Cornering The Market
The grand re-opening of The Shops at Tanforan is on tap for this fall — at an ideal location.

The former Tanforan Park Shopping Center on the San Francisco Peninsula is now the site of a completely new shopping experience, called The Shops at Tanforan. In addition to a group of popular new tenants, the redeveloped center will feature new cafés, an international food court and sit-down restaurants, as well as the area's only state-of-the-art stadium-seating multiplex cinema.

The Shops at Tanforan will feature exterior storefronts.

Hapsmith had promised a re-model of the mall for many years but due to financing issues was prohibited from doing so. Since the owner had anticipated trying to do something on his own, he kept the vacancy around 30 to 40 percent. When Wattson Breevast purchased the mall, the company continued that process and, as leases came up for renewal, offered only month-to-month leases. Eventually, the mall reached 50 percent vacancy.

“We did not want to renew leases in anticipation of having to buy those out when we had to empty the mall,” says Senior Vice President Greg Wattson, “because the mall needed not just a Band-Aid redevelopment, but a complete redevelopment and reorganization.”

Originally built in the early 1970s, the existing 965,000 square feet of mall space will be completely transformed into a 1.1 million-square-foot center. Phase I of the original mall was comprised of Sears, JC Penney and the mall corridor. Target eventually took over the Emporium space.

The center court at The Shops at Tanforan.

The original mall was in need of a complete overhaul. The malls of the early ‘70s were designed with incredible depth, allowing room for stock in the back and retail in the front. As rents continued going up, people no longer wanted such deep space, so Wattson Breevast needed to pick up that space and put it in production. The company created two new leasing corridors to be able to pick up space that wasn't productive in the past and turn it into storefronts to lease for additional revenue. By creating those two corridors, one out to El Camino Real, which is at the front of the mall, and the other to the east, where the cinema will be located, the mall went from roughly 65 to 70 storefronts to close to 110 storefronts.

The multimillion-dollar renovation will result in a completely new mall. Essentially, the development team took the mall down to the concrete and steel and is bringing it back up again.

“To the marketplace and to the tenants, it's basically a new mall,” says Wattson. “Tanforan is a very historical name, but it was important that we introduce this as a new mall and a new opportunity, as opposed to an existing mall that went through a re-model. There won't be much that is recognizable from the previous experience.”

The upscale contemporary design of the center is the work of Altoon + Porter Architecture, a firm nationally recognized for its redevelopment of other centers, such as Arden Fair in Sacramento, The Shops at Mission Viejo in Southern California and Fashion Show in Las Vegas. Whiting Turner, one of the nation's largest mall redevelopment construction firms, will serve as contractor, and General Growth Properties is in charge of leasing.

The food court at The Shops at Tanforan.

“What we plan to offer back to the community and the Peninsula is not only fine retail establishments, but dining as well,” says Wattson. “It has more of a lifestyle, entertainment type of feel. The other malls have the retail and restaurants but don't have the cinemas. So we have everything packaged together, not to mention mass transit right to our doorstep.”

Currently, the center is 81 percent pre-leased. Continuing anchors at the center are Sears, JC Penney and Target. Most of the original tenants who vacated the space returned to the mall, such as Anchor Blue, Crescent Jewelers and KB Toys. Other major tenants include Barnes & Noble, Pacific Sunwear, Hot Topic, Bath & Body Works, American Eagle, Victoria's Secret, Basic and Footlocker. New tenants to the center include Old Navy, New York & Company, Master Cuts, Regis Salon, Hawaiian Barbeque, Kiddy Candids, Verizon and Thai Soon, and some of the additional food court tenants will be Auntie Anne's, Burger King, Cold Stone Creamery, Mrs. Fields Cookies, Subway, Panda Express and Dairy Queen. The mall will also have more service-oriented tenants, such as Prudential, Master Cuts, T-Mobile, and Cingular. The theaters will be grouped with contemporary restaurants to create the area's primary entertainment and gathering spot.

The mall portion of The Shops at Tanforan is scheduled to deliver in October, with the cinema opening 6 to 7 months later.

— Susan H. Fishman