[Anqrew]

photo by Hillary Davis/ITB

Tucson is a relatively stable space for retailers. It’s seen growth booms and busts, not unlike Phoenix. But unlike Phoenix, its bubble didn’t swell so high and fast.
It never got a crosstown freeway, so interstate frontage was largely reserved for industrial uses and homes and shopping were built in the city’s core. Shopping centers were never overbuilt. And it’s even closer to Mexico, home to many a weekend shopper.

So malls, those enclosed, tiled, air-conditioned and pretzel-scented bazaars, have better results than the industry stories usually tell, even with newer mall-like complexes like power centers and lifestyle centers within a few miles.

The areas around Tucson’s two large traditional malls, Tucson Mall and Park Place, remain very attractive to restaurants and shops. They’re “hubs,” said Nancy McClure, First Vice President and a retail specialist at CBRE’s Tucson office— so much so that developers are razing older, dated shopping centers in their immediate area to put up new big boxes (see accompanying story).

Because retailers never built a glut of stores, shopping real estate has always been at a premium. Typically, a retailer will go to Phoenix first, get excited about the four million-plus person market and put up 15 stores, then do two or three in Tucson just to see how it goes, then move on to another market. Because the Tucson market doesn’t get as diluted, it tends to do well.

“In Phoenix, gosh, you could blaze a new road and there will be four big shopping centers on every corner. Here, it’s harder to get a good site and also, lenders look at Tucson differently than somebody like a Phoenix because it’s a tertiary market in their mind’s eye, and so they’re going to give a new project more scrutiny than they would up in Phoenix back in the time,” she said. “I think now lenders are going to give more scrutiny to everything because they don’t want to have happen what happened up in Phoenix and Las Vegas where so much of it got overbuilt.”

Pat Darcy, retail division head at Tucson Realty & Trust, said because Tucson doesn’t have nearly as many major corners as Phoenix does, it makes sense to be by one of the malls.

Darcy said the Tucson and Park Place malls are spaced out enough that they don’t really compete with each other. At Park Place especially, on Tucson’s golden retail road of Broadway Boulevard, it can be hard to find a parking spot, he said.

“Tucson is really supporting those two malls,” Darcy said. “They say the malls are kind of dying off, but not here.”

read the rest here: http://www.insidetucsonbusiness.com/...9bb2963f4.html

another article i found interesting. I think other than Downtown, these areas are the "Hubs" like mentioned in the article, they form a nice kind of Tri-fecta of commerce. I think it would be really nice to see these Mall areas also become lively neighborhoods of themselves, I think with the 2 new restaurants opening in the Park Place Hub (Longhorn and Yardhouse) we will start to see some new development. I'm pretty sure the properties along broadway between Hobby Lobby and the new Longhorn are next to be razed, hope to see some good development there!