultants to fill knowledge gaps or to supplement existing plans. One would not be overreaching to say that UPenn's model of working with outside firms acted as a tipping point for IHE requests for retail consultants. More than three dozen stores and eateries have opened around the university since the school undertook a revitalization initiative a decade ago.

"We get a lot more phone calls now from universities," says Kathleen Lin, senior vice president with the national retail real estate company Madison Marquette, which has contracted on UPenn's projects as well as others in higher ed. "Penn has been the poster child."

According to higher ed leaders as well as consultants, the best of the retail advisors take detailed factors into account: What stores should be located next to each other? Which retail outlets are socially conscious? Which eateries are popular among daytime populations as well as midnight-oil-burning students? Smart consultants also explain a university's needs to retailers.

Take Lin, who helps create what her company calls "special places." When working on IHE projects, she tells retail companies about the way the calendar works on campus. New retail should always be open by the fall, she advises, when students arrive on campus and peak periods such as homecoming and parents weekend occur.

Retail development can shape the feel of a neighborhood, the lives of those who reside, work, and study there, and the bottom line of the college in the middle of it all. In other words, it's a big responsibility. "The reality is that retail is a highly specialized area of real estate," says Robert Bronstein, president of The Scion Group, a Chicago-based consultancy. "Unless you have someone on staff who is highly specialized and stays on top of it, it's not something for amateurs to play in."

Meeting at a Destination

Inside a conference room at a large national convention in the late 1990s, Herman Bulls talked about retail and Bob Thompson listened. Bulls had worked on several mixed-use projects, including the developments at UPenn, as part of his job overseeing university partnerships for Jones Lang LaSalle. Thompson, a senior vice president for Administration and Finance at the Georgia Institute of Technology, had some ideas of his own for a mixed-use development. "I want one of those," he said to Bulls.

Flash forward: In 2003 Georgia Tech welcomed Technology Square, developed with assistance from Jones Lang LaSalle and retail specialists from The Shopping Center Group, an Atlanta-based consultancy.

Technology Square includes 71,000 square feet of retail space as well as the 252-room Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center, the 189,000-square-foot College of Management, the 113,000-square-foot Global Learning and Conference Center, the Economic Development Institute, and the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development.

Consultants played a significant role in guiding the university's decisions for retail in Technology Square, according to several parties involved. Key among the mores: Creating a destination by anchoring Technology Square with a Barnes & Noble bookstore.