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FEATURE ARTICLE, MAY 2005
BEST IN MARKET
New lifestyle center in Northwest Arkansas brings the best in retail, dining and entertainment to the market.
Susan H. Fishman
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BOS Group’s Pleasant Crossing will bring regional lifestyle retail to Northwest Arkansas.
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In the spring of 2006, a new 500,000-square-foot open-air lifestyle center will become the place for retail, entertainment and dining for all of Northwest Arkansas. A group of partners led by Bethesda, Maryland-based BOS Group is developing the project, called Pleasant Crossing; the development team includes First Security Vanadis, Greenhat Partners and Charles Reaves. Former Mills Corporation executives Mark Lichtman and Philip Kroskin of BOS Group say they fell in love with the site.
“We were searching for sites in Arkansas, both Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas, because we recognized the growth, most specifically the explosive growth in Northwest Arkansas, due to employers like Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and JB Hunt Trucking,” Lichtman explains.
Situated on 345 acres at the intersection of Interstate 540 and Pleasant Grove Road in Rogers, Arkansas, the Pleasant Crossing Lifestyle Center will be designed as an open-air village where guests can shop, eat and relax in a pedestrian-friendly, park-like setting. Combined with a 350,000-square-foot power center across Pleasant Crossing Boulevard, the entire Pleasant Crossing development will occupy more than 1 million square feet.
The center will deliver in phased openings from spring 2005 to spring 2006. Phase I of the project is the 1.2 million square feet of the combined power and lifestyle centers; Phase II is a build-out of additional retail south of a 7-acre, landscaped interactive lake feature, which has a restaurant park around it and walking trails (with bridges) in and through it; and Phase III will be a large residential and office component.
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The 500,000-square-foot Pleasant Crossing will feature many dining and retail options for residents of Northwest Arkansas, one of the fastest growing areas in the U.S.
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The project is being designed by architect Crawford, McWilliams & Hatcher (CMH) based in Birmingham, Alabama, which also designed The Summit in Birmingham for Bayer Properties, among others. Robert Murase & Associates, a landscape architect based in Seattle, also is working on the design. Murase and his firm did the landscape design for Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines, Iowa, for General Growth Properties and are known for creating extremely special landscape places around lakes and village green concepts. The village green they have designed for Pleasant Crossing will be the focal point of the project.
Pleasant Crossing will feature a bookstore; national, regional and local specialty retail shops; and a number of sit-down restaurants. The power center consists of 550,000 square feet, including a 209,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter that opened ahead of schedule in March 2005.
“What’s very special for us is that we are in Wal-Mart’s hometown, and they chose our location to build their brand-new 209,000-square-foot flagship store,” says Lichtman. “So it has given tremendous immediate validity to the site and to the interchange here at Pleasant Grove Road as the retail location of Northwest Arkansas.”
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Pleasant Crossing, Rogers, Arkansas.
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Malco Theatres and Parisian will join Wal-Mart Supercenter as the principal anchors of the lifestyle center. Construction on Phase I of the 50,000-square-foot cinema complex will begin this spring. The 14-screen stadium seated cinema will feature wall-to-wall curved screens, rocking chair seating, digital projection, a large screenformat auditorium, an Internet café, birthday party rooms, video arcade and lounge areas. Malco may add an IMAX theatre to the development as well.
Retailer Saks Incorporated will open a 100,000-square-foot Parisian specialty department store that, along with another location in Pleasant Ridge Town Center (a new lifestyle center opening in Little Rock in 2006), will be the company’s first two entries into the state of Arkansas.
“You typically wouldn’t see a Wal-Mart next to a Saks’ brand store,” notes Lichtman, “but Saks recognized the power of Wal-Mart and recognized the power of the region and the growing demographics of the region.”
With an estimated 10,500 people relocating to Northwest Arkansas annually, the area is the sixth fastest growing metropolitan statistical area in America. By 2025, the population of Northwest Arkansas could double. A total of 11,000 jobs are expected to be added to the region in the next 5 years by the combination of Wal-Mart, Tyson’s Foods and JB Hunt.
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Crawford, McWilliams & Hatcher is designing Pleasant Crossing for BOS Group.
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The location of Pleasant Crossing also bodes well for the project. It boasts 1.5 miles of unobstructed highway frontage and a dedicated diamond interchange on I-540. But the center will have some competition. General Growth recently has announced a project just 2.5 miles north of Pleasant Crossing, called Pinnacle Hills Promenade.
Even with the competition, Pleasant Crossing developers see only success in the project’s future.
“We have a flat, graded site with incredible visibility,” says Kroskin. “And it’s fully improved as well as approved. What’s also good about the site is, as this market is growing, all of the growth is to the east and west of I-540, but the west really is seeing most of the growth. So all of this new residential is dumping people onto the main highway right at our project entrance.”
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