Mall uses holiday season to lure short-term business

Motorcycle dealer Road House Cycles is one of several new stores in the mall in time for the holiday shopping season. Eric Gudell, Road House Cycles general manager, said the move to the mall is for one reason: traffic.

“We’ve had real good sales, and we thought that the opportunity available at the mall would be a good place to get a lot of traffic that doesn’t normally come to a motorcycle shop,” he said.

The new Road House shop will feature most of the items available at the main store, including motorcycles, apparel, leather jackets, saddlebags and other motorcycle accessories. Cycle parts will still be available at the main store, 1046 W. Sunshine St.

The store’s two-month lease agreement, details of which management declined to disclose, is not uncommon for the mall, according to Battlefield Mall Marketing Director Christine Moses.

“It’s very typical that during the holiday season we bring in merchants that are just here for the holidays,” she said. “That’s not just typical for Battlefield Mall, that’s typical across the country for Simon.”

Battlefield Mall owner Simon Property Group Inc. owns or has interests in 299 North American properties comprising more than 200 million square feet. The Indianapolis-based publicly traded company (NYSE: SPG) has total market capitalization of approximately $34 billion as of Oct. 31, according to its Web site.

Tenant rebound

Battlefield Mall has shown indications of rebounding from a minor slump in August 2003, when seven vacancies existed – most notably Radio Shack, an original Battlefield Mall tenant, and McDonald’s. Mall manager Rob Rector said the mall is running at close to 100 percent occupancy, and 19 stores are new to the mall or have relocated or renovated this year. Rector would not disclose Battlefield Mall’s specific occupancy rate, but all Simon Properties were 91.8 percent occupied as of Sept. 30, according to the company’s Web site.

Even when Road House leaves its temporary space after the first of the year, Rector said, conditions at the mall should continue to be positive.

“We already have plans for that space,” he said, though he declined to specify what they were. “And for the other short-term leasing spaces, I’d say about 90 percent of them have a commitment in place for next year. Overall, we’ve just had a fantastic year top to bottom.”

The short-term leases are part of the mall’s plan to keep occupancy levels high.

“We have two leasing programs,” he said. “We have a long-term leasing program, which is for stores that are here year after year; those are typically five- to 10-year leases. And then we have a short-term leasing program for companies that are looking to expand their current business and want the opportunity to be in the mall, or for the company that’s saying, ‘We want to get into retail business, we’re going to try it out.’ When we don’t have a permanent lease tied to a space, we will fill it with a short-term agreement, and that keeps the shopping center running at higher occupancy.”