Vision to reality: Bradley Fair, NewMarket Square thrive

There's an old axiom in the commercial real estate industry: First rooftops, then retail.

Two big examples are in Wichita, where visionary developers Don Slawson and George Laham created NewMarket Square and Bradley Fair, two prospering lifestyle centers to serve the city's two residential growth areas.

It's been a little more than 20 years since Bradley Fair opened, and the 10-year anniversary of NewMarket's first store — Old Navy — is in July.

Lifestyle centers are prospering across America as answers to blight or rapid residential growth, said Dan Butler, vice president for retail operations at the National Retail Federation.

"These developers don't just go in and build new stores," he said. "They create apartment buildings, townhouses, condos, homes.... Where is the growth coming from in the future?

"The goal is to make sure these stores go in the place where the community is developing and prospering."

The open-air concept is easily marketed to shoppers who want doorside parking and convenience in an old-time Main Street feel, said Dotty Harpool, a marketing professor at Wichita State University.

"One of the big benefits you have is a customer can actually see all their shopping options, unlike in an enclosed mall where it's not all in front of you," she said.

"It's easier to get around. You can park a lot closer to where you want to go and it's new, it's fresh, there's open air, trees. It's just more comfortable."

The centers are great for their developers, too, said Laham and Slawson vice president for commercial development Jerry Jones. They allow phased development driven by marketplace demand.

"These things work, and these things grow, by feeding off the success of each phase," Laham said.

Bradley Fair

Three years into his career as a retail broker with J.P. Weigand & Sons, George Laham needed an east-side home in 1989 for a key client, Gessler Drugs.

Out of that need grew Bradley Fair, 52 national and local retailers in 280,000 square feet on the classic Wilson Estates horse farm at 21st and Rock.

"As I talked to various local retailers throughout the market, they'd been scattered through the city, and it was enough to make you think about bringing all the specialty shops to one location," Laham said.

"At the same time, Gessler was looking for some space in the area. I had a relationship with the Wilson family at Wilson Estates, so I drove the president of Gessler with (Weigand broker) Grant Tidemann over across the street, and we sat there and gazed at this horse farm.

"I think Grant was left to wonder what I was doing. But I asked the guy from Gessler, 'What if I buy a piece of this ground and put you in this retail center with a bunch of these specialty retailers?' He was interested in that."

In November 1990, Bradley Fair opened at 28,000 square feet with 11 stores, anchored by Gessler's. Laham ultimately bought all of Wilson Estates, for residential, office and retail developments.

In August 1992, Talbots opened as the center's first national retailer — a good start. But Laham wanted to land Gap, the rare national retailer whose arrival would pull other national chains to Wichita.

The ever-persistent Laham spent two years courting the Chicago-based firm with little success. Wichita didn't have the demographics to lure the retailer, and Bradley Fair's look didn't appeal to a solidly mall company.

"I finally got through to the real estate director one day," Laham recalled, chuckling. "He was tired of my calls, so he took the call."

From Wichita, Laham convinced the Gap official he was going to be in Chicago the next day. So he flew to Chicago for his allotted half-hour, which quickly shrunk to 10 minutes.

"I mean, great. I was in the area," Laham said, laughing. "So I want to tell you about Bradley Fair and Wichita.

"The guy said, 'No, let me tell you about Wichita. Number one, you only have 390,000 people. We don't go to markets that small. Number two, we build in closed malls, not open air centers."

So the developer flew back to Wichita, commissioned an architectural rendering of an outdoor Gap store, had it framed and shipped it to Chicago.

Weeks passed without word, so Laham dropped in on the Gap corporate office again, where he learned that his persistence paid off. Gap officials came to Wichita a week later and opened their store in March 1994.

Donna Preston, who has operated Lyndon's since 1975, calls Bradley Fair "my best location."

"It's pretty much saved our business," she said. "We're doing better than at the two previous locations. It's all about location, service and a pretty place to shop."

Today, Laham has a waiting list for available Bradley Fair space and a staff charged with staying current on the latest national retailing trends.

"It's just a matter of matching the size of the tenant with the size of the space available," he said.

"We've just gotten the Ultimate Electronics space back, for example, and we're in the process of making a decision on who our new tenant will be."

Bradley Fair has exceeded Laham's expectations.

"At the time we started this in 1989, the term 'lifestyle center' hadn't been defined," he said. "We were building a lifestyle center when we didn't know what one was, so yes, I'd have to say that we've been thrilled with the results."

NewMarket Square

Don Slawson has the Midas touch. So it should come as no surprise that Slawson, an oilman and residential developer, honed in quickly in the mid-1990s on the lack of retail services at the rapidly growing intersection of 21st and Maize Road.

"We'd been building in northwest Wichita for years," Jones said. "So we were there to know that there were a heck of a lot of homes built and not a lot of retail for them. They were on the lookout for opportunities."

David Cramner of Cramner Grass Farm had the opportunity — more than 200 acres at 21st and Maize Road that Slawson snapped up, first for new homes and then for retail.

That decision was vintage Don Slawson, Jones said: A clear vision for the area's retail future mixed with Slawson's brand of patient, fiscally sound development.

"Don's approach to development isn't the norm now, but it used to be: Buy the land, come up with a vision, develop it and maintain ownership, managing and improving it over time," Jones said. "It's really that philosophy that allowed this project to happen."

NewMarket's first big score was the March 2000 closing on a land sale to the overtly standoffish national retailer Wal-Mart, Jones said.

"That's what cemented this deal," he said. "We'd been down to Bentonville talking and really didn't have the sense we were making any headway with them.

"So I'm sitting in my office one day and got a call out of the blue from their broker. 'I'm sitting at 21st and Maize in the Dillons lot with the head of real estate for this part of the country and we'd like to talk with you. Right now.'

"Three months later we had a contract. Clearly, they'd been looking harder at the market than they were letting on."

After NewMarket's November 2001 grand opening, with 370,000 square feet, the development got a big boost from the battle for Wichita grocery marketshare between Dillons and Wal-Mart when Target came calling.

"They had decided to get into the grocery business and they were expanding around the country pretty aggressively," Jones said. "Way up on the north end, far enough that it really changed our mental vision of how big this thing was going to be."

Eric Fisher said his salon at NewMarket has been a great success.

"We're very fortunate to be in NewMarket," Fisher said. "Higher rents and taxes, for sure, but it's more than offset by traffic counts and visibility.

"Anytime your business is more in the mind's eye of the consumer, you're better off, and we get that in NewMarket."

Today, there are two phases left to develop in NewMarket — a plaza in the middle of the development with room for another 35,000 square feet of retail, and a fifth phase north of Target on about 10 acres, stretching NewMarket for a full mile from 21st to 29th.

"It's really exceeded even our expectations, thanks to the way it's been adopted as a focal point by the west side of the city," Jones said.

This story was originally published May 26, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Vision to reality: Bradley Fair, NewMarket Square thrive."