FEATURE ARTICLE, MAY 2010

BUILDING A BETTER BUTLER PLAZA
The 1 million-square-foot Butler Plaza — one of the largest open-air centers in the Southeast and one of the few family-owned centers — prepares for an 800,000-square-foot expansion.
Randall Shearin

Butler Enterprises plans to add a town center component to expand Butler Plaza.

Butler Plaza has been a fixture of the community in Gainesville, Florida, for nearly 40 years. Over the next few years, Deborah Butler, president of Butler Enterprises, hopes to expand the center, creating a new town center for the residents of North Central Florida. Butler has plans to add to the already existing 1 million-square-foot power center with a hybrid center, adding restaurants, lifestyle and conventional retailers who have no presence in the area or are looking to expand. Butler is planning certain pedestrian friendly amenities to make the new center a place to be enjoyed by everyone.

Shopping Center Business recently met with Deborah Butler in Atlanta to discuss the center’s future.

Long-time Gainesville resident and developer Clark Butler purchased the site, a former airport, where Butler Plaza sits today in 1970. Butler was one of the pioneer developers of shopping centers in Florida during the 1970s, having built the original Butler Plaza on Highway 436 in Orlando earlier in that decade.

The Lowe’s Home Improvement Center at Butler Plaza.

By 1976, the Butler site in Gainesville contained a mobile home park, 250 apartments, and a small strip center. The original shopping center was 86,000 square feet. Back then, large-scale retail development was not Butler’s primary business. In addition to serving as a mayor of Gainesville at one time, Butler’s main concerns were banking and a portfolio of student housing apartments around the city.

He didn’t get serious about continuing the development of Butler Plaza until the 1980s, after his daughter Deborah had joined the company. Wal-Mart was one of the first major retailers to commit to Butler Plaza. After seeing the success of the Wal-Mart transaction, the Butlers realized they could develop the property themselves, rather than sell it “piecemeal it to retailers,” says Deborah Butler.

“In the 1980s, Newberry Road [Highway 26] was the retail focal point of Gainesville because of the Oaks Mall,” says Deborah Butler. “But by the late 1980s and early 1990s, Butler Plaza expanded to the point that Archer Road [Highway 24] became the major retail focus of North Central Florida, in addition to its role as the gateway to the university and to ‘The Swamp,’ the Gators’ football stadium. Today, Archer Road is the leading commercial corridor in Gainesville and Butler Plaza’s location to the University of Florida, Shands Hospital at UF, the VA Hospital and eight of the county’s major employers provides tenants with a unique opportunity to reach residents and visitors alike.”

Throughout the 1980s, Butler Plaza was expanded by 180,000 square feet, in four phases, which mostly followed market conditions. Following along, the company kept adding tenants as the Gainesville market grew. Over the years, it added Target and accompanying small shop space. Further expansions brought retailers like Ross Dress For Less, Pier 1, Michael’s, PetSmart and Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse. The center added restaurants like Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, TGI Friday’s, Olive Garden and Taco Bell. The center is home to one of the first Jack Miller’s Alehouse restaurants and it has the second Texas Roadhouse.

“We’ve had some great relationships with entrepreneurs over the years,” says Butler. “They took a chance on us and we took a chance on them. While Texas Roadhouse has more than 400 units now, we still have a great relationship with them and this remains one of their best performing restaurants.”

The Texas Roadhouse at Butler Plaza was the second restaurant in the chain.

Butler Plaza, as it stands today, is located immediately adjacent to Interstate 75 at Archer Road, ending at 34th Street, which runs a few blocks to the University of Florida. The center, which is technically three centers in a row along a one-mile stretch of Archer Road, has anchors including Ross Dress For Less, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, Wal-Mart, Target, Regal Cinemas, two Publix Supermarkets, Best Buy, OfficeMax, Michael’s, Old Navy and Barnes & Noble. More than 10 restaurants are also at the center, creating a restaurant row for North Central Florida.

