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May 25, 2005
Plaza Midwood
The birth of a brand?
Plaza Central leaders consider
emphasis on furniture
DOUG SMITH
The Next Big Thing
The next big thing in furniture
shopping might be within a 10-minute drive of
Charlotte
's uptown skyscrapers.
Plaza Central could become a
destination for antique, modern and consignment furniture if the business
district's leaders decide to adopt an emerging branding strategy.
Plaza Central Partners, a
neighborhood organization that focuses on business, inventoried the
district and discovered to their surprise 18 furniture-related stores.
"The only category that had a
larger representation was locally owned restaurants, with more than
20," said John Nichols, president of Plaza Central Partners.
"Furniture seemed to have the most potential when we talked about
what our branding niche should be."
Branding is as important in
neighborhood revitalization as in the corporate world.
In
Charlotte
, for example, South End brings to mind images of restored industrial
buildings, showrooms and restaurants. NoDa evokes art, entertainment,
funky shops and gallery crawls.
"Branding for these districts
makes a lot of sense," said city planner Laura Harmon. "They
definitely benefit from it."
One way to reinforce a brand, she
said, is for leaders to determine the type of tenants a district is
seeking and make sure they get the first opportunity to lease space when
it becomes available.
Developer Tony Pressley of MECA
Properties was a pioneer in South End's economic re-emergence and
successful branding in the 1990s.
"One of the things that truly
helped us is we recruited SouthEnd Brewery and convinced the ownership to
take the name of the neighborhood," he said.
In the early years, that attracted
tourists, celebrities and sports stars, keeping South End in the public
eye.
But over time, Pressley said,
leaders realized that "what we really had to have was a sustainable
economy -- a real payroll, real homes. We needed more than restaurants and
entertainment."
The thrust shifted to attracting
design-related businesses and home-furnishings showrooms to complement the
first wave of revitalization.
Plaza Central, which emerged amid
the neighborhoods of Plaza-Midwood, Commonwealth-Morningside,
Belmont
,
Elizabeth
and
Chantilly
, has a rich commercial history dating to the 1920s.
Following World War II, the
business strip along Central became known as the "Miracle Mile,"
a tribute to its thriving shops, services, restaurants and movie theater.
Businesses struggled to survive a
suburban exodus that began in the 1960s, but now the district is in the
midst of a commercial comeback.
A 1998 survey counted 123 retail
stores in Plaza Central, and recently developers have shown interest in
bolstering the retail with residential condos.
Plaza Central Partners' branding
idea still is in the embryonic stage, but Nichols expects members to
discuss it again at the organization's June board meeting.
"We want to continue to
promote our restaurants and unique shops, but we need to let people know
they will see furniture stores and antiques here that they won't see at
suburban retail centers," he said.
The district's recognizable name
won't be changed, Nichols said.
He hopes Plaza Central Partners
will select a branding theme focusing on the district's concentration of
furniture-related businesses and start recruiting similar stores within
about three months.
The idea, he said, is to get
people to think furniture when they see the name Plaza Central.
Steve Highsmith, owner of
Antique
Kingdom
at
700 Central Avenue
in Plaza Central, doesn't have a problem with more competitors. He said
they would pull in customers for everyone.
"A lot of people already are
browsing here," Highsmith said. "If people can't find what
they're looking for in my place, I send them down the road to the
others."
Nichols, a commercial real estate
broker and owner of The Nichols
Co.
, said the cost of retail space in Plaza Central could give the
organization a business recruiting edge.
"Here, retail space would
range from a low of about $12 a square foot (annually) to a high of $17 to
$18 a square foot," he said. "In the shopping centers of south
Charlotte
, you're looking at the mid- to high $20s."
Mecklenburg
's average annual retail rental rate at the end of 2004 was $18.68 a
square foot, according to Karnes Research Co.
One last word of advice from
Pressley as Plaza Central prepares to embark: "Branding is a
marathon, not a 100-yard dash," he said. "You have to work at it
every day, every week; take every opportunity to get it in print; get out
there and reinforce it."
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