Westfarms Steps Up Competition | Entrance redesign, new anchor restaurant and addition of high-end retailers aimed at attracting more consumers
Westfarms Mall wants to boost its consumer appeal by adding a number of new stores as well as a popular chain restaurant.
The shopping center is welcoming a number of new retailers, including Metropark, aimed at attracting young adults that claims to be part club, part street boutique, European clothier H&M, sensible shoes store Clark’s and upscale chain-restaurant P.F. Chang’s, as well as updating its entrance.
Erin Hershkowitz, a spokeswoman with the International Council of Shopping Centers, said many current malls are updating their image to keep up with new outdoor shopping and dining centers.
Malls are aiming more at specialty and higher-end retailers, often going for a more urban vibe that stores such as Metropark and H&M might lend to a typical enclosed shopping center.
The addition of more “destination” restaurants such as P.F. Chang’s is also a fairly common goal of enclosed malls these days, Hershkowitz said. Outdoor shopping centers market themselves as places to enjoy casual-to-upscale dining, so malls are finding it advantageous to add a successful restaurant like Chang’s.
Time Is Right
The clock ran out on a number of leases at Westfarms, so it was time to bring in a new crowd, said Kevin Keenan, general manager. “It’s probably a little bit heavier on the luxury side of things,” he said.
P.F. Chang’s will arrive along with Metropark and an AT&T store — both new to the area — as well as shoe store Bakers, Bare Escentuals cosmetics, Victoria’s Secret PINK loungewear store this winter.
Formal wear store Jessica McClintock formal will return to Westfarms after a months-long hiatus brought on by spacing issues, Keenan said.
Moving Out
The departed stores include L’Occitane en Provence skincare and fragrance shop, Timberland outfitter, The Children’s Place clothier as well as some stores with short-term leases, such as Diva Kidz, Royal Rug and Sports Parade. The Gap cleared off to make way for a Brooks Brothers, but returned shortly thereafter.
It’s all part of the flux of shops within the mall: “The changes that are taking place this year are significant, but not unusual,” Keenan said. He expects to have more lease changes to announce in the next few weeks.
And although the mall is keeping mum on another potential deal, Keenan said they expect another, similarly positioned destination restaurant to flank the mall’s New Britain Avenue entrance along with P.F. Chang’s. Because the new restaurants will change the look of the building’s exterior — Chang’s, in particular, puts a massive stone stallion outside its locations — the entrance will also get a facelift.
Westfarms officials say that the newcomers are an opportunity to update the entrance, Keenan said, which hadn’t gotten an upgrade since the mid-1990s. “We felt it was appropriate to modernize,” he said. “It was time.”
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