The downtown ice rink opened for the season in Triangle Park in early November, but across the street, business is just starting to heat up at The Square, Lexington’s newly rebranded downtown shopping, dining and entertainment destination.
Clothing retailers Urban Outfitters and Alumni Hall moved into street-level space in the project in October. Pies and Pints, a restaurant specializing in pizza and craft beers, will open its first Kentucky location at the Square on Main Street during the first week of December. Also, the upscale dining establishment Tony’s Steak and Seafood is slated to finish its two-story, 10,000-square-foot restaurant along Main Street near Algonquin Street by year’s end. They will be joining Saul Good Restaurant and Pub, which opened on the corner of Short and Broadway in September 2013.
“The traffic has been amazing,” said Brittany Fiel, store manager for Urban Outfitters, an eclectic retailer offering hip and trendy attire targeted at young adults ages 18 to 30. The store’s two-story space on the corner of Main and Broadway, formerly occupied by DeSha’s restaurant, has been renovated with large street-level window displays and a deconstructed, modern atmosphere. Much of the urban ambience embraces the exposed elements of the former lives of the shopping complex, which dates back to the 1880s. An old metal stairway uncovered during the renovation, for instance, has been incorporated into an innovative half-wooden, half-metal staircase design within the new store.
Fiel said that while the store has attracted a steady flow of students from the local universities, its customers so far have included a healthy mix of the downtown business crowd, Rupp event-goers and out-of-town visitors as well.
“We have people coming in from eastern and western Kentucky,” Fiel said. “People will drive the distance to come here.”
The creation of that kind of draw for downtown and wide appeal has been part of the marketing strategy for The Square since the beginning, said Mark Fallon, senior vice president, real estate, for Jeffrey R. Anderson Real Estate, the Cincinnati-based firm partnering with the Webb Companies on the project. The aim, Fallon said, was to bring in compelling destination tenants and create an energized street-level presence to spur like development and encourage local consumers and visitors to linger a little longer in the city’s core.
“That’s one of the reasons we decided to call it the Square,” Fallon said. “All four sides are going to show excitement on this — all four sides of the square.”
In a city that has struggled, like many others, with the retail piece of its downtown development puzzle, Fallon said he is already seeing positive signs. Storefronts along Broadway across from The Square that were empty when the project started are now housing a variety of eateries and boutiques.
“You’ll see that the street-level retail will continue to stretch down Main past Rupp. You’ll see great value and excitement along Short Street, not only across from the Opera House, but as you continue in both directions,” Fallon said. “It’s a different mentality, but with compelling destination tenants like we are putting there, that will happen — and it is happening right now.”
The reinvention of The Square is capitalizing on a national trend of turning back from suburban development and rethinking downtown opportunities, said Dudley Webb, cofounder of The Webb Companies, which also served as the original developer of the Victorian Square project.
“Downtown’s better than it’s ever been,” Webb said.
And the plan to actively advertise and promote The Square to higher-end, national-scale tenants in partnership with Jeff Anderson Real Estate was intended to capitalize on that existing energy, Webb said.
Roughly 95 percent of the project’s 60,000 square feet of retail space has been leased, Fallon said. But even with the months of renovations and the high-profile tenants opening their doors, the project is only 25 percent to 35 percent complete. The next phase will incorporate new office space on the upper level that will leverage the location’s blossoming retail, dining and entertainment below, Fallon said.
He doesn’t believe it will be a hard sell.
“I wish that we had three times the size of the project that we have,” Fallon said. “Of all the cities in the Midwest, I’d say this is the one whose downtown and its core has the most upside.”
Sandra Duvall, The Square’s property manager, said the new tenants have sparked more interest and added new faces to the customer base, but the project has also kept its tried-and-true shoppers as well.
Duvall said the new mix of businesses and the rebranding have also inspired The Square to up its game on social media, with a new website (www.thesquare-lexington.com) and Facebook page, along with a presence on Twitter and Instagram.
“I think social media is going to be a big difference for us,” Duvall said.
And while many changes are afoot at The Square, not all the faces are new.
“I’ve seen this mall totally full before,” said Sherry Wainscott, owner of the gift boutique Sincerely Yours, which had been a part of Victorian Square for 15 years. Sincerely Yours sells a variety of local and handmade accessories, jewelry and decor. When the rebranding was launched, Wainscott was given the option of relocating from her sizable first-floor shop on Main Street into a much smaller space in the new Square. Her new space is a quarter of the size of her old one, Wainscott said, but she saw it as an opportunity to downsize.
Her new location still has a window presence on Main Street, as well as an entrance near the Square’s atrium, which helps to increase her exposure, she said.
Wainscott said the extensive construction surrounding the store has been a challenge, but she is optimistic that the new energy at the Square will help the business.
“When we moved, we knew it was going to be a struggle,” Wainscott said. “It’s been a slow summer, and some people don’t realize we’re here. ... But we’re still getting our loyal basketball fans, and we’ve always liked downtown.”
Now, with signs that the renovations are nearing an end, Wainscott said, she is readying for an uptick in sales over the holiday season and stocking up on gloves and socks to supply any ice-rink skaters in need of a warm change.