Behind the center, there are approximately 150 acres of raw land owned by the Butler family. Butler Enterprises has ambitious expansion plans for Butler Plaza on this property and Deborah Butler and her team have been working with government officials over the past several years on the land’s entitlements.            Butler Plaza has always been popular among tenants looking to place stores in Gainesville. The center’s location makes it a convenient place to stop for those residing on the west side of the city (and surrounding counties) and those headed to work at the university, Shands Hospital, the VA Hospital or downtown. While the Gainesville MSA has about 220,000 people, there are an additional 600,000 living outside Alachua County who consider Gainesville their primary civic center. In addition to its stellar location, the family-owned center has a different philosophy on leasing: lower common area maintenance charges than other centers in the area.

“Our CAM is half what anyone else’s in town is,” says Butler. “I would rather have higher rent and I’ll save you money on CAM. You’ll have a property management office on-site, fresh landscaping and a great looking property.”

The momentum of the expansion was just getting started when Clark Butler passed away in 2008. To continue progress on the development, Deborah Butler — who has been working on the property since the 1980s and is an active member of the Gainesville community, serving as a board member for UF’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies and as a board member and executive committee member for Florida Citizens Bank — has built a new team to continue the development of Butler Plaza. 

Bob Bratcher, who originally helped Butler Enterprises develop the property and who, according to Deborah Butler, “knows every inch of the land,” is a key part of the team. Also contributing are Ron Carpenter, a long-time land use attorney in Gainesville; Linda Shelley, a Tallahassee-based attorney and former secretary of Florida’s Department of Community Affairs; Ralph Conti, principal of RaCo Real Estate Advisors LLC, an Atlanta-based retail development consultant; Noel Cupkovic of CUPKOVIC architecture, llc; and an engineering team led by Jonathan Thigpen from Kimley-Horn and Associates.

“It is not easy to do something like this,” says Butler. “But it is easier when you have a great team.”

Butler Plaza’s tenants want to expand. At the same time, Butler Enterprises still has a roster of tenants that want to join the center. In a time when many centers would love these challenges, Butler Plaza is 95 percent leased; it has little room for anyone to expand or join the center. The time, says Butler, has come for major expansion.

The addition to Butler Plaza has been in the works, albeit subtly, for years. Butler Enterprises has been working diligently to secure the requisite approvals for the addition of the town center. Butler estimates that the approval process will be completed very soon. Butler Enterprises envisions weaving the existing center with the new town center, creating a unique and distinct hybrid type shopping and entertainment environment.

“Today, Butler Plaza is a very typical, very linear and very successful shopping center,” says Conti. “It has very prototypical boxes. What we are planning will have a lot more architectural elements to it. A lot of the tenants will be able to have new and updated formats. This development is an opportunity for tenants who currently can’t get into the Gainesville market and, quite frankly, an opportunity for some existing tenants to introduce their newer formats without leaving this desirable location.”

The new town center component will be comprised of a village retail area that will transition the town center into a larger box area. A hospitality and office component will also be added, bringing the expansion’s initial plans to about 800,000 square feet. The initial phase of the expansion is targeted for opening by the end of 2012.

“The overall expansion will take place over a number of years and uses will be added over time,” says Butler. “We want to establish the underlying framework and infrastructure with the initial phase so we can layer onto the expansion as time goes on.”

Because Butler Plaza will be a center for the part of the city, the Gainesville City Commission has taken an active interest in the project. “The city has been very good about working with us,” says Butler. “They are going to get a phenomenal project.”

With the expansion, the center’s access will also be improved, opening it up to more entrances.

“It has amazing 360-degree transportation access,” says Butler. “You rarely see a shopping center like this adjacent to an Interstate, two six-lane roads and the state’s largest university, all within a mile of one of the largest teaching hospitals in the country. We’re in the right place where all these things are happening.”

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